I recall watching the movie, "Reservoir Dogs" in a movie theatre when it was first released a few years ago. I believe it was one of the earlier Tarantino films, dripping with unexplained, senseless, indifferent violence. Which is what made it so terrifying. I recall that mid-way through the movie, I suddenly realized I had the palm of my hand covering my face: I had actually been watching the movie for much of the time by peeking through the fingers. It was an unconscious act, but it captured how perfectly violent the movie was.

Odd, but I've felt exactly the same way in recent weeks. No, I haven't been watching any Tarantinos. I've merely been following the depositions before the Nanavati Commission in India, and the gory details of the crimes of India's leaders against humanity. The crimes of Narsimha Rao in 1984 - who shortly thereafter became Prime Minister of India and was subsequently charged for crimes other than those he committed against the Sikhs - were, it is finally being confirmed, at the very least crimes of omission and wilful blindness, if not worse. It reminds me of something else. More recent than 1984, but still a few years ago, Amitav Ghosh, an Indian novelist, had an interesting piece in The New Yorker magazine entitled "The Ghosts of Mrs Gandhi". Ghosh had eye-witnessed the pogroms against Sikhs in India's capital city in the wake of her assassination on October 31, 1984, and had decided, ten years later, to vividly describe what he has seen done to innocent people in broad daylight in the main streets of New Delhi.

Ghosh revived for me the trauma of watching, helplessly, the atrocities against my co-religionists during the sad months of 1984 as the events were transported half-way around the world, right here into my living-room, through the TV screen night after night, as mobs went berserk in a land that gave me birth. Ghosh remembered how, "Protected by certain politicians, 'organizers' were zooming around in the city, assembling 'mobs' and transporting them to Sikh-owned houses and shops". He then quoted a civil-rights report: "With cans of petrol they went around the localities and systematically set fire to Sikh houses, shops and gurdwaras.... The targets were primarily young Sikhs. They were dragged out, beaten up and then burnt alive ... In all the affected spots, a calculated attempt to terrorize the people was evident in the common tendency among the assailants to burn alive the Sikhs on public roads." Interspersed with graphic accounts of the sad goings-on in a land that professes to follow the teachings of Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, Ghosh - himself a Hindu - summarized the grim numbers: "Over the next few days, some twenty-five hundred people died in Delhi alone. Thousands more died in other cities. The total death toll will never be known. The dead were overwhelmingly Sikh men. Entire neighbourhoods were gutted; tens of thousands of people were left homeless."

Later in the article, he bemoaned that "to this day, no instigator of the riots has been charged". One wonders why. I believe Ghosh also has the answer, except it appears that he is not aware that he does. I found it close to the end of his article: ".... until now I have never really written about what I saw in November of 1984. I am not alone: several [other writers who were also eye-witnesses].... went on to publish books, yet nobody, so far as I know, has ever written about it except in passing." Ghosh struggles through mental gymnastics in justifying why he did not write about the events for more than ten years, but never makes the connection between the silence of those like him and the fact that no one was brought to justice. He belatedly describes individual acts of compassion and bravery that he witnessed as well, but fails to note that in the intervening decade, violence in India has escalated, and now is directed against every group which does not subscribe to the Hindu fundamentalist view of the world. Did he expect politicians to safeguard morality, ethics and basic human decency while artists and writers remained quiet as they nursed their personal wounds in their respective garrets? Poets, novelists, singers, painters - artists of every kind - are the guardians and nurturers of a nation's soul. If they remain silent, those who inherently lack vision and are guided only by the lure of immediate gains will inevitably hijack the nation.

So, the politicians failed India. And its poets and visionaries, the keepers of the flame, failed it even more grievously. I worry about it. You know, if people have karma, so do nations. I believe that the poison self-injected by Indians through their crimes of commission and omission in 1984 will remain in its blood stream. It is the way of life. It will course through its veins, over and over again, as long as the diseased body politic remains possessed of its demons. And, tragically, it will continue to rot within its life-blood and sap it of all its gains, spiritual and material.

Sadly, there is no one in sight who has either the sincerity or the capacity needed to cleanse the land. Pity. It's the very land, which, not too long ago, held so much promise.

Dr. T. Sher Singh is a Barrister & Solicitor in Guelph, Canada. He is also a regular newspaper columnist and a TV/Radio commentator on current affairs. As well, he writes a weekly column for a Canadian newspaper syndicate.