Who is Kamal Nath?

The following information has primarily been compiled from Ensaaf’s report Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India (2nd Ed., Ensaaf: 2006), available at Ensaaf's website.

Kamal Nath currently serves as India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry.

Allegations against Kamal Nath

On October 31, 1984, two of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her. From November 1 to 4, Indian state institutions, such as the Delhi Police, and Congress (I) officials perpetrated mass murder of Sikhs and later justified the violence in inquiry proceedings.

When Indian Express reporter Monish Sanjay Suri went to Gurudwara Rakab Ganj in Delhi around 4 p.m. on November 1, he saw Additional Commissioner of Police Gautum Kaul standing on one side as Congress (I) leader Kamal Nath led a mob of 4000 people. In an affidavit to a government inquiry commission, Suri stated:

Outside the gurdwara I saw a crowd of about 4,000 men led by Congress-I leader Kamal Nath. At the time I went there the crowd was on the road. Some were making weak attempts to enter the Gurdwara, but the Congress-I M.P. and other leaders of the same party who were with him were keeping them under some control….Leaders of the crowd seemed fully in charge. At one point a group charged towards the Gurdwara gate to a side near which Mr. Kaul stood. But seeing them he [Kaul] retreated instead of checking them.

The gang burned at least two Sikhs alive during attacks that day. (46) In their book, When a Tree Shook Delhi, reporter Manoj Mitta and attorney H.S. Phoolka, write: “Further, when he deposed orally in 2001 before the Nanavati Commission, Suri said that Kamal Nath ‘was controlling the crowd and the crowd was looking to him for directions’ and that even in the leader’s presence ‘some mobs had charged at the gurdwara.’”

The Nanavati Commission

As discussed in detail in Twenty Years of Impunity, various government committees and commissions have whitewashed the massacres.

On May 8, 2000, the Government of India appointed the latest inquiry commission, the Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, to examine the massacres of Sikhs in November 1984. (130) The major failings of the Nanavati Commission’s report include its:

• Incomplete and understated description of the massacres;
• Use of euphemisms and imprecise and legally irrelevant language when stating findings against perpetrators;
• Limitation of the inquiry to Delhi alone; and
• Failure to identify the organizers of the massacres. (131)

For example, even after acknowledging that the massacres were organized, Justice Nanavati omitted mention of crucial evidence that demonstrated the organized nature of the attack on the Sikh community, such as: the use of government-issued voter and ration lists to identify Sikh residences and businesses; the desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib and the forced removal of Sikh articles of faith; the refusal of medical care; the systematic disabling and neutralization of police officers who attempted to quell the massacres; and the manipulation of police records by senior officers in order to destroy any paper trail of the violence and shield criminals from the possibility of effective prosecutions. (132)

In 2003, the Nanavati Commission issued notice to Kamal Nath that it was likely to issue negative findings against him. (95, 96) Nath denied inciting the mob to attack Gurdwara Rakab Ganj, maintaining he was attempting to disperse the mob instead. (96) Ultimately, Nanavati discounted the two witness affidavits, and therefore stated that he could not reach a conclusion on Kamal Nath’s role in the attack on Gurdwara Rakab Ganj. Justice Nanavati disposed of Indian Express reporter Monish Sanjay Suri’s affidavit because of a slight discrepancy in his stated time of arrival, between his original affidavit (4 p.m.), and his testimony over 20 years later before the Commission (between 2 and 4 p.m.). However, Justice Nanavati did not apply the same logic to the accused Kamal Nath’s affidavit. There, he acknowledged that Nath’s reply was “vague,” gave no information on when Nath got to the gurdwara and for how long Nath stayed, failed to explain why Nath did not contact the police to quell the violence, but in the end allowed for the lapse of over two decades: “At the same time it is also required to be considered that he was called upon to give an explanation after about 20 years and probably for that reason he was not able to give more details as regards when and how he went there and what he did.” (fn 900)