Like any earth-shaking geological event that forever alters a landscape, the Sikh Riots of 1984 was the cataclysmic event that left the Indian political soil forever fertile for communal polarisation.
"There is a continuum from 1984, the politics of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, directly to the rise of BJP and Modi himself," said Hartosh Singh Bal, the executive editor of The Caravan magazine.
Writer and former civil servant NS Madhavan, who is also the festival director of Manorama Hortus, concurred. "The idea of riots and that riots can be used to grab power was probably seeded in the heart of political parties, especially the BJP, the 1984 Sikh Riots," he said.
Both were in conversation on 'The Continuum of Majoritarian Mobilisation: Forty Years of Punjab '84' at Manorama Hortus on November 3, the last day of the three-day art and literary festival organised by Malayala Manorama along the Kozhikode beach.
It was 40 years ago, exactly in these three days (November 1, 2 and 3), that blood-thirsty mobs stalked the streets of Delhi and massacred nearly 3,000 people. The organised mayhem spread outside the capital, and nearly 9,000 people died across the country. Even a gurudwara in Kochi, which catered to 20 Sikh families, was destroyed. The riots erupted following Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination on October 31.
For perspective, the Godhra violence in 2002 that lasted for nearly one-and-a-half months claimed fewer than 1,000 lives.
Repeat pattern
The speakers said there was a similarity in the way the 1984 and 2002 Godhra riots were orchestrated. First, there was what both the speakers called "spontaneous acts of violence". Then, the state apparatus remained silent for a few days as the mobs went berserk.
Finally, when the "bloodthirst was quenched", as Madhavan put it, the state apparatus came alive and put things in order.
And in both cases, nobody has been held to account.
The Hindu connection
Hartosh termed the vandals "Hindu mobs led by Congress leaders". Madhavan, who then worked as a senior civil servant in Delhi and was witness to the mob fury, had also spotted the muscular Hindu tone in the shouts of Congress leaders who led the mobs.
He recounted what he witnessed during the riots in a public road in Delhi. On one side was the Press Club of India and adjacent to it was the AICC office. Across the road was the house of the opposition leader, AB Vajpayee. He termed what he saw "unbelievable".
Madhavan was driving back after picking up a friend from the Bengali market. "We saw a mob coming out of the AICC office. A man in a white kurta, who I now recognise as Sajjan Kumar, was at the head. They went straight to Vajpayee's house and barged through the gate, shouting slogans: 'Tum Hindu ho? (Are you a Hindu?'). I had a feeling that such intimidating scenes were playing out in front of the houses of various BJP leaders and BJP karyakartas," Madhavan said.
"For the first time, BJP felt threatened by competitive Hindutva. The riot provided BJP lessons for the future. This was the defining moment of communal politics in India," he added.
Hartosh called the Sikh Riots as the "one communal massacre in the country that was organised and orchestrated by what we see today as the liberal side of our politics". The reference was to the Congress that has not positioned itself as the liberal alternative to the conservative BJP.
Sowing blood, reaping whirlwind
Both the massacres produced similar political results, too. Madhavan said what followed the Sikh Riots was "amazing".
"Rajiv Gandhi (sworn in as the Prime Minister after his mother's death) immediately declares an election. And Congress returns to power with more than 400 seats. They swept the polls," Madhavan said. "The idea of riots and that riots can be used to grab power was probably seeded in the heart of political parties, especially the BJP," he said.
This was repeated in 2002, in Gujarat. "A teetering Modi government, which had very narrow majority came back to power with a massive majority," Madhavan said.
Then, riots were employed as a strategy in 2013 in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar, a prosperous Muslim-dominated area. "All the Parliament constituencies affected by the Muzaffarnagar riots fell to the BJP," Madhavan said.
Now, Madhavan said the strategy has been highly localised. "Areas are divided mohalla-wise, ward-wise and small flare-ups are lit all over the country, even in Kerala," he said.
Backstory of riots
Both cataclysms had propelling factors, set off by the perpetrators themselves, that invariably pushed things towards disaster.
Hartosh said Indira Gandhi, after she returned to power in 1980, patronised Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to offset the Akalis, who had been among the fiercest opponents of the Emergency.
Initially, she let Bhindranwale run riot and refused to rein him in. But when things went completely out of control, the Indian Army stormed the Golden Temple to disastrous effect. Indira paid with her life. Hartosh called Operation Bluestar the biggest blunder of the Indian Army.
In the case of Godhra, Hartosh said the destruction of the Babri Masjid set off events.
Minoy bashing
Like the BJP now, the Congress, too, had professionally attempted to discredit the Sikh community. Hartosh said that Rajiv's closest confidant and his first cousin, Arun Nehru, hired a corporate advertising company called Rediffusion to attack a minority community. "This is the first paid for ad campaign in Indian political history," he said.
Here is what one of the ads said: "Will the Country's Border Finally Be Moved to Your Doorstep?" "The reference to Punjab was clear," Hartosh said. Just the way the BJP sowed suspicions about Muslims, the Congress had once, through professionally run ads, spoken of Sikhs as separatists.
