Chandigarh: Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) president and former Punjab Deputy CM Sukhbir Badal issued statement yesterday regarding the Sikh Genocide 1984. In his statement, Sukhbir Badal, said that the massacres of November 1984 were actually a genocide. Holding the then ruling party, Indian National Congress, responsible for the genocide, Sukhbir Badal praised Hindutva outfit Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). According to Sukhbir Badal, “the Sikhs as a community and all right thinking people in the country and across the world are grateful to the members of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) who had courageously come out in the streets during this genocide to stand by and save their Sikh brethren against dangerous and armed criminals and killers”.
Sukhbir Badal also urged the BJP led Indian government to recognise the fact of Sikh Genocide 1984. His statement came during a time when the Indian government condemned the motion adopted on Sikh Genocide 1984 by the Ontario parliament and took an open stand against the recognition of Sikh genocide 1984.
Sukhbir Badal [File Photo]Sukhbir
Notably, Sukhbir Badal’s party, the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) is an ally of Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and Sukhbir Badal’s wife Harmisrat Badal is a Cabinet Minister in Narendra Modi led BJP/NDA government at the Centre.
Sukhbir Badal’s claim that BJP members courageously came out to save Sikhs during the genocide holds no truth. On the contrary the evidences show that the BJP members participated in the genocide of Sikhs along with the Congress party leaders.
The fact is that the Sikh genocide 1984 was perpetrated by the Indian state working under the genocidal impulse of the Hindu society, of which BJP is also a part.
Documents and evidences have surfaced which shows that the genocide was supported and carried by active and ideological participation of the Hindutva forces such as Rashtriya Swayamwewak Sangh (RSS) and the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP).
A document written by Hindutva ideologue belonging to Rashtriya Swayamwewak Sangh (RSS) is a concrete evidence of ideological support extended by Hindutva forces to “secularist” Indian National Congress.
The RSS often poses as a firm believer in Hindu-Sikh unity. But in this document we will hear from the horse’s mouth that the RSS like the then Congress leadership, believed that the massacre of the innocent Sikhs was justified. Nana Deshmukh in this document is seen outlining the justification of the massacre of the Sikh community in 1984. His defence of the carnage can be summed up as in the following:
1. The massacre of Sikhs was not the handiwork of any group or anti-social elements but the result of a genuine feeling of anger among Hindus of India.
2. Nana Deshmukh justifies the killings of Sikhs arguing that there was moral sanction of the execution of Indira Gandhi by the Sikh community, the the attacks on Sikhs were justified.
3. He pleads that the Sikhs themselves invited these attacks, thus advancing the Congress theory of justifying the massacre of the Sikhs.
4. He glorified attack on Darbar Sahib and described Sikh reaction against this brutal army attack on the Sikhs as “anti-national”. When Sikhs were being killed in thousands he was warning the country of Sikh extremism, thus offering ideological defense of those killings.
5. In this document RSS ideologue says that it was Sikh community as a whole which was responsible for violence in Punjab.
6. In this document Hindutva ideologue preaches that Sikhs should have done nothing in self-defence but showed patience and tolerance against the killer mobs.
7. According to Nana Deshmukh it was Sikh intellectuals and not killers, who were responsible for the November 1984 massacre. He says Sikh intellectuals had separated Sikhs by cutting them off from their Hindu roots, thus inviting attacks from the “nationalist Indians”.
8. He described Indira Gandhi as the only leader who could keep the country united and on the killing of such a great leader such killings could not be avoided.
9. Rajiv Gandhi who succeeded Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister of India and justified the sub-continenet wide killings of Sikhs by saying, “When a huge tree falls there are always tremors felt”, was lauded and blessed by Nana Deshmukh at the end of the document.
11. There was not a single sentence in the Deshmukh document demanding, from the then Congress Government at the Centre, remedial measures for controlling the violence against the minority community. Mind this, that Deshmukh circulated this document on November 8, 1984, and from October 31 to this date Sikhs were left alone to face the killing gangs. Deshmukh was just not bothered about all this. (see: Sikh Genocide: Long Search for Culprits to read original document in Hindi and it’s English Translation)
BJP Members Participated in the Massacre of the Sikhs:
Contrary to Sukhbir Badal’s propaganda that the BJP members courageously saved lives of Sikhs during the Sikh Genocide 1984 the reality is that BJP members sides with the Indian National Congress in killing the Sikhs during this genocide.
Records related to November 1984 genocide of Sikhs in Delhi show that criminal cases against many BJP leaders/ members were registered on the recommendations of Jain-Aggarwal Committee while examined affidavits filed by the genocide victims before various commissions.
Some of the prominent Delhi BJP and RSS workers against whom cases were registered are- Pritam Singh, Ram Kumar Jain, Ram Chander Gupta, Rattan lal, Gian Lal Jain, Chander Sian, Pardeep Kumar Jain, Ved Mahipal Sharma, Padam Kumar Jain and Suresh Chand Jain.
A report in the Hindustan Times (February 2, 2002) notes that one of the accused Ram Kumar Jain, named in FIR No. 315/92 Dt. June 18, 1992 was the election agent of BJP leader and former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajapyee when he contested Lok Sabha election in 1980. BJP and RSS leaders were named in 14 FIRs, most of then registered at Sriniwaspuri police station in South Delhi, for incidents that took place in areas like Hari Nagar, Ashram, Sunlight Colony and Bhagwan Nagar.