The debate raging in Britain over MPs’ expenses is an
indicator that accountability is "work in progress" even in an advanced
democracy. Different countries however have different levels of
accountability. The 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi shows that India, a
country that prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy, has a
rather low level of accountability – or, conversely, a high level of
impunity.
That mobs were allowed to have the run of India’s capital
for three days in the wake of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination
raises serious questions about the autonomy of its law and order
machinery. That in his first public meeting barely a fortnight later,
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, rather than condemning it, likened the
carnage to the reverberations caused by the fall of a mighty tree betrays
the illiberal character of India’s democracy. That he did not permit
Parliament to debate the whitewash carried out through an in camera
inquiry conducted by a sitting Supreme Court judge and that Parliament
never even offered a condolence motion for the victims of the 1984 carnage
expose the disdain for human rights displayed by the highest institutions
in India. That barely 20 persons have been convicted for murder in these
25 years as against the official death toll of 2,733 is a poor reflection
on the integrity of India’s criminal justice system. That the manner in
which the investigating agency, prosecution and courts colluded to acquit
Congress leaders HKL Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar, despite all the evidence
against them, rips apart India’s pretensions to the rule of law.
The gap between the precept and practice of the rule of
law is so wide in India that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself
acknowledged in Parliament four years ago that even after a dozen official
inquiries into the 1984 carnage, "We all know that we still do not know
the truth and the search must go on." Despite such an exhortation by the
prime minister to continue the search for truth, the official meetings in
Delhi, corresponding to this event in the British Parliament, have been
confined to commemorating 25 years since Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
Given the complicity of its own leaders, dead or alive, the government
remains trapped in the mind-set that any formal expression of sympathy for
the victims of the 1984 carnage would insult the memory of Indira Gandhi.
On behalf of human rights defenders in India, I deeply
appreciate your gesture of remembering the 1984 carnage, which set a
dangerous precedent as an avowedly secular political party reaped an
electoral harvest for engineering sectarian violence. This resulted in
similar impunity and electoral rewards for the communal parties that
organised the killings of Muslims in Maharashtra in 1993 and Gujarat in
2002.
You have set a moral example for India by commemorating 25
years since the 1984 carnage. It is apt that you did so because even the
Raj had set a higher standard of accountability when a British army
officer, General Dyer, had in 1919 ordered the massacre of a peaceful
crowd at Jallianwala Bagh. The colonial rulers held a public inquiry in
which General Dyer was grilled not only by British but also Indian members
of the Hunter Committee. The House of Commons debated and endorsed the
Hunter Committee’s indictment of General Dyer, who was removed in disgrace
from the army. But independent India, as evident from the cover-up of the
1984 carnage, failed to measure up to the benchmarks set even by the
colonial administration. Such is the magnitude of the impunity crisis
facing the people of India.