Dubious morality

The 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi continue to haunt the Congress. Congress leaders assert time and again that they have come clean in contrast to the BJP and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi after the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Ahmedabad. They say that they have owned up the guilt and the shame and that they have tendered unconditional apologies from party president Sonia Gandhi downwards. Moreover, they say that the investigative agencies have given the accused a clear chit.

Indeed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has just let off Jagdish Tytler, one of Delhi city party leaders whom the victims claim was actively involved in the organisation of the massacre, so this claim is technically correct. But there is a moral dimension to the issue that cannot be ignored.

The party continues to stand by Tytler and others who are suspected to have been the masterminds of the mass killings in those four days of gruesome mourning following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. It tarnishes the sincerity of the moral anguish that the party says it experiences. Congress leaders’ obstinate attempt to save the reputations of the capital’s party leaders like Tytler, Sajjan Kumar, HKL Bhagat (now dead) does not survive ethical scrutiny.

The argument that there is no evidence of their involvement and therefore they are innocent is nothing more than legal wiggling. Tytler’s escape is doubly dubious because it is the CBI, and not the court, that has let him off. So, it becomes an act of administrative discretion, in this case indiscretion. It is an open secret that the CBI is not an independent investigative agency, and that it carries out, often without any subtlety, the demands of the party in power. Right now it is a Congress-led government. Even if there is no direct link between these circumstances, the conclusion is inescapable.

It is a folly for Congress leaders to believe that since they are truly contrite, they are entitled to go for the legal and administrative escape route. The ’84 riots are an albatross which they cannot shake off without moral action to prove their moral intent. It would mean they will have to ask Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and others to move away if nothing else. Only then can the party hope for a moral closure to the whole episode. These men should have the moral sense to bow out, or the party should ask them to do so. Anything less would lack credibility and legitimacy.