What actions did Rajiv Gandhi take during and after the massacres of Sikhs in November 1984?

Rajiv Gandhi was the eldest of Indira Gandhi’s two sons. After attending the elite Doon School in Dehradun he went on to study engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge, and mechanical engineering at Imperial College, London. However, he left both without completing his degrees and, after returning to India in 1966, he joined Air India as a commercial pilot.1 Unlike his younger brother, Sanjay, who was the political heir apparent of the Nehru- Gandhi dynasty, Rajiv showed no aspirations of following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, and of his mother.2

The catalyst to him becoming a reluctant prime minister was Sanjay’s death in an airplane crash in 1980. Rajiv was persuaded to enter into politics by his mother. He took up in earnest the political mantle thrust upon him in 1981 after winning the Amethi constituency in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the seat formerly held by his brother.

He viewed himself as a political moderniser who was determined to make India a player on the global stage.3 History, however, may well tell a different story. The genocidal massacres of November 1984 took place under his prime ministership watch, and possibly with his alleged actual or tacit approval or command. He prevaricated when others pleaded with him to call out the army to protect his Sikh citizens 4, he attempted to justify and downplay the violence, and he shielded those who orchestrated it.

It is almost inconceivable to imagine that Rajiv Gandhi was unaware of the activities of the key members of his party for those four dark days. He had been general-secretary of the All-India Congress Committee (I) since 1982, had reorganised the party, presided over its training camps and was deeply involved in screening potential election candidates. He knew these cadres well enough; several were his own trained men – and it was no secret that they and some of the old guard (known as ‘Sanjay’s boys’) had links with criminal gangs.5

Some commentators have gone so far as asserting that Rajiv Gandhi may have encouraged the violence as one source cited a conversation that was reported by a RAW intelligence operative on 31 October:

Upon arrival at Palam airport in Delhi and hearing of his mother’s assassination, Rajiv told those present, ‘My mother has been shot dead. What are you doing here? Go, and take revenge. No turban should be seen’.

Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 2002.6

The prime minister was reported to have said other damning things at the airport. At a meeting of the National Executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during a review of reports from various states cataloguing the attacks against Sikhs, it came to light that Shyam Khosla, a senior journalist, and Krishan Lal Maini, former Punjab finance minister, had enquired from several unnamed senior government and military officials what had happened and why. They were told that at the airport:

One of the senior officers had whispered something into his ears and Shri Rajiv Gandhi was heard saying “Yes, we must teach them a lesson”.

K.R. Malkani, ‘Witness statement’, Nanavati Commission.7

While the anger at his mother’s assassins was understandable, Rajiv Gandhi and those around him appeared to blame the entire Sikh community for the actions of two individuals. Shanti Bhushan, a former minister and senior advocate of the Supreme Court, was shocked when he tuned into Doordarshan to see the prime minister passively listening to the slogans calling for revenge.8

Journalist Tavleen Singh had a similar reaction when she watched the broadcast of Rajiv Gandhi’s first speech as prime minister:

In a calm, emotionless voice, he said India had lost a great leader. Someone who was not just his mother but the mother of the country, or words to that effect. Then he stopped and stared sadly at the camera while Doordarshan showed shots of H. K. L. Bhagat and his supporters beating their breasts and shouting, ‘Khoon ka badla khoon se lenge.’ [Blood will be avenged with blood].

Tavleen Singh, Durbar, 2012.9

Pupul Jayakar, a cultural activist closely associated with Nehru- Gandhi family, immediately went to see Rajiv Gandhi to insist the army be deployed after a reporter informed her of the violence: ‘Gurdwaras are being burnt down; crowds are dragging Sikhs by their hair out of their homes and making bonfires of them before our eyes’. Rajiv Gandhi asked Home Minister Rao as to what should be done but he remained silent. The prime minister then turned to Jayakar and asked her the same question. No stranger to speaking her mind, she reminded him that his mother would have called out the army by now and would not have allowed the butchery that was taking place.10 But no firm action was taken and the killings continued unabated and unchallenged for a further three days.

Shyam Bhatia, Bullets and Bylines, 2016, p43.

The president, Zail Singh, was unable to even get hold of the prime minister to raise his concerns. According to Zail Singh’s press secretary, Tarlochan Singh, the prime minister did not respond to his telephone calls and ‘neither the PM nor the Home Minister took any interest in defusing the situation or help[ing] the victims’.11

As his citizens burned, it was become increasingly clear that Rajiv Gandhi was not fulfilling his constitutional or moral duties. Although he was understandably grieving, Nicholas Nugent, his biographer, would later write: ‘Nobody, it seemed, had orders to seek out and try to prevent the holocaust that was taking place. Rajiv Gandhi seemed to be preoccupied with organising the funeral rites of his mother, and receiving the visiting dignitaries’.12

By the second week of November, word began trickling out from victims, journalists and human rights activists of the very real possibility that members of his party – especially senior Congress figures in Delhi – had been deeply involved in the massacres. Several prominent party members, former ministers and army chiefs notified him of this in the hope that he would distance himself from the perpetrators.13

Among those who attempted to communicate their concerns with the prime minister included a group of senior figures including the country’s only marshal of the Indian Air Force, Arjan Singh, Lieutenant General Aurora, and I. K. Gujral. On 12 November, after waiting two hours to meet Rajiv Gandhi, they were informed by a messenger that the meeting could go ahead immediately if they wished to condole with him. When Aurora responded that they obviously wanted to express sympathy for the prime minister’s loss but they also wished to tell him about the horrors endured by Sikhs and the need to punish the guilty, the meeting was reportedly abruptly cancelled.14

The reason was apparent, as explained by Rajni Kothari, President of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties at the time:

The more one thinks about it, and examines the evidence, the more it becomes clear that Mr Rajiv Gandhi must also take the blame for the revenge following his mother’s assassination. Gandhi not only knew of, allowed and condoned the violence, he took advantage of it. He was advised that this was politics as usual, and he did not question this advice in any way.

Dr Rajni Kothari, ‘Genocide – 1984: The How and Why of it All’, Angelfire, 1994.15

At the heart of New Delhi stands India Gate, the national memorial to the 70,000 soldiers of undivided India killed in action from 1914–21 primarily in the Great War. Adjacent is the Delhi Boat Club, which had become a hub for political rallies in the post- colonial era. In his first public rally as prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi spoke to thousands of his supporters here on the anniversary of his mother’s birth – 19 November – just a fortnight after the massacres:

“Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.”

PM Rajiv Gandhi, Delhi Boat Club. November 19, 1984.

From his podium, the prime minister presented his casual justification for the mass murder of thousands of his fellow citizens: it was a natural phenomenon, spontaneous and tragic but only to be expected and nothing of any greater consequence.

During the 1984 election campaign, The Indian Express reporter Sanjay Suri probed the prime minister about the alleged involvement of Congress Party leaders. Gandhi’s telling response was that evidence was found in one case and that individual had been punished.16

The minister in question was Dharam Dass Shastri and his ‘punishment’ was not being allowed to run for re-election. Although the admission of a Congress leader having been involved was significant, Rajiv Gandhi had also sent a clear message – he was not prepared to take more than superficial action (Shastri was punished for ‘political misdemeanour’). The encounter left Suri questioning why the prime minister had not taken further action; where was the legal inquiry into his own party members? He claimed the prime minister had unfortunately squandered a precious opportunity to take a stand at that crucial moment in his career.17

When the new Indian parliament opened in January 1985, the two houses adopted a common resolution expressing condolence for Indira Gandhi’s death. No mention was made of the thousands of Sikhs who had been massacred in her name.

In his first interview as newly elected prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi told M. J. Akbar, founding editor of India’s first weekly political news magazine, Sunday, that the killings were only extensive in those areas where the Sikhs were rumoured to have celebrated his mother’s death by distributing sweets – in essence, they only had themselves to blame.18

He also repeatedly dismissed calls for an inquiry stating that one would never be instituted as ‘it would do more damage to the Sikhs, it would do more damage to the country by specifically opening this whole thing up again’.19 In April 1985, however, he grudgingly ordered a judicial inquiry into the violence as part of the Punjab Accord.

Those seeking the truth, like widow Lakhwinder Kaur, would just have to wait. When they came to kill her husband she was an eighteen-year-old mother of a five-month-old daughter and two months pregnant:

It seemed easy for Rajiv Gandhi to say, “When a giant tree falls, the earth below shakes”, she told a reporter twenty-five years later. ‘Our trees were felled and we can still feel the tremors.

Widow Lakhwinder Kaur20

Was the new Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi responsible for the violence against the Sikhs?

  1. Shyam Bhatia, ‘Rahul first in three generations with a world university degree’, The Tribune, 18 February 2014. ↩︎
  2. Meena Agarwal, Rajiv Gandhi, 2004, p 18. ↩︎
  3. Bhabani Sen Gupta, ‘Rajiv Gandhi: Image building’, India Today, 30 April 1985;
    Yoginder K. Alah, ‘Rajiv Gandhi and the story of Indian Modernization’, Livemint, 19 May 2013. ↩︎
  4. Pranay Gupte, Mother India: A Political Biography of Indira Gandhi, 2009, p 92. ↩︎
  5. James M. Markham, ‘Anti-Sikh whirlwind: where did it come from?’, The New York Times, 16 November 1984. ↩︎
  6. Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 2002, p 395. ↩︎
  7. K.R. Malkani, ‘Witness statement’, Nanavati Commission. ↩︎
  8. Shanti Bhushan, ‘Affidavit of Prominent Persons. Nanavati Commission. ↩︎
  9. Tavleen Singh, Durbar, 2012, Chapter 12: Rajiv. ↩︎
  10. Pranay Gupte, Mother India: A Political Biography of Indira Gandhi, 2009, p 92. ↩︎
  11. C. G. Manoj, ‘Rajiv Gandhi didn’t take calls from President after 1984 riots broke out’, The Indian Express, 30 January 2014. ↩︎
  12. Nicholas Nugent, Rajiv Gandhi – Son of a Dynasty, 1990, p 26. ↩︎
  13. Who are the Guilty? Report of a joint inquiry into the causes and impact of the riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November 1984. Gobinda Mukhoty, Peoples Union of Civil Liberties and Rajni Kothari, Peoples Union of Democratic Rights. November 1984, p12. ↩︎
  14. Ajaz Ashraf, ‘Lest we forget: what five eminent Sikhs and a former prime minister witnessed during the 1984 riots’, Scroll, 31 October 2016. ↩︎
  15. Dr Rajni Kothari, ‘Genocide – 1984: The How and Why of it All’, Angelfire, 1994. ↩︎
  16. Sanjay Suri, 1984: The Anti-Sikh Violence and After, 2015, p 22. ↩︎
  17. ibid, p 26. ↩︎
  18. ‘Rajiv Gandhi’, Sunday Magazine interview by M. J. Akbar, March 1985, quoted in Siddharth Varadarajan, ‘Moral indifference as the form of modern evil’, The Hindu, 12 August 2005. ↩︎
  19. The day India killed its own, The Indian Express, 31 October 2004. ↩︎
  20. Shobhita Naithani, ‘I lived as a queen. Now, I’m a servant’, Tehelka, 25 April 2009. ↩︎