By Tavleen Singh

THE viciousness of the Congress (I) attack on Ram Jethmalani in the Rajya Sabha plunged parjamentary debate (if we can call it that any more) to an entirely new level of degradation, ‘CIA ke kuttey bahar jao’ shouted the ruling party’s stormtroopers for several minutes, while Najma Heptullah, the deputy chairman of our ‘House of Elders’ continued to smile her plump and serene smile returned and she said she would haye to consult her book of rules, but as a ‘zoologist’ she would tolerate no insults to dogs. The animal loving Mrs. Heptullah might have found it slightly harder to smile serenely in the face of a similar attack on her since this would haye involved using the word for the female of species, but perhaps even this would have been acceptable because of the new attitude to debate as merely an extension of abuse. Both the ruling party and the Opposition must share the blame for this, however, as can be seen from the offensive personal remarks that Jayanti Natarajan provoked when she tried to bring up the kidnapping by NTR’s son-in-law.

But to return to Ram Jethamalani. I am give to understand by Congress I friends that the reason why the ruling party hates him so passionately is because he is a traitor to the country and a Khalistani. When I have pointed out that he has, in fact, on several occasions stated categorically that he does not support secession or Khalistani, my ruling party friends reply that he recently gave a series of interviews to foreign television networks in which he attacked the country. I then ask whether by ‘country’ they, in fact, mean the government and generally there is a long pause before they admit that perhaps they do mean government. In other words, criticism of the Congress (I) now amounts to treason.

Disturbing as this is, there are even more disturbing aspects of the Ram Jethmalani hate campaign which are likely to have serious consequences for the country and perhaps even for the government. These aspects relate to Punjab. At the risk of ending up with a treason charge myself I would like to say that, however unreasonable Jethmalani may sound when he talks about the Prime Minister, when it comes to Punjab his is the voice of reason itself. If it is not recognized as such it is only because emotion has for so long clouded all Judgments on Punjab.

What has Jethmalani done, after all, that he should be called a traitor? He defended Kehar Singh and Balbir Singh because he believed that they were innocent. Balbir Singh was freed and Kehar was hanged despite a fairly widespread view that he did not kill Indira Gandhi. He is now defending Simranjit Singh Mann and again there are many who believe that he was not involved in Indira Gandhi’s assassination and that his implication Was an afterthought. As for his alleged propagation of Khalistan it is not even worth going into since he has himself explained often that when he talked about the need for Sikhs to feel that they had a state of their own he had meant it to be within the country. What Jethmalani has done, however, and he has done it time and time again, is to talk about the injustice that has been done to the Sikh community and the need for a political solution to a problem that will have to be recognized as a political (rather than law and order) problem if it is to ever be solved,

If this view amounts to treason then there are quite a few traitors around and, perhaps, once the election are over and the government really wants to solve the Punjab problem it will be these “traitors” who will be listened to. I should mention, in passing, that even Julio Ribeiro, our “bullet for bullet” hero, appears to have joined the ranks these days, so ‘treason’ when it comes to Punjab is catching on

BUT even if one wants to see it, as the government seems to want to, purely from a law and order point of view, then it can only work if there is the same law for Hindu and Sikh militants. By Hindu terrorists I mean the mobs that ruled Delhi for three days in November 1984 and at whose hands over 3,000 Sikhs were killed even by the government’s own calculations. In my mail recently, arrived a pamphlet from the Sikh Forum called Rajiy Gandhi and 1984: Facts and Fantasies’ whose stated purpose is to nail some of the lies that the government has been telling us about the 1984 violence. The lies: “One, that the riots were controlled quickly. Two, that ‘unprecedented rehabilitation work’ had been done and ‘meticulous care taken to rehabilitate several families.” Three that prosecution cases against 2,400 people accused in about 225 rioting cases had been launched and so on.

On how quickly the riots were controlled the pamphlet quotes from the government’s own report prepared. By Justice Ranganath Misra which says, “There was inordinate delay on the part of the government to call the army in aid of Civil Administration. There were 5,000 fighting army men available by October 31 midnight. If army had been called on the morning of Ist November, and 5,000 army jawans would have been moving in the streets of Delhi, the situation would have been different.” Among other things the report also says that the police “were highly negligent and grossly failed to perform its duty and at places the police had connived with the mob.”

As far as action being taken against the guilty, the truth is that the government has been able to deal in the past five years with only one murder case in which six people were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Sessions Court. The pamphlet says, “In the other murder cases the accused have been acquitted primarily because of lapses of police investigation. An example of willful lapses by the police: the police did not register a single case of murder in Mangolpuri, Shahdara and Kalyanpuri which saw some of the worst fury of the massacre. They even refused to register FIRs when survivors came to make complaints.”

The government would do well to the read to Sikh Forum’s pamphlet because it also contains some of the affidavits that were filed before Justice Misra. I shall quote from only two. An affidavit from a 70 year old man says of Sajjan Kumar, former Congress (1) MP. “When Shri Sajjan Kur r, MP, arrived at the meeting, then I came to know thiche meeting was in connection with the death of Smt Indira Gandhi and the question of the Sikhs. Shri Sajjan Kumar said that whosoever kills the sons of the snakes, he would be rewarded by him because they have murdered our Prime Minister, Smt Indira Gandhi. He said that whosoever kills Sardar Roshan Singh and Bhag Singh would be given Rs 5000 each by him and those who kill other Sikhs will be

rewarded Rs 1000 per head.” The other relates to Shri H.K.L. Bhagat the ho no.

durable Minister for Information & Broadcasting and was filed by a retired policeman who says, “On 31.10.84 1 came from NOIDA where I had gone to see my friend… on the way I saw Shri H.K.L. Bhagat, MP Standing in front of the house of Shri Shyam Singh Tyagi along with 1015 other persons… from about 9:30 pm till late night .. through all the streets of the locality these people (the ones with Bhagat) carried the Congress (I) flags in the their a ands and were shouting slogans like khoon ka badla khoon se lengay and sardar, Shaddar, maar do,” Bhagat was recently exonerated by the Prime Minister on the grounds that he was not in the areas where the violence took place.

 

THE police did not register a single case of murder in Mangolpuri, Shahdara and Kalyanpuri which saw some of the worst fury of the massacre. They even refused to register FIRs when survivors came to make complaints.”

Article extracted from this publication >>  September 22, 1989