Anti-Sikh riot report kicks up storm in India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s parliament was disrupted on
Tuesday as rival lawmakers clashed over a report on anti-Sikh
riots in 1984 which named ruling Congress party leaders in
connection with the violence that left nearly 3,000 Sikhs dead.

Opposition lawmakers want the government to take action
against a junior minister, Jagdish Tytler, who the report said
may have instigated rioters after then Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi was killed by her Sikh bodyguards more than 20 years
ago.

But the Congress party-led coalition government headed by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a Sikh, said it was not
taking action against Tytler as the panel did not have
conclusive evidence against him.

Tytler has denied the charges.

The inquiry report by retired judge G.T. Nanavati, which
was tabled in parliament on Monday, probed one of India’s worst
religious riots, which broke out across northern India after
Gandhi was assassinated on Oct. 31, 1984.

Media reports and human rights groups say the Congress
party — which was ruling the country at the time as well –
had a hand in organising the anti-Sikh killings, a charge
denied by the party.

On Tuesday, deputies from the opposition National
Democratic Alliance — including members of a small Sikh party
– demanded an immediate discussion on the report in the lower
house of parliament but the speaker said a time had to be
agreed upon first for such a debate.

“I deeply mourn the occasion (the riots),” speaker Somnath
Chatterjee said as opposition lawmakers shouted anti-government
slogans. He then adjourned the house.

The upper house was also adjourned for an hour as an uproar
erupted over the Nanavati report.

“The Nanavati Commission has held the Congress party
responsible for the killing of Sikhs,” Sushma Swaraj of the
opposition Bharatiya Janata Party said in the upper house.

But the government said it would investigate whether legal
action could be taken against another Congress leader, Dharam
Das Shastri, also accused of instigating riots.

The media said that the government needed to act on the
Nanavati report if it wanted to heal the wounds of the Sikh
community, who make up around two percent of Hindu-majority
India’s one-billion-plus population.

The uproar in parliament is an embarrassment for the
government, but is not a threat to its survival, analysts said.

“For the Congress, it is an important moment,” the Indian
Express wrote in an editorial. “Its credibility is on test.
Will it seek to brazenly protect its own or will it choose
serve the ends of justice?”

At least 2,733 people were killed — many of them burned
alive — in reprisal killings after Indira Gandhi’s
assassination.

The former prime minister’s killing was to avenge her
decision to send troops to flush out Sikh separatists from the
Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, in north India.

Most of the Sikhs killed in the 1984 riots died in New
Delhi where about 600 cases of arson, killing and rioting were
registered, but police closed half of them, ostensibly for lack
of evidence. Only around 10 people have been convicted of
murder. (Additional reporting by Nigam Prusty)