Chandigarh, Nov 11 BJP leader and senior advocate H S Phoolka on Wednesday termed claims concerning the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s book “Belonging: A Journey of Love” a calculated attempt to “twist” historical facts, “mislead” the public and provide an “unwarranted” clean chit to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Phoolka, who has been fighting cases for victims of the anti-Sikh riots, claimed that the narrative being pushed through the memoir seeks to revive the false claim that the 1984 violence was a spontaneous “Hindu versus Sikh” conflict arising from public anger.
“It was neither a spontaneous riot nor a Hindu-Sikh clash,” Phoolka asserted, adding that ordinary Hindus did not kill Sikhs.
“It was Congress workers, engineered mobs and organised elements affiliated with the party who systematically targeted innocent Sikhs while law enforcement looked away,” he said.
Phoolka said what happened was not just the brutal murder of thousands of innocents but the premeditated murder of justice, the rule of law and the Constitution.
He challenged Sonia Gandhi to cite even a single incident of public unrest or communal violence in Delhi during the afternoon of October 31, 1984, immediately after Indira Gandhi was shot.
“The memoir attempts to create a myth that common citizens flew into an uncontrollable rage across the capital the moment the news broke,” he said, adding that in reality, the city was peaceful that entire afternoon.
“The violence began only around 5 pm, orchestrated by organised goons who ambushed the motorcade of President Giani Zail Singh outside AIIMS. That attack marked the start of a pre-planned political operation, not an organic popular eruption,” Phoolka said.
He also took strong exception to Sonia Gandhi’s claims, shifting the blame for the delayed military deployment onto the then Army chief A S Vaidya.
In her book, Sonia Gandhi claims that Rajiv Gandhi asked General Vaidya on the night of October 31 to summon the Army. However, the Army chief hesitated because units near Delhi contained Sikh soldiers, opting instead to call troops from distant stations like Dehradun, he said.
Phoolka dismissed this claim as factually untenable and an insult to military history.
Citing official Justice Misra Commission records and sworn testimonies of senior military officers, Phoolka clarified that an Army chief’s constitutional role is solely to make armed units available upon formal requisition; actual deployment, sector allocation and issuing shoot-at-sight orders rest entirely with the civil administration.
“Official commission records confirm that nearly 6,000 trained troops were already present and available in Delhi between the night of October 31 and the morning of November 1,” Phoolka said.
“They were deliberately kept confined to cantonment barracks while Delhi was left to burn. Had the civil administration deployed these available forces on the streets without criminal delay, more than 2,000 innocent Sikh lives could have been saved,” said Phoolka.
He questioned why, if Rajiv Gandhi bore no responsibility, his administration failed to take action against a single police or civil officer who delayed the deployment.
“Instead, leaders and officials named by victims were rewarded with parliamentary tickets, ministerial berths and promotions,” said Phoolka.
Punjab BJP chief Kewal Singh Dhillon said Sonia Gandhi’s claim that Indira Gandhi had “tears of pain and remorse” in her eyes after watching footage of Operation Bluestar rubs salt into the wounds of the Sikh ‘Panth’.
If there was genuine remorse, why was the truth suppressed for decades, he asked.
Dhillon claimed that while Sonia Gandhi concedes that factional infighting within the Punjab Congress worsened the situation, she conveniently rationalises “the military assault as an unavoidable necessity to absolve the family and the party”.
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal criticised Sonia Gandhi for not apologising in her book for the Sikh “genocide” in Delhi and various other parts of the country in 1984.
“Three successive generations of the Gandhi family have kept away from apologising for this act of genocide which was planned and executed by the Congress party. They have even gone to the extent of making former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh apologise for the massacres but refrained from doing so themselves,” she said.
(PTI News)
