When the State collapses…

Romesh Thapar

First published in The Illustrated Weekly of India. 23 December 1984.

The attempt of those in power, says Romesh Thapar, has been to shelve the ghastly holocaust that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination as yet another communal riot. This it was not. When a state collapses, only a change in the ruling political culture, says Thapar, can help restore the vital psychological equilibrium of a people. The mauling of the Sikhs, he concludes, could be a dress rehearsal by the criminal politicians and their lumpen gangs to hold our society to ransom. We are permitting a paralysed, unthinking, inexperienced government to treat our problems as if this is still India of 1947.

Whatever themes are projected by the media, in print or electronically, about the horrendous mauling of the Sikh communities in the North, from the Capital city of Delhi to the borders of Bengal, make no mistake, we are in very serious trouble. The wounds are deep, barbaric in fact, and there will be no healing for a long time — and very much more so if this listless, incoherent, emasculated government of in- experience were to continue its reign.

We have emerged, shattered from ten incredible days when government ceased to function. From the assassination of Indira Gandhi — an eventuality that was very much a part of the security scenario following the assault on the Golden Temple — to the almost total collapse of the police system across Northern India, its collusion with lumpen, looting mobs, largely led by recognised Congress (I) leaders, and the cowardly inability of the administrators to confront the rioters are now established facts of that terrible November. What is not known is that, had it not been for the pressure exerted by some active citizens and some Opposition politicians, the paralysis would have persisted with the assault spreading to all sections of the richer population.

The looting, the burning, the murder, the brutal butchery had a pattern which certainly needs urgent investigation, if only to round up the political ringleaders, whatever their ruling party status. While all energies ore concentrated on establishing a conspiracy around the assassination of Indira Gandhi, this ghastly holocaust is sought to be shelved as another ‘communal riot’ which it was not — so much so that a citizen’s committee has thought fit to launch an inquiry. Men of reputation, be-longing to The System, have been compelled to offer their services: former UN negotiator Rajeshwar Dayal, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Sikri, former Governor Govind Narain, former Ambassador and Vice-Chancellor Badruddin Tyabjee and former Home Secretary Srinivasabardhan. It is a commentary on our condition that such a step was thought necessary.

The holocaust is believed to have destroyed properties worth Rs 300 crores, reduced to cinders something like 2,000 trucks and taxis and, if we include the tentative figure of families whose earning members were butchered, burnt alive and buried without notice, it should be anything between 6 and 8 thousand. Statistics were difficult to collect because indecent haste marked the closing of the camps in Delhi, where some 50,000 refugees had sought safety from the murderous mobs.

Obviously, the evidence of the holocaust was sought to be scattered. A battered people were sent back despite their fears and traumas. And the new Lt Governor of Delhi, MMK Wali, the same who presided over a paralysed Union Home Ministry, spent his active hours minimising what had happened and criticising “exaggerated accounts”.

These men will have to be investigated at some point in our recovery.

Some 350 volunteers, drawn from the universities and from all communities, began work almost simultaneously with the sacking of various colonies in the sprawling Capital. Standing on rooftops, it looked as if Nadir Shall was again on the. rampage, but these volunteers gathered food, clothes, medicines to bring succour to the suffering. They passed through experiences beyond the tales of the Partition. Wherever they went, these youngsters were inspired by the fortitude of a community that had been put to the torch and they brought forth tears of love and gratitude from those who had lost everything,

But as so often happens in this bureaucratised and polarised land, when their representatives visited Mr Wali, the Lt-Governor of Delhi, they were asked if they were a “registered body” and described as hostile to government. This from the head of an administration whose presence in the colonies was difficult to establish. What difference between the dismissed Lt-Governor of Delhi, P G Gavai, of Antulay fame and this replacement?

The harassment of the volunteers by the police, who made themselves visible after the tragedy, the conscious effort to black out any reference to the Nagrik Ekta Manch of the volunteers — a body uniting many organisations — and the enormous play on ‘peace marches’, organised , very often by the marauders themselves, gave us a taste of the style of governance that has prevailed in India during these troublesome years and which has destroyed the probity and the accountability of the administrative and police system.

During those critical days, almost every group, including Opposition leaders, which visited Rajiv Gandhi or his ministerial team, came away with the feeling that no one was in command and there was no one to turn to. This extraordinary situation, heightened by the attempt of various coteries to function in total isolation shattered public confidence.

Take one striking illustration, No one in the so-called hierarchy left behind by Indira Gandhi understands the great damage that this mauling of the Sikh community has done to the armed forces. Apart from the fact that some 30 Sikh officers and men in uniform have been done to death in tire presence of ‘captive’ non-Sikh soldiers, the 120,000 Sikh soldiers and 22 per cent of the officer corps that is Sikh knows that they were not trusted or permitted to take part either in the funeral rituals or the post-assassination restoration of peace. What was done in the police force was done to the armed forces. The repercussions are too fearful to contemplate, particularly when little effort has been made to dramatically restore the lost hopes of the Sikh community in the future of Indian secularity and justice.

It is incredible that concerns about the future have to be voiced by groups of individuals still able to see the crisis in its larger dimensions. Official silence greets those who urge immediate action to punish the guilty and to restore security and confidence. Cases are not being registered and, where they are, a corrupted police force is assuring the guilty that they will be released.

The inexperienced coteries now claiming power and basing all their calculations on a considerable ‘sympathy vote’ in the backward Hindi-speaking heartlands, are prepared to hold their familiar ‘spontaneous rallies’ in the Capital, bringing in lorryloads of paid mobsters from neighbouring states, despite the warnings of the police and the military chiefs. They are unmindful of the damage being done to the psyche of the Sikh community.

If the prevailing passion to return to the security of Punjab does not dissolve and the Sikhs feel that they are hostages, you can be sure that they will band together in groups of five and ten thousand to begin the great migration back to Punjab. These kaflas, once they get moving, will be difficult to stop. All the persuasion in the world will not halt them. Then the future of Punjab — indeed, the entire north-west — will become uncertain.

We are permitting a paralysed, unthinking, inexperienced government to treat our problems as if this is still India of 1947. Banish the stupidity. The India of 1984 has potentials both for prosperity and for self-destruction never dreamt of before. At the helm of affairs, we need men and women who comprehend this profound change in their land. The rest are a threat to the future.

When a state collapses, only a change in the ruling political culture can help restore the vital psychological equilibrium of a people. A new national reconciliation cannot come about without a new national consensus. And a new consensus cannot be separated from the building of a political thrust that cements national unity. All else is dust in the eyes of our people.

The transition from one ruling culture to another cannot be anything but messy and chaotic, but it can be made less so by an informed people mobilising at every level to lift the fog of confusion. We are already into this transition. It is a transition which will spark a great deal of new thinking, often from unexpected quarters.

Here are a few sentences extracted from a remarkable article in The Times of India which questions the logic of the leader writers of the newspaper. It is by a well-known economic historian, Mrs Dharma Kumar, and it captures the traumas of the sensitive in the North:

“If all the sweets in India had been distributed, that would not have justified the burning alive of one single Sikh.”

“…if burning alive were the punishment for vulgarity and folly, there would be few people left in India.”

“The killing of Hindus in the past is irrelevant— or has the state abdicated its responsibility for preventing and punishing murder?”

“Is any Muslim in Delhi, gentle Hindu reader, ‘justified’ in roasting you alive because of Bhiwandi or Ahmedabad?”

“…is preventive murder now a right of all Indians?”

“Why should every Sikh be responsible for the doings of all other Sikhs?”

“Those who demand loyalty to the state had better ensure a state worthy of loyalty.”

We need to address ourselves to these questions while we are still able to. The mauling of the Sikhs could be a dress rehearsal by the criminal politicians and their lumpen gangs to hold our society to ransom.

We have been warned— and we still have the vote.