Justice is so delayed and the organisers of anti Sikh Pogrom still not in dock

The Telegraph, December 16 , 2009

ONLY WORDS

The repetition of the promise that action will be taken against those who are accused of killing the Sikhs in 1984 is becoming as tedious as a tale told many times over. The latest in the series of promises comes from none other than the Union home minister, P. Chidambaram, who assured the Rajya Sabha that action against the 1984 riot accused would be speeded up. The home minister advised the lieutenant governor of Delhi, Tejinder Khanna, to sanction prosecution by the Central Bureau of Investigation in four riot cases before the end of 2009. Mr Chidambaram announced to the Upper House that the CBI’s investigations were complete in seven cases against the Congress’s three politicians, Dharam Das Shastri, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar. (Shastri, it needs to be pointed out, is dead.) Messrs Tytler and Kumar are still active in politics, even though they were denied tickets in the Delhi assembly polls earlier this year. This kind of reassurance, even when it comes from the Union home minister, does precious little to assuage the grievances of the Sikhs. If anything, it aggravates the grievances since it bypasses certain crucial questions.

There is no satisfactory answer, for example, to the question why it has taken so long to arrive at a decision on the cases that go back to 1984. The other uncomfortable question relates to the presence of Mr Tytler and Mr Kumar in Congress politics. There is something to be said against the failure to suspend them or expel them from the Congress party. It would not be unfair to conclude that the only time Mr Chidambaram wakes up to take cognizance of Sikh grievances regarding the 1984 killings is when a Sikh hurls a shoe at him or when Sikh members of parliament raise the issue. It would be simplistic to only blame Mr Chidambaram about this state of affairs where justice is so delayed that it appears as if it has been deferred. There is something systemic in the delays that occur to unearth evidence and then to prosecute on incidents that are matters of national shame. One recent example is the report of the Liberhan Commission, which has taken 17 years to prepare. The pogrom against the Sikhs — the word, pogrom, is used advisedly since the epithet, riot, is an euphemism for what was a one-sided and organized killing — happened 25 years ago and nothing more than apologies has been offered.