Black July 1983 : India cannot adopt ‘holier than thou’ attitude

by Mano Ratwatte

(August 06, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I have been reading, an interesting exchange of opinions about Sri Lanka and its tragic race riots between one Mr. Gunasekera and Mr. Dayan Jayatilleke. I agree with Mr Jayatilleke’s description of Sri Lanka’s barbarism in 1983; but I suspect he may have not known much race riots in India. True, innocent people were made to suffer by UNP government goon squads and barbaric idiots in Sri Lanka and that should never be allowed to happen again no matter what provocative action the Tamil Tigers take against Sri Lankans. The riots were organized and executed by goons associated with the all powerful regime at that time – the J R Jayewardene regime - and it was the start of this fratricidal civil war in its 25th year now.

However, Mr. D Jayatilleke goes on to cite India as an example of how no one was slaughtered for holding Tamil or other separatist views, and how the sordid riots in Sri Lanka would not happen in India.

I lived in Punjab from 1980 to early 1985. Ergo, would you please allow me to put my two-paise worth into this wonderful exchange of letters. I witnessed how the Indira Gandhi led Congress-I hunger for state power setting up the extremist Jarnail Singh Bindranwale as a dividing block to split Sikh votes with the hopes of blocking the Akali Dal party which controlled the state government in Punjab at that time. I saw how the power hungry Congress-I manipulated the cry for ‘Khalistan’ only to lose control of Bindranwale and his extremist separatist agenda, like the Indians later did with their Sri Lankan baby - the Tamil Tigers.

I was in Punjab, when Indira Gandhi launched the disastrous ‘Operation Blue Star’ against the Sikh sanctum sanctorum in 1984. It radicalized the proud hard working Sikh people. I saw how even politically indifferent professors with PhDs, suddenly became defiant and began dressing in the Khalsa manner e.g., putting their previously neatly netted beards down, and wearing blue and yellow ‘pagdis’ or turbans as sign of anger against the desecration of the Golden Temple from June 3 to June 6, 1984.

This raid was the seminal cause of the Khalistan movement to spread asking for separation, immediately after the bungling ‘Blue Star’ operation. We had to suffer long curfews in the heat of summer and our liberties were curtailed and news censored. For weeks we survived on a meagre supply of vegetables we were able to purchase during a 3-hour window when curfews were lifted. Our education was interrupted and there was a lot of uncertainty when a Sikh brigade in Bihar mutinied in anger. Suddenly, we were swarmed with totally alien linguistically and culturally clueless South Indian troops in Punjab when the Sikh troops were taken out of active duty because of a fear of the mutiny spreading, even though a vast majority of Sikhs remained steadfastly loyal to the Republic of India.

Then came the assassination of Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. Do you know what happened next? Thousands of innocent Sikhs were pulled out of trains, houses, cars, burnt alive, raped and massacred by Hindu goondas. No one took action for six days. Some of my friends in Ludhiana were so afraid to go home that they cut their sacred hair and beards to blend in with Hindu Punjabis to go home. Some Hindu Punjabis also joined in this sordid saga of burning and killing innocent Sikhs whose only crime was to be Sikh by faith. Sikh women were raped by Cong-I gangs who said: "We will ferret out the Khalistani from them". Mobs lead by Congress-I leaders committed murder, loot, arson and rape across India for over a week. The worst affected area was the capital of India, New Delhi. Figures of those who died are over 4000 and 60,000 were rendered homeless in Delhi alone. These figures do not incorporate those "missing".

"India is ablaze with hate and anger. In city after city from one corner of the country to the other enraged mobs have gone and are going about systematically burning and looting Sikh properties and assaulting Sikhs without discrimination". - The Times of India.

These were organized Cong-I mobs and not people acting out of grief or revenge. The end result was a brutal war against separatism and terrorism in Punjab where the Indian government employed any and all means necessary to curb civil liberties, and people disappeared. Thousands were killed in Punjab and eventually the Indian Government writ prevailed because like the Tiger terrorists, the Khalistani terrorists overestimated their popularity and their support amongst Sikhs. However, to this date, India will not tell the world how many innocent Sikhs were murdered in Black November, 1984 or in operations against terrorists in Punjab.

The Cong-I Government refused to act to protect Sikhs for a week because some of the goon squads were led by Cong-I MPs and thugs like Jagdish Tytler MP, Ajay Makan and R. K. Ananda. They were implicated in heinous acts against innocent Sikhs. Adding insult to injury, in 2004, Congress announced these men will again stand for election to Parliament from Delhi despite round condemnation by civil liberties groups.

Adding to this, please note, India has been fighting a lot of secessionist guerilla movements in the N.E states of Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram for over 50 years. No foreigner is allowed to visit those states without special permission from the Indian Defence Ministry in Delhi. I had good friends from those states, and I was told I cannot go visit them even when they invited me because India governed those states with an iron hand and did not want any foreigners visiting them. Attacks on Moslems and burnings by RSS gangs in Western India continue at the drop of a hat.

The 83 riots should have never happened, just like the slaughter, rape, massacre and barbecuing of innocent Sikhs by Hindu Indians should have never happened, either. India cannot afford to be holier than thou about anyone. If we are to paint all Sinhalese as blood thirsty barbarians, then we will have to do the same with all Hindu North Indians. Sri Lanka has learned its lesson. Indians cannot preach to Sri Lanka about matters they have so miserably failed to practice in their homeland. Their attitude towards Sri Lanka is as fake as a Bollywood farce. Barbarism and ethnic attacks by Indians or barbarism by Sri Lankan Sinhalese or Tamil Tigers or by Serbian Christians (over hundred thousand Bosnian Moslems slaughtered in highly civilized liberal Europe, while the big powers stood by there doing nothing until much of the damage was done) is immoral and wrong.

Mr. Jayatilleke is using the wrong example to state the right thing.
- Sri Lanka Guardian