Assassination of Indira Gandhi and Massacre of Sikhs
On the morning of 31 October 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by two Sikh security guards (Satwant Singh and Beant Singh) in New Delhi in retaliation for Operation Blue Star. The assassination triggered fulminant violence against Sikhs across north India. While the ruling party, Congress (I), maintained that the violence was due to spontaneous riots, its critics have alleged that the Congress members had planned a pogrom against the Sikhs. Senior Congress leaders such as Jagdish Tytler, H. K. L. Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar have been accused by Sikhs of inciting the mobs against them.
Other political parties, such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strongly condemned the riots. Two major civil-liberties organisations issued a joint report on the anti-Sikh riots naming sixteen important politicians, thirteen police officers and one hundred and ninety-eight others, accused by survivors and eye-witnesses.
Read more about this topic: Sikh Religious Extremism
Famous quotes containing the words assassination of, gandhi and/or massacre:
“I cannot be indifferent to the assassination of a member of my profession, We should be obliged to shut up business if we, the Kings, were to consider the assassination of Kings as of no consequence at all.”
—Edward VII (1841–1910)
“I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar.”
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