|
Amritsar, Nov. 18:
Rahul Gandhi today said the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that followed
the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi were “wrong”
and that those involved should be punished.
“The 1984 riots were
wrong. People involved in the violence should be brought to
justice,” Rahul said in this town.
Rampaging mobs had killed
thousands of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in the country after
Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh bodyguards Satwant Singh
and Beant Singh on October 31, 1984.
Indira Gandhi’s son and
Rahul’s father, Rajiv Gandhi, was then reported to have said
“when a big tree falls, the earth shakes” — a comment widely
criticised as an insensitive attempt to play down a human
tragedy.
Today, on the eve of
Indira Gandhi’s birth anniversary, Rahul said his family held no
grudge against Sikhs.
“There was tragedy in
1984. My mother and father hold no animosity against anybody.
When my grandmother lost the elections in 1977, it was the Sikhs
who had rallied behind her, giving her strength. There is no
ill-feeling in the family against anybody. We are very proud of
the Sikh community.”
Rahul’s comments came in
the town of the Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine whose
storming by troops in June 1984, authorised by Indira Gandhi to
flush out militants, had begun a long estrangement between the
Congress and large sections of Sikhs, and led to the Prime
Minister’s assassination. The October-November riots worsened
the relations.
Fourteen years later at a
National Sikh Council meeting, Rahul’s mother and Rajiv Gandhi’s
wife, Sonia Gandhi, expressed “anguish” at the violence and said
she hoped to re-establish the strong bonds between the Gandhi
family and the Sikh community.
But the old wounds were
reopened three years ago over the Congress’s dilly-dallying in
acting against party leaders Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar,
indicted by the riots probe panel.
Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh, a Sikh himself, then tried to apply balm by saying: “I
bow my head in shame on behalf of the government… for what
happened in 1984.”
Rajnath ticked off
Rahul made a sarcastic
rejoinder to BJP president Rajnath Singh for calling him a “bachcha”
(child or greenhorn) in politics yesterday.
“Yes, I am a bachcha.
But so are 70 per cent of the people in India. Bachchas
think in a completely different manner. Yes, I agree I do not
have even half the political experience as… the likes of Rajnath
Singh,” Rahul, 38, said.
The Congress general
secretary was here to announce the schedule for organisational
elections in the Indian Youth Congress, of which he is in
charge.
He was accompanied by two
former chief election commissioners, J.M. Lyngdoh and T.S.
Krishnamurthy, whose NGO, Fame, is helping organise the
elections.
Rahul also met students
of the DAV Public School. |
