8 years ago, jour­nal­ist Jar­nail Singh, now an ac­tivist and politi­cian, flung his shoe at for­mer In­dian Home Min­is­ter P. Chi­dambaram, in re­ac­tion to com­ments about for­get­ting No­vem­ber 1984 at a press meet. En­am­oured by his act, WSN Ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh wrote a sym­bolic Open Let­ter (now edited) to the Shoe which, made a his­tory of sorts and brought some cheer to a be­lea­guered Sikh com­mu­nity reel­ing un­der  mem­o­ries of the car­nage.

Dear Jar­nail Singh’s Shoe: I won­der how to greet you, but greet I must. Since the last few days, every time I re­move my shoes, I treat it with more re­spect and care than ever be­fore. Let me say a sweet Sat Sri Akal. You are spe­cial for me and many Sikhs.  In­stead of hav­ing a rick­ety old small cup­board, I am plan­ning to have a nice set­ting to place your broth­ers and sis­ters in my house.  

We love you for you have achieved what years of le­gal wran­gling and ex­ec­u­tive pre­var­i­ca­tion could not do.  The gen­tle toss from the gen­tle­manly Jar­nail Singh’s feet to the vicin­ity of In­dian Home Min­is­ter P. Chi­dambaram has im­mor­tal­ized you. In two and half me­tres you trav­eled twenty-five years.  

Through­out this year, the com­mem­o­ra­tion of 25 years of the 1984 pogrom would have been a sor­did and painful af­fair, but you have given the Sikhs a rea­son to pause and be a lit­tle sat­is­fied. In a span of less than five sec­onds, you put the Con­gress party on the mat and made them change their pro­file. A bit. I can­not re­call any in­ci­dent like this in In­dian or world po­lit­i­cal his­tory. The mere show of a shoe brought the Con­gress party on its knees and the per­pe­tra­tors of may­hem were shown the door. Booted out would not be liked by you, isnt it?

“Oh dear shoe! The gen­tle toss from the gen­tle­manly Jar­nail Singh’s feet to the vicin­ity of In­dian Home Min­is­ter P. Chi­dambaram has im­mor­tal­ized you. In two and half me­tres you trav­eled twenty-five years.”

Why did you miss Pala­niap­pan Chi­dambaram? Was your wearer Jar­nail Singh be­ing as po­lite as he nor­mally is? Did he merely want to score a point? Was it off the cuff or pre­med­i­tated?   

I think you man­aged the tra­jec­tory. You were clev­erer than Jar­nail Singh. You did not want to be tainted with the touch of a per­son who jus­ti­fied mass mur­der. You were con­scious that in his ear­lier avatar as Min­is­ter for In­ter­nal Se­cu­rity, he prob­a­bly had some hand in the mur­der of In­dian Post jour­nal­ist Dhiren Bha­gat -who had ex­posed mas­sive il­le­gal arms sale to vig­i­lantes and po­lice in Pun­jab. 

The me­dia has been ex­tra nice to your foe -the Home Min­is­ter and has called him sweet and soft. Per­haps, he was as soft as Kurt Wald­heim who went on to be­come the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of the United Na­tions, till his Nazi past was dis­cov­ered and he was called per­sona non-grata.

“In the long, tire­some and ap­par­ently fruit­less jour­ney in search of jus­tice, we should not al­low any of per­pe­tra­tors to go scot free.  Even if it re­quires throw­ing an­other shoe.”

Hey, I am sure you must be laugh­ing at all this talk of ethics, jour­nal­is­tic norms and good be­hav­iour in a sec­tion of the In­dian me­dia. Your boss -I hope you do not take of­fence, if I call him so, merely tossed you. What about the run­ning com­men­tary of jin­go­is­tic jour­nal­ism that we were fed with af­ter 26/​11?  Saner el­e­ments all across In­dia and the world were be­wil­dered at the man­ner in which the in­ci­dent was be­ing tele­cast minute af­ter minute, round the clock by satel­lite tele­vi­sion. The shrill voices of renowned an­chor-ed­i­tors Barkha Dutt and Ra­jdeep Sarde­sai even to­day through their Ter­ror TV, send a chill down the spine.

 Read also: JAR­NAIL SINGH (1973-2021) — The Man Who Threw A Shoe At In­jus­tice

Till how long can one func­tion with­out a spine? How long? Spine­less­ness kills char­ac­ter; can we have jour­nal­ism with­out char­ac­ter? Can we gov­ern the coun­try with­out char­ac­ter? What you per­haps may not know is that the per­son who has given you fame wit­nessed im­mense pain and suf­fer­ing twenty-five years ago on the streets of Delhi.  What you may know as his con­stant com­pan­ion is that Jar­nail Singh was cer­tainly in­spired by the elec­tion cam­paign of his pa­per, Dainik Ja­gran. Bill­boards all across the coun­try are telling the elec­torate, “Ham Nahi Karenge to Kaun Karega?“If not us, who will? Not stop­ping at this, they go on to say, “Ab Nahi to Kabh? “If not now, then when? I hope Dainik Ja­gran will take this into ac­count when they con­sider any ac­tion, if any against your friend Jar­nail Singh.

You must be won­der­ing about all this sud­den lime­light that you have gained. Your pals have been in the pa­pers and on tele­vi­sion but have al­ways re­mained con­fined to the paid ad­ver­tise­ment sec­tions.  You were never placed on the up­per half of the page. That too, the front page. Com­pa­nies who have branded you spend mil­lions every year but the com­pany which man­u­fac­tured you and the store in Seat­tle from where you were bought by Jar­nail Singh, may see more Sikh pa­tron­age.  

For the Sikhs, the footwear of the de­vout and the brave is the car­rier of the sa­cred dust which can wash sins and make one hum­bler. Next time when some­one picks your brethren out­side a Gur­d­wara, one is sure to re­mem­ber you and your con­tri­bu­tion.  

While writ­ing to you, I also re­mem­ber the ad­mon­ish­ment of my school head­mistress, who used to scream, “The first thing to see in school uni­form is a clean and bright shoe. Grad­u­ally the sight moves up­wards.”

 Read also: Jar­nail Singh’s Shoe writes back seek­ing jus­tice for Nov 1984

I do not know whether you are in the cus­tody of the po­lice or in the back­rooms of the Home Min­is­ter’s of­fice. I am not sure at this stage whether you will land at Christie’s till some un­known Sikh mil­lion­aire may bid for you just as they do for your other fel­lows worn by David Beck­ham.  

What I do know is that later that day, af­ter you had fin­ished your task, you heard the min­is­ter say,“ 400;”I for­give him. Sub­se­quently you also heard the lumpen leader Jagdish Tytler say,“I wish to apol­o­gise to the Sikhs. What­ever hap­pened was a shame­less act I had ac­tu­ally abused the gov­er­nor as he was en­joy­ing his drink while the car­nage was on.”

No­body heard you. The whole coun­try was ob­sessed with the min­is­ter, the would-be MPs and Jar­nail Singh. I heard you loud and clear.  

You said, “We do not for­give you. Who was en­joy­ing what drink has still to be un­earthed. We will find out, how­so­ever much the de­lay. We have a long way to go till we get due jus­tice.”

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I am with you in this jour­ney and we should not al­low any of per­pe­tra­tors to go scot free -all those who have been test­ing our pa­tience, un­der­min­ing our loss and pain and ridi­cul­ing our wait for a fair, just and truth­ful clo­sure to the pogrom of No­vem­ber 1984. Even if it re­quires throw­ing an­other shoe.

With best wishes and hopes to meet you some­day.
Re­spect­fully yours,
Jag­mo­han Singh