There
is little question that the tragic killing of six Sikh worshippers at a
Gurudwara in a Milwaukee suburb on Sunday was a depraved and reprehensible act.
It also underscored the toxic brew produced by combining the United States’ lax
gun control laws with the resurgence of racist ideology.
That
being said, the official reaction of the Government of India to this horrific
incident reeks of hypocrisy. The outrage expressed by the Indian National
Congress, the principal component of the current ruling coalition, the United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) is entirely insincere given that it has done little
or nothing to bring the perpetrators of the 1984 pogrom against the Sikh
population of New Delhi to justice. In this tragedy it should be emphasized
that as many as 800 Sikhs were systematically slaughtered in the streets of the
nation's capital.
The
attacks took place in the wake of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination
by two of her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. The bodyguards were motivated by her
decision to send Indian troops into the Golden temple in Amritsar, the holiest
of Sikh shrines, after Sikh separatists had seized it. To ostensibly avenge her
death, a host of street thugs, many of whom are believed to have been
associated with the Congress Party, went on a rampage across much of the city
attacking Sikh neighborhoods and killing many of those they came across.
As
a number of independent assessments have shown, the city's police during this
incident were merely bystanders to the carnage at best and tacit collaborators
at worst. Today, even after no less than ten government-appointed commissions
of inquiry, only a few insignificant persons have been convicted for their role
in what could be described as India's first pogrom. Indeed, as Human
Rights Watch put it in a 2011 report, “The [Indian] government has yet to
prosecute those responsible for the mass killings of Sikhs that followed the
1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.”
With
its track record of being either unable or unwilling to prosecute the key
individuals who organized and directed the grotesque events, the Congress
Party’s denouncements of the U.S. government ring hollow. Had Wade Michael
Page, the individual accused of the heinous crime in Wisconsin on Sunday, not
been fatally wounded by police after Wade had shot the first officer to arrive
on the scene 8 or 9 times as the officer sought to care for the wounded, rest
assure U.S. Law would have certainly followed its course. Page would have
faced the full weight of a fair trial and would have, in all likelihood, paid
dearly for carrying out this cruel and wanton act.
Publicly
upbraiding the United States for allowing individuals to have easy access to
firearms and for the racist proclivities of an individual may well generate
enthusiastic press coverage and electoral support for India’s politicians.
However, it cannot wash away the stain from India's own flawed record in its
abject failure to bring the guilty to justice for the terror that they had
unleashed upon a segment of their hapless, innocent citizenry in the closing
months of 1984.
