Raj Thapar
Yes, How is it done?
You take a stick, wrap some cloth around it dip it in a mixture of kerosene and some other deadly stuff, and you hurl it into a lifetime’s work, a shop, a taxi, a mud hut, a scooter. Then you catch the inmates, you chop off their hair and amidst gleeful shouting, you hurl them into the raging fire one by one. When a wife comes out wailing at the death of her husband, you seize her, you bash her bones with lathis and you hurl her in as well. You leave the child because you gloat in the agonized survival of that orphan.
How do you do it? What sort of monster can do this? No one bred on non-violence and meditation and Shanti. So, were all these meaningless words defeated and buried under the onslaught of the values of today? Violence, murder, tape, is this input of our progress-in school, in radio, everywhere a criminal lumpenisation.
You can’t call the killers Homo sapiens. It has to be another mix. Because nowhere in the world has it happened quite in this way. Hitler organized mass-killing, but kept it away from the population, training the monsters separately in a long unending chain of command.
And when you recognize amongst the vicious faces some belonging to the ones that rule you and you see the police meant to protect you pass by the raging fire or conniving with the killer squads, where do you go? To which place, to which person, to which wall? Where?
This is the story repeating itself relentlessly as you move from camp to camp, recur again and again and you begin to wonder. How so much kerosene was available, how were so many people available at a moment’s notice to indulge in such uncontrolled frenzy? They were mostly not neighbors.
Hindu neighbors defended their Sikh friends. Many were not from the area so who brought them there? How did they get implements for these gory deaths? How did one leader of the mob, while being dissuaded by neighbors from burning a car because the flames might touch the overhead cables, since no human arguments could possibly have swayed that fiend says,
“Don’t worry; we have switched this section off from the mains. We are not fools.” How did he get to the mains to turn the switch off?
Or how did a train arrive at Sunlight Colony station, disgorge its population of monsters, who burnt and killed and mauled and maimed at breakneck speed, then got on to that waiting train, which set off as the job was completed? Who gave the orders for that train, which brought those men, who equipped them?
And where did all the politicians go on those dark nights of November? Were they discussing their seats in the coming elections? Or watching in jeeps, frightened the shifts in hierarchy they stood around the or issuing statements. Yet they had a precedence of courage behind them of Gandhi giving up his life for just this, of Jawaharlal Nehur rushing to separate violent mobs with his bare hands in 1947, or Indira Gandhi of yesteryear driving straight out to Chandni Chowk the moment she heard of tension there in 1965.
One can continue in this refrain until the sun stops setting, but unless we answer these questions now, we will have made Northern India the shame of this land and forfeited our children’s future. Let us begin to look into this-what can you call it, it has no name and punish the identifiable guilty with speed, otherwise the future will remain a dark volcano lit up with countless, blazing pyres. And no one will be exclude No one for it is not a Hindu-Sikh problem alone. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
So, let’s get to the job and demand an enquiry not as camouflage set up by the powers that be because they failed abysmally at every level. No contingency plan existed although threats had been articulated for long, no decision for curfew or shoot-at-sight or calling the army in until the fires had begun nothing done to Station House Officers who were cheerfully sitting on tolen chairs; it was a failure which threatens the very life of the nation. Let the authorities also sit up and take note, it is in their interests as well, for they cannot wish to rule over a graveyard. Let them associate the voluntary organizations which sprung up like mushrooms to organize relief for the victims, all young people untrained by politics or authority.
The people of Delhi must demand:
- An immediate enquiry into the outbreak of violence with the help of people from the areas affected, Government and non-government, with a time bound frame for action.
- Suspension of all “SHO”s of the areas that blew up and cased launched for investigation.
- Immediate compensation where means of livelihood have been destroyed. If we can spend on fancy armaments, why is the government being stingy on this? A committee of citizens to guard this operation from sharks and gangsters Priority release of vehicles, of building of huts and homes by the PWD.
Article extracted from this publication >>
