Lack of Prosecution Angers Indian Sikhs

Taddibai Kaur celebrated when a fellow Sikh was named India’s prime minister last year, confident he would seek justice for the thousands killed in anti-Sikh riots in 1984, including three members of Kaur’s family.

But her hopes were shattered this week when the government said it wouldn’t prosecute officials implicated in the riots that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, a decision that’s left this country’s small but highly visible Sikh community questioning its place in India — and its loyalty to its leader.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh to take the country’s top job, “has let us down,” said Kaur, 58. Her son was hacked to death and her brother and son-in-law were burned alive by Hindu mobs that went on a rampage following Gandhi’s death.

“We have waited for 21 years,” she said. “This was our last hope.”

A report by a government commission into the killings, released Monday, found credible evidence that Jagdish Tytler, the current minister in charge of nonresident Indian affairs, was “very probably” involved in organizing attacks on Sikhs in New Delhi.

At the time of the riots — in which more than 3,000 Sikhs were killed — Tytler was a senior official in the Congress party, which governed India then and is now back in power.

But the government said Monday that it wouldn’t act on “mere probability” and prosecute Tytler, or the other three Congress party politicians named in the report.

Singh, in his first comments since the commission’s report was released, indicated Wednesday that his government will continue investigating the allegations against the four politicians, but did not say if any prosecutions were planned.

His comments came as hundreds of Sikhs protested for a second straight day in New Delhi, demanding those implicated in the report be brought to justice. On Tuesday, about 300 protesters were arrested when they tried to jump the iron barricades in front of Parliament. The government’s decision also sparked protests in Punjab state, where Sikhs are in a majority.

The 1984 riots broke out after Gandhi was gunned down in retaliation for the Indian army’s assault on the Golden Temple, the holiest site in Sikhism, where militant Sikhs had taken refuge.

For three days, mobs of Hindus went from house to house in Sikh neighborhoods across northern India, dragging people into the streets and killing them. Sikhs are easily identified: Men wear turbans and virtually all have the name Singh, while Sikh women are named Kaur.

“They pulled out our men, beat them, torched them and killed them, and all of them are still roaming free,” said Nirmal Kaur, 52, whose husband was killed in the riots. “If no justice was to be delivered, why did the government keep us in darkness for 21 years?”

While Sikhs make up just 2 percent of India’s more than 1 billion people, they have come to dominate the country’s military and are famed as industrious farmers, traders and truckers.

Now, some warn of grave consequences if no one is prosecuted for the riots.

“My grandson is 21. He always asks who killed his father,” said Taddibai Kaur, whose daughter-in-law was pregnant during the riots. “He is a lovely child, very peaceful. I pray to God he stays like that. But I am not sure.”

“The government doesn’t care for us. We don’t matter because we are small in numbers, we are not a big vote bank,” said Surjit Singh Bedi, a retired official in New Delhi whose family escaped the riots unharmed.

The commission — set up by the previous Hindu nationalist-led government — was the ninth panel to investigate the killings. Previous investigations made little progress.