Ashok Jaitly, an IAS officer posted in Delhi in November 1984, was one of the rare officers to testify against the police and political workers for their role in the anti-Sikh riots:
Ashok Jaitly, an IAS officer posted in Delhi in November 1984, was one of the rare officers to testify against the police and political workers for their role in the anti-Sikh riots:
On the morning of November 1, a number of us got together around Lajpat Nagar. While marching for peace, we passed a gurudwara to see hoodlums standing outside with trishuls in their hands, wearing saffron headgear. Inside, the scared Sikhs were holding swords. When we came out onto the Ashram flyover, I remember seeing corpses lying on the rail tracks. A group of us went to Congress leader Arun Nehru, demanding the army be brought out. His demeanour was frighteningly casual; he claimed he and his party were doing all they could.
Within no time, we had set up the Nagrik Ekta Manch. Groups went in all directions, coming back with horrendous stories of people found dead and burnt. We got affidavits from victims in which they detailed what had happened. Much of that evidence was put before the Nanavati Commission. I myself testified before the commission. On the basis of the evidence we found, there is no question that what transpired in 1984 was not a riot, it was a pogrom. Thousands died and there was barely a response because there was a quiet complicity between the establishment and the mob, like in Gujarat.
When I look back, I realise my actions weren’t out of the ordinary. My generation had many bureaucrats who thought differently. We had an ideology, which to use a cliche, was pro-poor, pro-minority, pro-secular. Even our ‘elitist’ St Stephen’s-Oxbridge education taught us that. If one had to desperately hunt for a positive, it would have to be that in 1984, there emerged a unique citizen’s movement, a spontaneous response to the pogrom.
As told to Shreevatsa Nevatia