New Delhi, Nov 1 (IANS) Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Sunday that what happened in 1984 was not merely a riot but a genocide carried out by the Congress government of the time.
At least 2,733 people were killed in Delhi and subjected to horrific brutality, he said, adding that according to official figures, approximately 3,325 people were killed across the country.
Puri was addressing a gathering from the platform of the “1984 Sikh Genocide Protest March”, organised by the BJP in association with Sikh organisations to mourn the victims of the riots.
The Union Minister said that he remembered being posted in Geneva 42 years ago, while his parents lived in Delhi’s GDA Colony. When the violence began, some of his Hindu friends came forward and safely escorted his parents to a secure location in their car.
Referring to the official figures on riot victims, Puri said that when people were going to the homes of Sikh families in Delhi, they were not identifying them merely through electoral rolls.
“A person named Harnam Singh could belong to Madhya Pradesh or Haryana and could be a Jat, a Rajput or any other individual wearing a turban. However, the attackers appeared to have been provided with the identities and details of their targets in advance. This clearly indicated that the violence was not the result of spontaneous anger but had been meticulously planned,” said the Minister.
Puri said that Manmohan Singh also lived in Delhi, and the attackers had reached his residence as well. His son-in-law, who was Hindu, stood outside the house and told the mob that it was his home.
The mob responded that, according to their list, it belonged to a Sikh. His son-in-law clarified that no such person lived there and managed to protect everyone inside, recalled Puri.
He said that the incident is often described using the word “riot”. However, these were not riots. Riots generally involve clashes between two groups, whereas in Delhi, 2,733 people were brutally killed in a one-sided wave of violence.
“The appropriate term for this was genocide. The Delhi High Court, as far as he recalled, had also used terms such as ‘Crime Against Humanity’ to describe these incidents,” said Puri.
He said that the seriousness of this crime could be understood from its scale and nature. The Congress leaders should reflect seriously on this issue.
Recalling how mothers would reprimand children for their mischief by telling them to go and buy some sense from the market, he questioned whether November 1 was the only possible date for organising a political programme when another date could easily have been chosen for the INDIA bloc rally at Ramlila Maidan.
Puri said that even today, he believed that neither the community nor the nation had fully come to terms with what it witnessed in 1984. Nor had the Congress appropriately apologised to the victims.
“Therefore, choosing November 1 for a political event was inappropriate,” he said.
Puri added that, irrespective of everything else, the tragedy of 42 years ago must continue to be remembered in the years ahead.
It is the individual and collective responsibility of all of us to ensure that this incident is never forgotten, he said.
He said that the most important thing was to ensure that such violence never occurs again, either in India or anywhere else in the world.
–IANS
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