Modi Attempts to Whitewash RSS Role in 1984 Sikh Genocide

At the centenary celebrations of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) parent organization, the right-wing body—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to whitewash the role of the organization in the 1984 Sikh Genocide. He said, 'In 1984, during the Sikh massacre, so many Sikh families took refuge in the homes of swayamsevaks (volunteers). This is our nature.'  While the genocide is normally attributed to the Indian National Congress there is enough proof that both the RSS and BJP were involved in the killing of Sikhs and looting of their properties. One such is a set of fourteen First Information Reports (FIR) filed in 1992 on the basis of victim affidavits at the Sreenivaspuri Police Station, New Delhi. The FIRs were filed on the recommendation by Jain-Agarwal Committee (JAC), 1990-93 to recommend the registration and investigation of cases related to the Sikh genocide by the Delhi Administration. Many of those FIRs are against RSS and BJP leaders with names and details. These FIRs were never processed. The official stance of RSS was enunciated by its leader Nana Deshmukh who blamed the Sikhs for inviting the massacre upon themselves in his piece Moments of Soul Searching published in the magazine Pratipaksh (counterpoint) edited by George Fernandes who later became the Defence Minister of India during the first National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government (1999-2004). This was the same NDA government which awarded Deshmukh the Bharat Ratna, India’s topmost civilian award. Deshmukh said, ‘Sikhs themselves invited these attacks...Sikhs should have done nothing in self-defence but showed patience and tolerance against the killer mobs. These were Sikh intellectuals and not killer mobs which were responsible for the massacre. They had turned Sikhs into a militant community, cutting them off from their Hindu roots, thus inviting attacks from the nationalist Indians.’ However, this does not mean some Sikhs were not sheltered by RSS members. That could have happened, but those must be seen as acts of courage in personal capacity and not an organization stance. This is why BJP now promising justice to Sikhs is their attempt to show the INC down, not empathy for the Sikhs.