The On­tario Provin­cial Par­lia­ment ac­cept­ing a mo­tion moved by MPP Harinder Kaur Malhi, call­ing the No­vem­ber 1984 Sikh killings as geno­cide has be­stirred the Sikh world and un­der­stand­ably up­set the guilty state of In­dia

Harinder Kaur Malhi -the Mem­ber of the Provin­cial Par­lia­ment of On­tario from Bramp­ton-Spring­dale con­stituency, the daugh­ter of the first tur­baned Sikh Mem­ber Par­lia­ment of Canada -Gur­bax Singh Malhi, has suc­ceeded in cor­rect­ing a huge his­tor­i­cal wrong heaved on the Sikhs 33 years ago.  Sup­ported by her Sikh col­leagues Jag­meet Singh, Harinder Takhar and Vic Dhillon, she has achieved this with a 34-5 ma­jor­ity, with many of the mem­bers not pre­sent in Par­lia­ment and with the In­dian diplo­mats and the for­eign min­istry of In­dia cry­ing foul from the rooftops.

What has she done? Pon­der over this:

• Of­fi­cially 2733 Sikhs killed on the streets of Delhi alone on 1-2-3 No­vem­ber 1984. Un­of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics touch  5000 and more.
• No se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer or politi­cian con­victed for the geno­ci­dal killings
• No non-Sikh was ha­rassed, at­tacked or killed.
• Sikhs were at­tacked and killed in 115 towns and cities as also on buses and trains.

What would you call this? Ri­ots? Mas­sacre? Geno­cide?

The first three days of No­vem­ber will for­ever be etched in the minds of the Sikhs and what­ever they may say or do will con­tinue to haunt those who have a con­science in In­dia. On those days, in full pub­lic play, the tur­ban and beard on the body of male Sikhs, the du­patta as a head cov­er­ing for Sikh women, be­came out­ward sym­bols for at­tack.

Men were hounded and killed in homes, of­fices, on the streets and in trains. Scores of women were sex­u­ally as­saulted. Hun­dreds of homes, of­fices and build­ings owned by Sikhs and clearly ear­marked, were de­stroyed and prop­erty looted.  The ma­raud­ing lumpens con­sciously cho­sen and trained by the Con­gress party and oth­ers in­clud­ing the BJP,  had a field day, the po­lice and other agen­cies sup­ported the killers, dis­armed Sikh po­lice per­son­nel and those who had li­censed arms, well planned phys­i­cal at­tacks on poor Sikhs and de­struc­tion of prop­erty of rich Sikhs in posh colonies. The con­spir­a­tors in the Con­gress gov­ern­ment and party, iden­ti­fied by PUCL and PUDR in their land­mark re­port –Who are the Guilty?, were pro­tected and kept be­yond the realm of law.

The Con­gress party and other par­ties took time to ac­cept and recog­nise that some­thing huge had hap­pened. The Prime Min­is­ter of the day, Ra­jiv Gandhi, in his re­ac­tion to the killings of the Sikhs, eu­phemisti­cally de­clared, “Once a mighty tree falls, it is only nat­ural that the earth around it shakes.”

Iron­i­cally, two decades later, the first Sikh-face Prime Min­is­ter of In­dia -Man­mo­han Singh apol­o­gized in the In­dian Par­lia­ment. He said, “I have no hes­i­ta­tion in apol­o­gis­ing not only to the Sikh com­mu­nity but the whole In­dian na­tion be­cause what took place in 1984 is the nega­tion of the con­cept of na­tion­hood and what is en­shrined in our Con­sti­tu­tion.” It is an­other story that he too failed short of ac­cept­ing the guilt of the Con­gress party.

In 2014, the In­dia Home Min­is­ter, Ra­j­nath Singh speak­ing at a func­tion had said, “It was not riot, it was geno­cide in­stead. Hun­dreds of in­no­cent peo­ple were killed. The pain of the kin of riot vic­tims can­not be com­pen­sated by even pay­ing crores of ru­pees.” I think that he too did not mean geno­cide, per­haps only mass killings.

The mo­tion no. 47 moved by Harinder Kaur Malhi and adopted by the On­tario Provin­cial As­sem­bly reads, “..con­demn all forms of com­mu­nal vi­o­lence, ha­tred, hos­til­ity, prej­u­dice, racism and in­tol­er­ance in In­dia and any­where else in the world, in­clud­ing the 1984 Geno­cide per­pe­trated against the Sikhs through­out In­dia, and call on all sides to em­brace truth, jus­tice and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.”

The gov­ern­ment of In­dia, al­ways abra­sive of any ef­forts to in­ter­na­tion­alise con­flicts and dis­putes in In­dia which it con­ceives as law and or­der prob­lems only, has re­acted with the ex­ter­nal af­fairs min­istry spokesper­son say­ing, “we re­ject this mis­guided mo­tion which is based on a lim­ited un­der­stand­ing of In­dia, its con­sti­tu­tion, so­ci­ety, ethos, rule of law and the ju­di­cial process.” My foot.

The high sound­ing of­fi­cial ver­bosity is mean­ing­less. 2733 Sikhs were killed within 72 hours in broad day­light in the cap­i­tal city of Delhi. The whole na­tion slept like a log with lead­ers hound­ing the Sikhs and even then In­dia had its con­sti­tu­tion, so­ci­ety, ethos, rule of law with the high­est seats of po­lit­i­cal and ju­di­cial power in Delhi.

In­di­a’s con­sul gen­eral in Toronto Di­nesh Bha­tia, for once in a quandary ran hel­ter-skel­ter to stall the mo­tion and is now threat­en­ing break­down in bi­lat­eral re­la­tions. By the way, the de­fense min­is­ter of Canada -Har­jit Singh Saj­jan would be soon on a bi­lat­eral visit to In­dia early next week. Pro-In­dian out­fits like the Canada-In­dia Foun­da­tion, Panorama In­dia and the In­dia Canada Cham­ber of Com­merce had to eat hum­ble pie.

Not sur­pris­ingly, even while re­port­ing this news story from On­tario, the In­dian me­dia has cho­sen to call it ri­ots and a hand­ful have grad­u­ated to call it as mass killings.

WSO pres­i­dent, Mukhbir Singh said, “For years, the term 1984 anti-Sikh ri­ots was used to de­scribe events of No­vem­ber 1984 which was a dis­tor­tion and wrongly im­plied un­or­ga­nized com­mu­nal vi­o­lence. Rec­og­niz­ing the state-spon­sored vi­o­lence that tar­geted Sikhs across In­dia in 1984 is an im­por­tant and his­toric step to­wards jus­tice, ac­count­abil­ity and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, which we hope will be an ex­am­ple to other gov­ern­ments.”

Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions world­wide have wel­comed this step which has pro­vided so­lace to the com­mu­nity and vic­tim fam­i­lies. Jathedar Akal Takht Sahib, Dal Khalsa, the SGPC, All In­dia Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion (AISSF), Sikhs for Jus­tice, the Aam Aadmi Party and even the Badal-led Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal have chided the gov­ern­ment of In­di­a’s re­ac­tion as child­ish and sought re­ver­sal of the same. In a de­lib­er­ate twist reek­ing of ob­fus­ca­tion, Sukhbir Singh Badal in his state­ment has tried to blame only the Con­gress for­get­ting the eu­lo­gis­ing of In­dira Gandhi by the BJP af­ter the at­tack on Dar­bar Sahib in June 1984 and the to­tal si­lence of the BJP till re­cent years. Fac­tu­ally, many BJP work­ers and lead­ers were part of the team lead­ing the at­tacks on Sikhs in Black No­vem­ber 1984.

On­tario Pre­mier Kath­leen Wynne who had vis­ited In­dia some­time back, has had the last laugh. Thank you Harinder Kaur Malhi. Thank you to Jag­meet Singh, Harinder Thakar and Vic Dhillon. Thank you to Sikh-Cana­di­ans. Thank you Pre­mier Kath­leen Wynne. Thank you On­tario. Thank you Canada.

In No­vem­ber 1984, the con­cept of In­dia as a coun­try of di­verse peo­ple died. In­dia shook aside from civ­i­liza­tion -and plunged deep to be­come an un­civ­i­lized so­ci­ety. Is it civil to­day?