Fake Democracy,
Real Terrorism
Toronto, Mar. 20, 2005
By SAN GREWAL
The Toronto Star
Turning a blind eye to a nation's anti-democratic ways can have
a high cost. The Air-India disaster is the proof
The public reaction to Wednesday's acquittal in the Air-India
case has overlooked an important question: Was the terrorism exported
to Canada from India a direct by-product of that state's long-standing
anti-democratic policies?
And, perhaps more importantly, does the title 'democratic' give
countries that are anything but a licence to operate darkly in
the background while using the propped-up ideals of freedom as
a veil?
A month before the Air-India verdict, which found the two men
accused in the 1985 bombing of flight 182, Ripudaman Singh Malik
and Ajaib Singh Bagri, not guilty, a disturbing report was released
in India, the world's largest democracy.
It was called the Nanavati report, named after former Indian
Supreme Court judge G.T. Nanavati, who presided over a commission
convened in 2000 to find out how thousands of Sikhs were systematically
targeted and killed in the streets of New Delhi immediately after
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was murdered by her Sikh bodyguards
in 1984.
The report documented the commission's main finding that the
widespread rioting and massacres were 'organized' and instigated
by members of the assassinated prime minister's ruling Congress
party to 'target the Sikh community' without any 'meaningful intervention'
by the police.
The Delhi riots carried on for three days while fires lit the
city. Government reports estimate 2,000 Sikhs were killed. The
death toll, according to various articles in the Indian press,
was as high as 10,000.
'My own two houses were burned down in broad daylight,' said
Patwant Singh, a prominent Indian author who testified in front
of the Nanavati Commission and was interviewed two years ago at
his home in New Delhi.
'I went to see the president twice and the home minister while
the riots were taking place. I urged them to send out military
forces, the usual procedure during a period of civil unrest. It
became clear that it was not civilians leading the massacring
of Sikhs.
'It was an eye-opener, the degree to which a constitutional government,
a state, can allow and endorse crimes against its own people.'
No charges have been laid, but five former Congress party members
were named in the report for their involvement in the riots, including
the former home minister, the former lieutenant-governor and a
current Congress party M.P.
'Whatever happened in India and elsewhere has to be seen against
this backdrop,' said Patwant Singh.
It's a backdrop that presents a disturbing sight in a country
held up as an example of how democracy can succeed.
In 1975, when tension about Sikh autonomy mounted between Mrs.
Gandhi and Sikh leaders, the Indian High Court handed down a decision
upholding an earlier petition that had charged the prime minister
with campaign fraud during the 1971 election.
Instead of stepping down from office, as she had been ordered
to do, Mrs. Gandhi, in an unconstitutional move, declared a state
of emergency, threw 100,000 political opponents in jail (a disproportionate
number were Sikhs), censored the press, banned political parties
and suspended all elections for nearly two years.
It was a foreshadowing of how things would unravel.
'Sikhs were, and still are, second-class citizens,' said Patwant
Singh. 'If there was even the faintest suspicion that a Sikh had
anything to do with the independence movement, they and their
families were killed with impunity. Close to 200,000 were murdered
by government security forces (according to the National Human
Rights Organization) and police during the decade following Mrs.
Gandhi's death. The government won't even let Amnesty International
in to investigate the claims.'
In 1994, the U.S. State Department reported that the Indian government
paid out over 41,000 cash bounties to police officers for killing
Sikhs in the northwestern state of Punjab, where Sikhs still make
up a slight majority and where many have agitated for an independent
Sikh state.
Last April, the European Parliament called for a 'Commission
of Truth and Justice' under the auspices of the U.N. The call
was to 'comprehensively investigate whether the slaughter to which
Indian Sikhs were subjected in 1984 constitutes genocide as defined
in the Genocide Convention and the relevant international law.'
The point here is that the Air-India disaster did not occur in
a vacuum. There is no justification for acts of mass murder, but
that applies to governments as much as it does to terrorists.
The slaughter and unlawful imprisonment of Sikhs in India during
the 1970s and 1980s was at the very least condoned by a democratic
government, if not outright instigated by it. Yet the world turned
a blind eye to the killings, seeing the issue as an internal matter
- until it landed on foreign shores.
This is the cost to the international community of not acting
when a so-called democracy ignores the rule of law or enforces
democratic principles in a selective manner.
The Canadian government welcomes immigrants into this country.
But with the law-abiding come people such as Talwinder Singh Parmar,
the suspected mastermind of the Air-India bombings, who in 1992
was killed by police in Punjab.
Parmar saw Canada as a safe haven from which he could foment
hatred of the Indian government within this country's Sikh community.
It was a hatred Patwant Singh and many others believe led directly
to the Air-India bombing.
Not one person has yet been convicted for the worst mass murder
in Canadian history.
And, as Singh said two years ago, 'Not one chap has been charged
for the deaths of thousands of Sikhs during the 1984 riots.'
