Senior Congress leader and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi today took to Twitter to sarcastically thank PM Modi after two mobs in two separate incidents lynched two men over allegations of sacrilege in Congress-ruled Punjab.

Rahul Gandhi’s tweet on lynching shows how to cleverly whitewash a crime in which you are a complicit. Entire Punjab Congress leadership has not said a word on it and focussed only on sacrilege. Rahul Gandhi is smart, he knows how to use the ecosystem when you are losing the narrative war. He killed two birds with one stone here: earn brownie points that at least Rahul Gandhi spoke on lynchings and to trigger BJP into reacting and bringing in lynchings prior to 2014 and thereby diluting the gravity of the heinousness of what is happening in Punjab.

Punjab Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu wants Taliban-esque public hanging of those accused of sacrilege. The ones who are now dead because the mob lynched them inside the holy temples. But instead of condemning such brutality where your leader calls for public hanging of a person for stealing chapatis which one assumed to be sacrilege, Rahul Gandhi has put the onus on PM Modi.

What is unfortunate is that the killings, especially lynchings, have been a part of our history.

On 16th August 1946, Mohammed Ali Jinnah gave a call for nationwide protests demanding the creation of Pakistan. It led to the 1946 Calcutta Killings and the genocide of the Bengali Hindu community. Soon, it spread to the rest of the country and culminated with the Partition and the terrible partition riots. The Direct Action Day culminated with the greatest migration of population in modern history.

In October 1946, riots engulfed Noakhali and Tipperah Districts of Bengal (now Bangladesh) where the Hindu community was targeted. Murders, rapes and lynching (Rahul Gandhi, pay attention, please), were rampant. Mahatma Gandhi then suggested women to either self immolate or drink poison to save their honour. An article published by fact-checking website fact-hunt mentions a book named 1946: The Great Calcutta Killings and Noakhali genocide written by Dr Dinesh Chandra Singha. In the book Gandhi was quoted giving the suggestion when Dr B C Roy contacted him to apprise him of the situation in Bengal.

Shockingly, after the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, which concluded with horrifying tales of murders and rapes of BJP workers in Bengal after TMC swept the polls, Mamata Banerjee decided to declare 16th August as ‘Khela Hobe Diwas’.

And then everyone knows of the horrors of partition, also presided over by Rahul Gandhi’s great grandfather Jawharlal Nehru. The terrifying tales of rapes, lynching, murders, looting and being displaced from your place called home because some people decided to divide the country on basis of religion.

But here’s the thing. Rahul Gandhi does not even need to go that far back in history. I’m sure he would not have forgotten that his father not only presided over the worst ever mob lynching in history of independent India but even justified it.

Here is a shot clip from 30 years back where the then Prime Minister and Rahul Gandhi’s father Rajiv Gandhi justified anti-Sikh riots.

Rajiv Gandhi stood in front of a crowd on a stage and said that one must remember Indira Gandhi. “We must remember why she was killed. We have to remember who all could have been behind her. When she was killed then there were some riots. We know that people of India were angry and for some days people thought that India has shaken. But whenever a big tree falls, the ground shakes a little,” he said to an applauding crowd.

Rajiv Gandhi was speaking about the anti-Sikh riots that erupted across India following the assassination of his mother and the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on 31st October 1984. She was assassinated as a revenge for Operation Blue Star that was carried out by her in the Golden Temple, Amritsar (one of the sites where recent lynching took place on December 18) to snuff out Khalistani separatists Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and others.

In the anti-Sikh riots that followed her assassination, many Congress leaders have been accused of roaming around on streets of Delhi with voter ID list and identifying and targeting Sikhs. There have been numerous tales of how Sikhs were targeted and killed.

In fact, Congress leader Sajjan Kumar has been convicted of murder and rioting during the 1984 riots. The ex-Congress MP has been charged for the murder of a man and his son in west Delhi’s Saraswati Vihar. On November 1, 1984, a thousand-strong mob had allegedly burned alive a father and son duo (Jaswant Singh and Tarun Deep Singh) in Raj Nagar, West Delhi. The prosecution had stated that the crowd burned alive the two men, as well as damaged, destroyed, looted, arson and inflicted severe injuries on their family members and relations, on Kumar’s incitement and abetment.

While framing the charges, the court said that there was sufficient evidence on record to form a prima facie opinion that Sajjan Kumar was not only “a participant of the riotous mob but had also led it”. Guess it was not ‘lynching’ enough because after the riots and subsequent allegations, Sajjan Kumar was given a ticket by Congress in 1991 to contest elections which were subsequently won by him. He also won 2004 general elections on congress ticket from Outer Delhi seat with highest ever votes at 8,55,543 votes. A Sanjay Gandhi loyalist, he served as Member, Committee on Urban Development and Committee on Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme in 2005.

Congress not only shielded those who carried out lynching but also rewarded them.

Sajjan Kumar was not the only loyalist of Nehru-Gandhi family and Congress who was accused of leading mob and running a riot. One such Congress leader was Jagdish Tytler. The Nanavati Commission recorded the testimony of a witness namely, Jasbir Singh who stated that on 3rd November, 1984, he was passing by the TB hospital gate after taking dinner at the house of one Sucha Singh situated at Outram lane when he had seen Jagdish Tytler coming there in a car.

Singh furthered that he heard Tytler “rebuked” the persons who were standing because his instructions were not faithfully carried out and therefore his position was greatly compromised and lowered in the eyes of the central leaders. He has alleged to have further stated that there was only nominal killing in his constituency compared to East Delhi, Outer Delhi, Cant. etc. and it would be difficult for him to stake a claim in future as he has promised large-scale killing of Sikhs. He had complained to those persons that they had betrayed him and let him down.

Jagdish Tytler was given subsequent tickets to contest election by the Indian National Congress and also made Union Minister of Civil Aviation first and then labour department. He had contested 2004 elections and won as well. He was dropped in 2009 polls.

Another such high profile Congress leader who has been accused of leading a mob (and subsequent lynching – saying it louder for Rahul Gandhi to hear it) has been Kamal Nath.

Monish Sanjay Suri, witness No. 17, testified before the Nanavati Commission against the Congress leader said how Nath turned a blind eye to a rioting mob. “He (Suri) stated that Kamal Nath tried to control the crowd and the crowd was looking at him for directions. He did not hear Kamal Nath giving any direction to the mob. He merely saw him speaking to different persons who were in the mob. He reiterated before the Commission that Kamal Nath did not make any attempt to control the situation near the Gurudwara,” the report noted. 

Witness No. 2 Mukhtiar Singh, who lived in the Gurdwara quarters, deposed that at around 4 pm, he saw a huge crowd of 4000 people led by Congress leader Kamal Nath. The Commission however said that Singh was standing quite a distance away from the Congress leader and that it wasn’t possible for him to overhear the conversation between Nath and the mob. As such, the report said that Singh’s inference was based on gestures made by Kamal Nath and thus not ‘conclusive’ evidence. Kamal Nath was never tried in court for his questionable role in the 1984 Sikh genocide.

Maybe now is the good time for Rahul Gandhi to revisit history, especially that of his party and his family, and learn a bit about some of the biggest ever mob lynchings that took place in history of India which is now a part of his dual legacy.

References:

opindia.com - Nirwa Mehta