You did not hear that supersonic boom, but Punjab’s Left finally broke the silence barrier. Thirty-seven long years after its tryst with silence over the 1984 killings of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere, the annual Mela Gadri Babiyan Da finally resolved to demand justice for the victims of these genocidal ethnic killings, carried out in full view of the regime in a town swarming with rulers, establishment, military and diplomatic brass. It should make no news that those committed to the cause of human rights and civil liberties everywhere in the world have demanded punishment to killers of thousands in organised massacres, but in this case, the comrades seemed to have wrestled too long with the idea. In the spirit of Der Aaye, Darust Aaye, Senior Journalist S P Singh takes note of criminal silence and revolutionary shift in the stand.

THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS AFTER GOONS LED BY POLITICAL MASTERS killed, maimed and burnt alive thousands of Sikhs in the national capital of Delhi and other towns, the organisers of Mela Gadri Babiyan Da finally included a demand that the culprits of such gory killings be punished.

The resolution passed at this iconic annual gathering in Jalandhar, largely comprising various shades of Punjab’s Left, was the first time that a demand for justice of the 1984 pogrom of Sikhs made it formally to the wish-list of the comrades, a development pleasant and shameful at the same time.

Mela Gadri Babiyan Da has traditionally remained a three-day affair, invariably culminating with night long theatrical performances on November 1 that end in the wee hours of November 2.

With its schedule precisely congruent to the exact days when Sikh women were
being raped in Delhi, Sikh men were being haunted by mobs ready with voter-lists in hand to identify them by ethnicity, it had remained a matter of shame and perplexing conspiratorial silence that the Left parties did not push for inclusion of
the issue on their Mela agenda.

THE REVOLUTION IN COMRADES’ CAMP -The demand at number 5 will serve more as a revelation of the Left’s mindset when history will record that it took 37 years for this perfunctory ritual to become writing on the wall -A WSN Photograph

Casual references and perfunctory chatter aside, the exclusion of the issue of the 1984 pogrom of Sikhs rankled community circles who seemed to have given up hope. In fact, the conduct and collusion of sections of the Left with the deep state during Punjab’s dark era of militancy also left much trust deficit behind. Successive leadership of Left parties did less work to cover that ground, certainly much less than the metaphoric balm which Congress and others pretended to apply.

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Read the recent WSN story that had called out the criminal silence
at the Mela about 1984 killings. The Abyss Between Trilokpuri in Delhi
and Desh Bhagat Yadgaar Hall in Jalandhar. ਤ੍ਰਿਲੋਕਪੁਰੀ ਦੀਆਂ ਗਲੀਆਂ ਅਤੇ
ਗ਼ਦਰੀ ਮੇਲਾ — ਹਿੰਦਸਾ-ਨੁਮਾ ਵਰ੍ਹੇਗੰਢਾਂ ਅਤੇ ਮੁਸਤੈਦ ਕਾਮਰੇਡ

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While political analysts and intellectuals will someday weigh on how much the Mela lost by keeping out the concerns of a persecuted community while endlessly blabbering in the middle of Punjab’s Doaba about human rights violations and civil rights struggles in the jungles of Bastar and Dantewada, the fact remains that the issue of 1984 was kept out of this event as a matter of a considered application of mind.

“You do not need the effort to include the demand for punishing those who killed thousands of people of a minority community, but you do need extra-ordinary effort, opinion-making exercise and conspiratorial networking among so many shades of the Left to ensure that the issue is not raised for 37 years. Hats off to the comrades for doing that — for keeping it out for 37 years, and including it this time,” said a senior journalist who has been tracking the Gadri Mela for years now.

This time, for some real effect, the Mela organisers even hung a banner at the entrance that included the demand for meting out punishment to the 1984 killers of Sikhs.

Mainstream Left parties have had no compunction in striking political alliances with the Congress in the same of secularism and not raising the issue of killings of Sikhs in Delhi under political patronage.

Mainstream Left parties have had no compunction in striking political alliances with the Congress in the same of secularism and not raising the issue of killings of Sikhs in Delhi under political patronage. While massive documentation and dozens of books by sufferers, chroniclers of riots and leading academicians have detailed the role of the politicians and political parties involved and the apathetic attitude of the law enforcement agencies and the justice dispensing machinery, the Left’s deafening silence even at a Mela dedicated to human rights and civil liberties have always perplexed those fighting for justice.

Dr Parminder Singh, a key thinker and part of the Desh Bhagat Yadgaar Committee, actually took pains to point out to visiting journalists that this time the Mela has included the demand for justice to the killers of Sikhs.

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Read the recent WSN story that had called out the criminal silence
at the Mela about 1984 killings. The Abyss Between Trilokpuri in Delhi
and Desh Bhagat Yadgaar Hall in Jalandhar. ਤ੍ਰਿਲੋਕਪੁਰੀ ਦੀਆਂ ਗਲੀਆਂ ਅਤੇ
ਗ਼ਦਰੀ ਮੇਲਾ — ਹਿੰਦਸਾ-ਨੁਮਾ ਵਰ੍ਹੇਗੰਢਾਂ ਅਤੇ ਮੁਸਤੈਦ ਕਾਮਰੇਡ

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Of course, the mainstream media hardly ever questioned the Mela for its silence on the issue for decades. Left parties remained shamelessly silent on the Congress giving prime positions to senior leaders accused of leading the killer mobs and participating in the pogrom, possibly considering it an internal affair of a party the Left loved to call “a secular force” needed to keep out “the communal forces.”

Selective silence about the killings of Sikhs and denial of justice for years has remained a defining feature of some of Punjab’s leading intellectuals playing tango with the Left, over the years. The list of economists wailing loudly about falling groundwater table and debt-ridden farmers but remaining silent about pogroms in the national capital runs longer than the 38 years of Left’s criminal silence at a Mela known for Gadar Di Goonj.

Selective silence about the killings of Sikhs and denial of justice for years has remained a defining feature of some of Punjab’s leading intellectuals playing tango with the Left, over the years.

Sources close to the organisers of the Mela said they are not sure if the heart-wrenching cries of the widows of 1984 will ever make their way into the comrades’ flagship composition, Jhande Da Geet, the ritualistic defining event of the Mela every year, but even the perfunctory inclusion of a mention of 1984 killings of Sikhs is being seen as progress among circles that took upon themselves the cause of revolutionising society.

“When comrades whip up a storm in a teacup, they do it sip by sip. It’s the pace of the revolution they have become used to. Hence the three-day annual whistle-stop tour of the revolution to Jalandhar’s Desh Bhagat Yadgaar Hall remains an island in a city of a million people and lakhs of migrant workers but does not attract even a couple of hundred residents. Comrades are happy with their cadre arriving from all over Punjab in trolleys to watch theatre and do some networking over cups of tepid tea rather than involving the masses. The Mela gives hope to the committed comrades and also explains at the same time why the revolution failed in its tracks,” said a political analyst who mingles with the Left cohorts every year at the Mela.