Riots In India

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‘<b>Rao told me to protect friends...Rajiv told me you’re a heart patient, take rest’</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Gavai insisted the carnage was not on account of any errors on his part but rather because the Rajiv Gandhi Government at the Centre ‘‘deliberately delayed’’ calling in the Army when the mass killings began on November 1, 1984.

For Gavai, the Nanavati report completes a dubious hat trick. The retired Maharashtra cadre IAS officer said this was the third occasion he had been made the ‘‘fall guy’’.

<b>The first time, he said, was when Rajiv Gandhi summoned him on November 2, 1984, and told him: ‘‘Gavaiji, you are a heart patient and you should now take rest.’’ Though he was advised to proceed on leave, Gavai chose to assume ‘‘moral responsibility’’ and resign the following day, after overseeing Indira Gandhi’s funeral</b>.
Two years later, the Ranganath Misra Commission, while exonerating the Rajiv Gandhi Government — its home minister was P V Narasimha Rao, later to become premier himself — held Gavai should have ‘‘perhaps’’ assumed more than just moral blame and kept open ‘‘the extent of his responsibility’’.

But in the Nanavati report, the blame for administrative lapses has not gone beyond him, to the Union Home Ministry or even further up. ‘‘Gavai was the person responsible for the maintenance of law and order in Delhi,’’ the Nanavati report says baldly, ‘‘and, therefore, he cannot escape the responsibility for its failure.’’

But Gavai had another view. Though law and order of Delhi came directly under the jurisdiction of the Union Home Ministry, it was convenient for everybody, he alleged, to pin the blame on him. <b>He ascribed this to two reasons: one, he was not a Congress politician, and, two, he belonged to the Scheduled Castes. </b>

Gavai’s chief claim to innocence is that he had asked the then commissioner of Delhi Police, S C Tandon, to call in the Army right on the morning of November 1, when the violence had just begun. But for reasons beyond his control, the Army entered only two of the then six police districts of Delhi by the evening of November 1. It became effective in all districts as late as November 3. By then, hundreds of Sikhs had been slaughtered.

<b>‘‘The sequence of events clearly tells a tale. Political authorities purposely wasted time in keeping with their nefarious design to teach Sikhs a lesson,’’</b> Gavai told The Indian Express. ‘‘(P V Narasimha) Rao was calling me up to only ask me to protect his friends.’’

When Rajiv Gandhi rebuked him at their November 2 meeting for not having acted swiftly in calling in the Army, Gavai, by his own admission, kept quiet. He saw no point in defending himself: <b>‘‘Who was I to delay the Army? Those who could have sent the Army had purposely delayed it. When I raised this with the then Army chief, he said these things (deployment) take time. The concern that was shown was all a drama.’’ </b> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->