Exactly 37 years ago, on the morning of 31st October, 1984 Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India was assassinated by her Sikh body guards. Eminent writer Khushwant Singh once used to be very close to her family, especially to her younger son Sanjay Gandhi, but later fell out of her favor after Sanjay's death in an air crash. He wanted to visit her place to pay his last respect in spite of their estrangement.
When he was about to leave he got a call from a well wisher (I have forgotten the person's name) - "Sardarjee (as Sikhs are addressed), Have you lost your mind ? Don't ever dare going out now. The goons of Congress are dragging Sikhs out of vehicles and roasting them alive. They are going to make a Sikh KABAAB (roast) out of you".
Needless to say, the hired goons of HKL Bhagat (An East Delhi Mafia) and goon troika of Lalit Maken, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar - all HONORABLE MPs from Congress party, were directly accused of conniving and complicity in the riots against the hapless Sikhs who have no connection with Indira's killers except their religion.
Thousands of Sikhs were killed and maimed in the days following. Estimates vary - from the government issued figure of 2,800 to the independently assessed number 8,000 to 10,000. All said and done, many hardened criminals were released from jails that fateful evening in full police protection. Scores were armed with iron rods and Kerosene oil.
Bribed and motivated by the 100 rupee note handouts (had a decent purchase value then) and fueled by bottles of liquors alleged supplied by Sajjan Kumar and Lalit Maken (Uncle of the present Congress politician Ajay Maken who was a baby when his parents were mowed down by Sikh gunmen months later for his dad's involvement in anti-Sikh riots in Delhi), they went on rampage, destroying life and property of Sikhs they came across.
Indira's son Rajeev Gandhi who took over as the Prime Minister after his mother's untimely death shrugged off the Sikh massacre as "When a big tree falls the surrounding earth shakes". Government controlled All India Radio and Doordarshan blacked out the mass killing of Sikhs. People tuned in to British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) to get stunning news of Sikhs killed not in the hundreds but in thousands (Ironically the news of killing of Sikhs by iron rods and garlanding them with tyres set on fire would have stayed hidden from the same folks who today despise BBC for reporting some unpalatable truth from India).
This is not the sole example. Our great Congress party, espousing soft Hindutva has a history of involvement in several large scale killing of minorities including Muslims whom ironically it now portrays itself as their savior. The following ones come on top of my mind, though I am sure of many more such incidents taking place under the auspices of our Grand Old Party Congress.
1983 - Nellie massacre in Assam (3,000 killed)
1987 - Maliana near Meerut (50 Muslim youths picked up from their homes and killed by the UP police)
1989 - Bhagalpur in Bihar (1000 killed).
Congress was in power in both at the Center and the above states during these pogroms of Muslims.
BJP is no lily white, but it sounds utterly hypocrite when Congies like Digvijaya Singh and Ajay Maken whose father incidentally handed out 100 rupee notes and liquor bottles as prize to teach the Sikhs a lesson, are accusing BJP of resorting to Communalism. This is nothing but a classic case of Pot calling the kettle black. Death of Indira was itself the end of an era but the progrom that followed paved the way minority bashing in the future.
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