Much water has flown under the bridge since 1984. Whatever it might have done then, should we still be hounding the Congress party, which is today seen as the single greatest bulwark of secularism?
A. It is indeed ironical if any party s claim to secularism can be sustained only by suppressing its complicity in a massacre of members of a minority community. It is also instructive to note that the polarization we see today, with the Sangh Parivar and the Congress party standing at the opposite ends, was not so sharp in 1984. Though the BJP was even then at loggerheads with the Congress party, it is widely acknowledged that the RSS had actually abandoned the BJP for the Congress party in the 1984 Lok Sabha election. Sections of Hindu hard-liners, traditional supporters of the BJP and its forerunner Jan Sangh, campaigned for the Congress party in that election in appreciation of its moves to teach the Sikhs a lesson through Operation Bluestar and the November 1984 carnage.
