Jugni jaa varhi ajj Dilli
Uther bhir 'ch rul ke bhulli
Kithon aai kithey challi
Sab visar gaya...

Jadon aaya usnu cheta
Tan si mukhiya usda vela
Veer meriya ve jugni kendi aa
Ajj naam Guran da laindi aa


Jugni blazed into Delhi
Where she forgot in the crowd
Where she came from or where she was going
All was forgotten...

When she came to her senses
Her time was up
Jugni says, my brother
I take the Guru's name.
- Rabbi Shergill, Jugni

Do you remember 1984? Harneet Singh does.
And in a very small insignificant way, so do I.
My father and his colleagues, including a sardarji I knew as Sangha uncle, were returning from Barabanki to Lucknow, late in the evening, in a company van.
Stones shattered the car's windows.
They'd seen Sangha uncle's turban.

It's about twenty kilometres from Barabanki to Lucknow. Sangha uncle spent most of it lying on the floor of the van.

In Delhi, yesterday, site of the worst of the Anti-Sikh rioting after Indira Gandhi's death, 1984 was remebered, and we were asked to forget. Again.

Cong buries the Sikh massacre again

NEW DELHI, AUGUST 8: Twenty years after hundreds of Sikhs were massacred in the Capital, a judicial inquiry has for the first time given a finding that Congress leaders were involved in it.

The Justice G T Nanavati Commission, which was set up in 2000 to undo the ‘‘whitewash’’ by the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission in 1986, has indicted, among others, a minister in the Manmohan Singh Government, Jagdish Tytler, and Congress MP from the Outer Delhi constituency, Sajjan Kumar.

But, having waited till the last permissible day to table the Nanavati Commission’s report in Parliament, the Government today rejected the finding against Tytler on a ground that is bound to trigger a legal controversy.

The Commission concluded that there was ‘‘credible evidence against Jagdish Tytler to the effect that very probably he had a hand in organizing attacks on Sikhs.’’

In its action taken report (ATR), the Government however interpreted these carefully chosen words to mean that ‘‘the Commission itself was not absolutely sure about his involvement in such attacks.’’

And then, turning Indian jurisprudence on its head, the Government claimed that ‘‘in criminal cases, a person cannot be prosecuted simply on the basis of ‘probability.’’

This flies in the face of the fact that cases are registered—and even charges are framed—on the basis of probability. It is only at the stage of conviction does the system insist upon charges being proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Brushing aside the Commission’s recommendation to look into the allegations against Tytler and ‘‘take further action as may be found necessary,’’ the Government said that ‘‘any further action will not be justified.’’

Which political part in India now has any moral right to critique anyone else?
When the Congress attacked the BJP about Gujarat, most of the BJP's answer was - and what about Delhi, 1984? Now of course, the BJP has been 'subdued' in their reaction in Parliament. Presumably becuase they know they'll be countered by - and what about Gujarat?

And i know that sending Jagdish Tytler and HKLBhagat to jail, twenty one years after the riots, in not going to right a single wrong, or bring back a single life - but what about justice?

What about acknowledging that the stae had a hand in what it did to its own people?

What about a public apology?

The only thing anyone who suffered in '84 could have hoped from this commision and its report was that the truth be told, that the violence done to them would be rememberedby the nation-state, and not casually, brutally erased - from records, from memory.

But,
Sab visar gaya... All was forgotten...