She Lost Here, She Lost There

She looks older than her 60 years. She is big built, and walks with force befitting a Sikh lady. But something is missing. There seems to be a vacuum in her soul which you instantly realise as you look into her sad eyes. In 1984, the bloodthirsty Congress supporters had burnt her husband alive. She was lucky to save her life, still luckier that her son and daughter survived, but terribly unlucky in losing a husband and having no support. She worked harder than her broken spirit would allow, put the mother in her at its best to continue fighting against all odds to raise her children.

The wound inside her feels fresher than that you expect from a tragedy happening three decades back. Her wound was again opened up by another tragedy in 2001 Gujarat riots. In 1984 she had suffered for being a Sikh, and Indira Gandhi had been killed by her Sikh bodyguards. In 2001, she suffered for being the mother of a Muslim convert. Her daughter whom she loved more than herself and even her son, showered with love care and affection and who even did well to get into Jamia Milia University for a graduation course, fell in love with a Muslim boy and would not listen to anything contrary to the inter-religious marriage. Sikhs are nearer to Hindus, sharing even many Gods, but she loved her husband so was justified in feeling closer to the Muslims. Delhi and its society both were claiming their bits of modernism, so her daughter got converted and was married to the boy from Gujarat. Just out of their graduation courses they went back to the boy’s place in his home state. And it was here that the tragedy struck taking away her Harpreet-e-Gulzaar from this world during the dark-famed Gujarat riots.     

The long and wordy debate about the tragic tales of the communal violence keeps going. In the one Sikhs suffered; in the other Muslims suffered; she suffered in both; she suffered as the wife of a Sikh husband; she suffered as the mother of a Muslim convert. Elsewhere in India, Hindus suffered invisibly on account of the talks of Islamic terrorism; the unseen unknown suffering fuelling the pseudo-secular drama which is an important component in the Indian contemporary politics.

In 2009, the UPA government’s eagerness and enthusiasm in deliberately leaking the Liberhan Commission’s report to expose the wrongdoings of the Hindutva elements and condemn the BJP as a communal party could have given her a touch of solace from the daughter’s side who died as a Muslim. But how could she forget the massacre of 5000 innocent Sikhs in 1984 including her husband. Of the two main political parties, which one to support during the elections? She had not voted during the parliamentary elections six months back. For which one to get her soul blued and finger marked indelibly for a week as a token of support?  

In 1992 a structure was stage-managed to be broken for political gains. In 1984, it was the real flesh and blood that spattered the streets of Delhi; like it was the real blood in Gujarat. Who was ruling in 1984? Who was ruling in 2001? Who was ruling at the centre in 1992? How can the central government wipe its hands clean of an act perpetrated in a state when there were intelligence reports regarding the impending destructive task by the Kar Sevaks? It was just like allowing your enemy to commit a murder so that the foe can be held guilty. The Congress government did only that. And ask the pseudo-secularists isn’t it just plain communalism to politically appease a particular section always citing the wrongs committed against it by the political opponents? Political action and reaction mean the same as far as communalism is concerned.

Whom to support and whom to go against? Who was more communal? In the future parliamentary elections where to cast her vote? The mother and the widow in her kept away from any interest in the famed Indian democratic machine operating along the communal lines.