The angry reaction of Rajiv Gandhi in describing the appointment of three member cabinet committee by the Punjab Chief Minister as a direct encroachment upon the Central jurisdiction hence absolutely unacceptable has left even the worst sceptic with no doubt about his determination to exterminate the Sikh youth. It only proves that the Indian ruler is not communal for the core but communal from the core. The committee was appointed to report on the killing of fourteen Sikh young men by the Border Security Force on the night of August 31-1986. It was required to submit its report within four days. Rajiv’s reaction however has permanently frozen the report. In all probability it will never be made public. If at all the government is compelled to release it in response to popular glamour it will not be the original report but a carefully prepared document suitably worded to justify the B.S.F. action.
In a democratic set up high level probe into the ruthless and doubtful deeds of the law enforcing agencies is not a concession to any quarter but a minimum obligation to satisfy the affected people. The disdain with which Delhi dismissed requests from Amnesty International and U.N. Human Rights Commission to allow their teams to visit disturbed areas speaker’s volumes about the nature of democracy that obtains there.
Earlier also Rajiv preempted any adverse observation in Mishra Commissions report on November 1984 anti-Sikh riots from going to the public by blocking its presentation before the Parliament through a Presidential ordinance. Like lady Macbeth Rajiv is obsessed with his own guilt and is terribly afraid of the truth. Haunted by a near insane urge for vendetta against Sikhs he has embarked upon a diabolic course of Sikh genocide and to hide his bloodstained hands he resorts to crude methods and acts like a criminal hiding from himself.
He is convinced that he can suppress truth by just denying truth. He believes that the free world has no option but to accept his denial at its face value. He has so perfected the technique of applying subtle tilts in international power permutations and trade transaction as to make the free world swallow whatever rubbish he feeds it. All this has turned his head. Another Nero is out in the balcony fiddling away while Sikhs and Muslims are burnt alive. Another Hitler has reactivated his gas chambers in Punjab police stations and substituted the dreaded concentration camps with security belts where undeterred and untried he indulges in the bloody sport of hunting captive Sikhs.
Liberty equality justice morality human rights and human dignity are beautiful words and fine ideals fit only for window dressing or for mechanical repetition in schools temples and international forums. They have no relevance to the mundane affairs of the world dominated by political and economic considerations. Perhaps “we are here as on a darkling plain” where power drunk despots feast on innocent human flesh where State terrorism generates a vicious cycle of terror and death where the arrest of a Journalist in Russia angers the entire free world but the indiscriminate killing of innocent Sikhs is dismissed as an internal matter of India hence of no consequence or concern for the lovers of liberty and champions of human dignity.
It is a disquieting scene; The curse of double standards is all pervasive. Will the freedom loving people of the world ever make a determined bid to break the spell of this monstrous curse? Have the people gone emotionally so bankrupt that they need continuous reenacting of tragedies to ensure regular supply of emotions? The answer cannot be in the affirmative. The suffering multitudes are already having portentous convulsions and time is not far when they would reassert themselves. Only then perhaps the free world will bail them as the new liberators.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 19, 1986
