Anti-Sikh pogrom: Without tangible reparations, Rahul Gandhi’s apology is symbolic

In response to a Sikh student’s question in the US early this month, Rahul Gandhi accepted responsibility for the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom on behalf of the Congress. His admission adds to the series of apologies made in 1998 by Sonia Gandhi and, later, Manmohan Singh. Their apologies have redeemed the Congress to some extent given how in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi had put his school physics lessons to use in order to justify the anti-Sikh attacks (“when a big tree falls, the earth shakes”).

Narendra Modi probably took lessons from Rajiv Gandhi when, in 2002, he offered a similar analogy for the anti-Muslim attacks in Gujarat in a speech (“every action has an equal and opposite reaction”). But unlike the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party has never issued an official apology or taken responsibility for the Gujarat killings.

Without doubt, official apologies in the wake of mass violence are important. They are a symbolic acknowledgement of human rights violations committed in the past that caused irreparable harm to victims. The Congress’s apology certainly has reparative value. But, at the end of the day, they are only words. Apologies mean nothing to victims of brutal violence unless matched with more tangible forms of reparation – convicting the perpetrators for one.

India has an abysmal record of convicting rioters. Investigations are a farce even as endless number of commissions are set up year after year only to achieve nothing. Governments over the years set up 11 inquiry commissions to investigate the Sikh violence and two to investigate violence in Gujarat, rejecting one that did not suit the ruling party’s agenda, apart from scores of independent investigations. The result? A little over 100 convictions in Gujarat and worse in the case of Delhi.

While the official conviction figure in the anti-Sikh violence lies at 442, there is little clarity on the actual number of convictions carried out or are under appeal in a higher court. As senior advocate in the Supreme Court of India, HS Phoolka said, “The number of commissions and committees set up to probe the murders... is more than the number of convictions.” Importantly, those convicted are only the foot soldiers – the actual murderers. Organisers of violence have gone scot-free usually. Or, as in the case of elected politicians, the “organisers” of violence, Sajjan Kumar or Maya Kodnani, they have either been penalised decades later or acquitted after perfunctory imprisonment, defeating the purpose of the exercise.

A perfect example is the Liberhan Commission report investigating the Babri Masjid demolition. The commission took 17 years and 48 extensions, at a cost of Rs 7 crore, to submit its report. Stating 17 years later that the demolition was “neither spontaneous or unplanned” and indicting the top rung of the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh makes no sense. The indicted leaders had reached the pinnacle of their careers by then. The damage was done. In the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 too, a BJP legislator, Vikram Saini, was convicted in 2022 but got bail soon after the judgement was passed. As for the massacre of 3,000 people in Nellie in Assam in 1983, who even remembers that?

Such laxity is logical once we realise that “riots” in India are not clashes between groups but very often state-orchestrated attacks on a specific group. No wonder investigations are botched and judicial redress delayed. This makes official apologies all the more hypocritical.

The reason that 796 people in the anti-immigration riots of 2024 in the UK were arrested and charged almost immediately after the riots is simply because the state had no role in instigating rioters. Similarly, for the 2013 riots in the UK, within two months, 1,984 were prosecuted and an immediate custodial sentence given to 331.

Such precise figures are rarely released by the government in India, be they for the number of deaths or for convictions. When released, they are ambiguous. For example, as I show in my research, the official death toll in the Gujarat violence (excluding the 59 Hindu passengers who died in the train fire) was 1,044: 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus. But this also excluded the 228 people who had gone missing during the violence. Seven years later the 228 missing were declared dead. The final official death toll was publicized as 1,180 (again excluding the passengers) instead of 1,272 (1,044 + 228), but the government never explained this anomaly.

There is one more crucial reason why convictions are important. Most perpetrators of violence are people known to the victims, usually their own neighbours. This is true for India and many other parts of the world. Courts investigating the murders of 2002 in Gujarat found identification parades to be unnecessary in several cases because the witness knew the victim.

For example, I show in my research that the mean distance travelled by perpetrators of the anti-Sikh attacks was 0.37 km from their homes, a walk of four-five minutes. Similarly, for Ahmedabad in Gujarat, this distance was 0.92 km, a walk of 8-10 minutes.

In state-orchestrated violence, the involvement of insiders makes strategic sense as they play a key role in identifying victims and navigating escape routes for attackers. Since convictions are few or protracted, the state finds no obligation to relocate victims who are usually the poor and have little means to relocate on their own.

For years, many are forced to live alongside the very neighbours who attacked their family and looted their property, with no legal or social recognition of their guilt. Once victims are compelled to share everyday spaces with their own perpetrators, they are also compelled to forge superficial relationships with them after the cessation of violence. Such survival mechanisms may not last very long for they hold serious implications for the recurrence of violence.

Talk is cheap. Apologies are necessary but rarely sufficient in helping repair the trauma of victims of mass violence and to prevent recurrent violence. But when the state itself is complicit in rioting, who will bell the cat?

Raheel Dhattiwala is a sociologist. She is the author of Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 (Cambridge University Press, 2019).