Dr. Rajni Kothari 1st of 2 parts courtesy of Sikh Review, Nov 1994

The savagery of mass killings at Delhi following Mrs. Gandhi’s ‘assassination continues to haunt the conscience of all those who happen to have a conscience, in Delhi and outside, Despite all the fact-finding reports, firsthand eyewitness accounts and some extremely candid and searching analyses, the question one constantly keeps coming across is but how did it happen, on such Scale, with so much ferocity over so many days, in so many places ‘and yet all following a pattern that is so strikingly similar?

The question keeps recurring even now. The temptation either to dismiss it as a spontaneous outburst of communal passion and frenzy, or to dramatize it as some grand conspiracy hatched by a few people after the assassination. Does not help explain the reality which. On careful perusal of the evidence that has surfaced so far, appears to be more complex, though not necessarily more sobering.

The evidence points to something much more long drawn out, built over time by a variety of factors and actors. Triggered off after the assassination, no doubt, but also pointing to “dress rehearsals” for reprisal and vendetta before that. All of it culminating, when it did finally happen, in a classic regime of terror facilitated by a complete breakdown of the civil order throughout the length and breadth of the country’s capital. It is necessary to take the various factors into account and identify the generic process through which a relatively stable and safe place for the Sikhs like Delhi degenerated into one of extreme brutality and barbarism. First, it is necessary to remind ‘ourselves of some macro developments in the country as a whole that are pertinent in explaining why the factors immediately responsible for the massacre in Delhi and elsewhere could be so effective, For a long time now we have seen a striking erosion of institutional safeguards against raw instincts and primitive conflicts breaking out in the open and, what is worse, being taken advantage of by individuals and interests out to undermine the delicate balance of this highly complex and plural society. A long period of decay of institutions that were designed to mediate between contending i tersest, the sway of paranoid personalities unwilling to share power and privilege, and the operation of a mindless electoral calculus whose only aim has been survival in power by any means, had produced a massive vacuum in the country’s political structure. A large part of this vacuum has been filled in by both communal and criminal forces which have found it easy to subvert the constitutional and secular political process.

The main victims of this process of displacing democratic politics by a politics of violence and terror have been, on the one hand, the poor and the underprivileged like Dalits and a divas is and, on the other, the religious minorities. In particular the Muslims and of late the Sikhs. The second important fact to remember is that there has been built over a long time now, in Delhi and elsewhere, both an infrastructure and a technology of terror, especially since the days of the Emergency, Jagmohan’s Delhi (with full support and backing of Sanjay Gandhi) was built on bulldozing slums and squatter tenements, forcing the presidents outside the margins of the city, in the process destroying their community basis and making them available for recruitment to all kinds of jobs. For the rabblerousing relics at I Safdar Jung Road (Residence of Mrs G.) and elsewhere, for storm. Trooping into courts and commissions of inquiry, and whenever the need rose, for threatening, intimidating and attacking any target group. It is from these outer fringes = now heavily populated Trilokpuri, Sultanpuri, Mongolpuri, Nand Nagri and Shakarpur that both the “goonda” leaders and the more numerous lumpens came to mount the violence and carnage. It is these goonda leaders and their mercenaries that carried out most of the killings and arson. What happened in Delhi in early November was not a communal “riot” like any other. It was instead a criminal hatchet job carried out by known perpetrators of lumpenized terror for which the terrain and the infrastructure were already laid out.

Such a readymade structure and process of coercing the public towards desired ends had earlier been used for legitimizing populist postures and pretense, on this basis, a “winning coalition” between the rural poor. The religious minorities and the lower castes all over India and the Brahmins of North India had been forged. It worked quite well throughout the Seventies (with the exception of the 1977 election) and while it led to a very large concentration of power in one family, and to a massive buildup of both corruption and criminalization, it at least preserved the broad secular character of the Indian state. With the sudden change of electoral strategy of the Congress(1) in early 1983, following growing unpopularity, and based on a sustained stirring of Hindu communalism for consolidating the massive Hindu vote, particularly in the northern “heartland” but also elsewhere, the character of the Indian state also changed suddenly. This consolidation was realized along two parallel but independent streams. First, through confrontation with Muslim opinion, by scrapping Congress’s long standing relationship with the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir during the.1983 state election, unceremoniously toppling the 1984, providing both overt and covert support to the Shiv Sena in the Bombay Bhiwandi riots, raising the scare of threats from Pakistan, and entering into an ‘*under—standing” with the R.S.S. And, second, through manipulating the whole Punjab problem, by transforming it into a Sikh Hindu problem deliberately allowing it to deteriorate to such a pass that Operation Blue Star became “inevitable”. And by producing an anti-Sikh ferment among the Hindus, especially in the North. To the already potent armory of corruption and criminalization was now added communalism. With this, the nature of the Indian State ‘was completely transformed.

It is these “macro” developments that had set the stage in 1984 for whatever happened in Delhi, Kanpur, Bokaro and elsewhere. ‘They provided sanction and legitimacy for those who indulged in communal violence and torture, those higher-ups who prepared the groundwork for and “planned” it, as well as those who merrily looked on, or deliberately stood by, or asked others, to stand by. Without this generalized sanction of violence and murder against an identified and designated target, such a gruesome camage, carried out, according to set patterns, would just not have been possible. It also explains why those at the helm of affairs did so little to arrest the madness. For they were part of the “pattern”.

It is within this framework of understanding that other, more proximate, factors need to be gauged in explaining this unprecedented. Still unbelievable crime against whole people. Three clusters of such factors are important and fall in pattern with the” ‘macro” situation described above.

First, there were well worked out and relatively well coordinated logistic and technique. Almost everywhere where killing took place, there. Was first a mob attack with? Iron rods, rendering the victims unconscious, after which kerosene and other combustible fuels were used to bum the bodies. In case of trucks, the attempt was to set them ablaze through piercing the fuel tanks, burning fully both the truck and the driver. In the case of shops and buildings there was greater use of charred Tags and combustible chemicals in powder form. Taking Delhi and Bhopal together and probably other places too, the extent to which “chemical warfare” has been waged on one’s own people is terribly frightening.

All this called for a massive supply of fuel of all kinds in large parts of the city. There is clear evidence that this was planned and coordinated. So was identifying the location of colonies, households, shops and establishments,; this too was systematically carried ‘out, There was evidence of men on scooters locating the places, followed by mobs who carried out the killings and arson, in many areas supervised by higher-ups moving in Ambassador cars from ‘one place to another. The use of incendiary slogans (khoon ka badla khoon) charged the atmosphere. Wireless relays to “control rooms” and loudspeakers were also in evidence, but only in posh colonies. The brutal killings were much more in the poorer colonies where women were on the whole spared but were forced to witness in full the tortuous methods pulling out of limbs, eyes, tearing off hair, beards being set on fire, piercing of bowels and kidneys with sharp weapons through which their menfolk were put to death. Ivan FERA, who has reported this aspect the best, sums it up well: “Certain images had to be burned into the psyche”.

It is quite clear that all this could not have been accomplished, and both the synchronization of logistics and the striking similarity of technique cannot be explained, but for there being, a large measure of advance planning and rehearsing. Evidence from various sources is mounting that, soon after Operation Bluestar and the extremist response thereto in parts of Punjab, a plan of retaliation by identifying Sikh targets, ranging from households to commercial establishments to Gurudwaras had been undertaken, including the planning of logistics and the techniques to be employed. Both a psychology and technology of “revenge” had thus been blueprinted before the assassination provided the moment to carry it outery is not surprising, then. that the concept made its way into the mind of the new Prime Minister who gave vent to it in his first public appearance after the assassination, on the occasion of his mother’s birthday, November 19, 1984.

Second, and almost as important as the coordinated killings and arson, were the conditions that permitted, and in parts catalyzed such. An understanding. Perhaps the most outstanding and notorious of these was the concentration of all bandobast at Teen Murti around the body of Indira Gandhi which was kept on for more than three days, and along the security route from Palam airport to Teen Murti to protect world dignitaries while thousands were being killed, robbed and raped in large parts of the city. There were no police officers to be seen in these areas as most of them were found huddled together with their senior officers at Teen Murti. So were the contingents of paramilitary and armed forces, many of whom had been brought in from outside Delhi presumably to help he announced to control the riots. ‘The contrast was so shameful, so) abominable. On the one side lay one body, deliberately uncreated for three days, only to be accorded a royal cremation with Vedic mantras. Chandan and ghee. On the other side there was no one even to lift the bodies of several hundred for two and, at places, three days. When finally after umpteen phone calls and appeals, the bodies were lifted, it was only for mass dumping! These too woe murdered like that other one often Muni and ironically bodies too lay uncreated for two. Or three days. But what a contrasts and what a direct relationship, between contrasting party’s alt attention to one, complete neglect to others, Dozens of appeals were. made to police headquarters, the Prime Minister’s Secretariat and the Delhi Administration, but to no avail, It looked as the dead body of the slain Indira Gandhi was itself taking “revenge” ”on the. Sikhs at large. (The body was kept on the television screen for many more days and reappeared from time to time through the election with most of the officers out of reach, all one could see were all groups of low-ranking police either looking on at the camage, or even participating in it.

Article extracted from this publication >>  December 9, 1994