Commentary / Mani Shankar Aiyar
What began as an innocent reaction...developed into one of the darkest tragedies in independent India's history
As for the administration and the police, the Misra enquiry had
shown them up for all the mistakes and worse they made. What requires
closer examination is Judge Dhingra's assertion that there was
a conspiracy and that 'all those who were involved in the
conspiracy, those who helped in this conspiracy by their inaction
should have been brought to book and made to face the trial.'
As far as I am able to make out--and I remain open to correction
-- there is nothing in the Dhingra judgment that establishes
grounds for the existence of a conspiracy. Justice Misra says,
'There can be no scope to contend, and much less to accept,
that at the initial stage on 31 October, 1984, the violence that
took place was organised.' He finds that there was a 'spontaneous
reaction of the people to the then prevailing situation at the
commencement but as the police did not attend to the situation....
what began as an innocent reaction... developed into one of the
darkest tragedies in independent India's history.'
Justice Ranganath Misra is, of course, not infallible. It is
possible that in the decade that has elapsed since he submitted
his report evidence might have come to hand indicating a conspiracy,
plot or plan by the 'political masters' of the day, namely
the Indian National Congress(I) and its leaders, to seize the
opportunity provided by the assassination of their prime minister
to launch a genocide against the Sikh community.
If such evidence
has come Judge Dhingra's way, he seems not to want to share it
with us. The judge who could not find one murder among a hundred
accused has, in effect, contradicted the findings of a former
chief justice of the Supreme Court. That is his right -- but surely
with that right goes the duty of adducing the evidence that would
prove a chief justice wrong -- and an additional sessions judge
right.
For please consider what Justice Misra had to say: 'The
massive scale on which the operation had started soon after the
fact of death (of the prime minister) was circulated is clearly indicative
of the fact that it was the spontaneous reaction of the people
at large. The short span of time that intervened would not have
permitted scope for any organising to be done.' Judge Dhingra
is, of course, free to disagree with the logic of this finding
-- but surely he should tell us why before, as it were, rushing
to judgement.
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