A Case for Truth & Reconciliation Commussion

Unprecedented genocidal violence in 1984 and 2002 tragically remains unpunished as India urgently needs an effective and transparent truth and reconciliation mechanism, writes Prof. Satya Narayan Misra.

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THE year 1984 sets a terrible precedent of how those with power can and have sought to suppress minorities violently with impunity. Over four days in the first week of November, an estimated 8000 Sikhs were slaughtered by rampaging mobs in the world’s largest democracy. It is equal to the civil death tolls of the Northern Ireland conflict, Tiananmen Square, and 9/11 combined. The eminent lawyer Geoffrey Robertson calls it India’s Guilty Secret. The killings of around 2000 innocent Gujarati Muslims in 2002 have been made that much more possible by the outrageous genocidal massacres of 1984, which have served asa sickening blood-stained blueprint for state-directed/complicit killings. As the Human Rights Watch 2016 report brings out, rising intolerance is a cause for serious concern; security forces, including police and the Army, are rarely held accountable for the abuses they commit. The Indian government has escalated pressures on civil society groups critical of its policies, using harassment, intimidation, and restrictions on foreign funding. Free speech has come under attack from the state, critics of the government often face charges of sedition and criminal defamation, and are labelled as anti-national.