PM says 1984 should never have happened

V S Chandrasekar
Toronto, Jun 28 (PTI) The 1984 anti-Sikh riots should
never have happened, a concerned Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh said Monday but at the same time appealed to
the Sikh community to "move on" to let the wounds of the
tragedy heal.
Speaking to the community members here after paying
homage to the victims of the 1985 Kanishka bombing at the Air
India Memorial here, Singh reminded them that he had
apologised to the nation for the carnage that ensued the
assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
"The 1984 anti-Skih riots should never have happened.
I have apologised to the nation... all possible steps will be
taken to provide succour and comfort," he said.
Singh, the first Sikh to ascend to the post of the
Prime Minister of India, said "by constantly reminding of the
1984 riots, sometimes you unwittingly vitiate the creative
thinking of the Sikh community".
"We need to move on," he said.
The Prime Minister said Sikhs in India were no longer
restricted to Punjab but were actively participating in all
spheres of the public life, referring to his own example.
"There is a Prime Minister, there was an Army chief,
you have governors and ambassadors," he pointed out.
In 2005, during a discussion in the Parliament on the
Nanavati Shah Commission report on the anti-Sikh riots, Singh
had intervened and apologised to the nation and to the
community for the violence which some of his party's leaders
were accused of instigating.
The Prime Minister's remarks came at the Air India
Memorial where a lawmaker of Indian origin spoke about growing
pro-Khalistan feelings in Canada.
Ahead of Singh's visit here, there was an attempt to
raise the 1984 riots issue in Canadian Parliament when a group
of Sikh MPs moved a petition seeking the the Canadian
government recognise the carnage as 'genocide'. PTI VSC
RBT


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