New Delhi, Nov 9 (IANS): The Congress has faced, and continues to face, flak over the involvement of its leaders in instigating the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards, and the delay in acting to stop the violence, but former party President Sonia Gandhi says the delay in the deployment of the army was due to certain concerns by the then-army chief. In her memoir “Belonging: A Journey of Love”, Sonia Gandhi also contends that she is convinced that her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, who is blamed for turning a blind eye to the violence in the national capital and allegedly condoning it with his infamous comment that “When a big tree falls, the earth shakes”, “could not in any way have authorised those heinous acts on innocent men, women, and children”.
However, she does acknowledge that it is “also evident that some in charge must have looked the other way”, and, “in some instances even stoked passions, adding fuel to the fire”. Noting that “many contradictory reports have appeared about that harrowing period, some concerning the delay in the deployment of the army”, she said it was not deliberate, and the army had been requisitioned on the night of October 31, 1984 itself, but took time to appear on the scene due to the composition of the nearest units. The Army Chief then was General Arun Sridhar Vaidya, who had also planned and overseen “Operation Blue Star”, the army action against Sikh radicals ensconced in the Golden Temple, in June 1984, and would tragically be fatally targeted by Khalistani terrorists in Pune after his retirement in 1986.
“Although the Chief of the Army Staff General A.S. Vaidya had received his orders the same night as the assassination, we heard later that he had decided not to mobilise the nearest units because they were manned by Sikh soldiers, a factor that might have exacerbated the situation,” she wrote, citing the sporadic mutinies by Sikh soldiers, and some officers too, in Gurdaspur, Bihar’s Ramgarh, Pune, and Jammu. “Whatever the reason, General Vaidya ordered units further away, in Dehradun, to move to Delhi. This took some time, but by the night of November 1, army units had started moving into place and by noon of November 2 had been positioned in the parts of the city affected by rioting; a curfew was in force and shoot-at-sight orders had been issued.
” On the role of Rajiv Gandhi, who had taken over the helm, Sonia Gandhi noted “that very night, Rajiv appeared on national television to appeal for peace – virtually his first public act after being sworn in as Prime Minister”, and said that “nothing would hurt the soul of our beloved Indira Gandhi more than the occurrence of violence in any part of our country”. Rajiv Gandhi did not restrict himself to appeals only, she wrote, noting that he visited various tension-racked areas of Delhi and sent members of his staff to look out for the safety and welfare of their Sikh colleagues”. She said that he had gone out again on November 1 and the following day, issued another nationwide appeal on TV, citing his mother’s words “Do not shed blood, shed hatred”.
Sonia Gandhi says her husband, “just and compassionate to his core”, could not have been behind the violence as his “instinctive, immediate response at a moment of extreme personal affliction bears that out, but admits “that he was thrust into a moment of the country’s history when effective governance had foundered and barbaric acts followed. Recalling that she came to know about the “horror of these events” from friends who had given shelter to Sikhs and “the many Sikhs who had found refuge in our home”, she confesses that in her “state of disorientation” then, she had “become empty of tears, benumbed by the experience of violence that had uprooted me”. It was only years later, that she could process the “enormity and horror” of those events, she admits.
