Sparks flew at an event on Saturday to mark three years of the communal riots in Delhi that claimed 53 lives.

Delhi University professor Apoorvanand fiercely countered former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung’s conciliatory stand towards the RSS, and accused the BJP’s ideological fountainhead of preparing the ground for the violence.

Jung is part of the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), a body of former civil servants that organised the event and on whose initiative a panel led by former Supreme Court judge Madan B. Lokur published a fact-finding report on the riots last October.

Jung was also part of a delegation of Muslims who met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in August last year. In January this year, a meeting was held with four RSS leaders at Jung’s residence in Delhi.

The former bureaucrat spoke after three fact-finding reports were discussed at Sunday’s event, and young activists who are helping the victims described the bureaucratic maze the battle for compensation is stuck in.

Jung initially called for justice but his speech increasingly sounded like a political sermon directed at Muslims.

“When Germany’s difficult era ended, then some people… began to collect evidence. One such person was (Simon) Wiesenthal. Like (social activist and former civil servant) Harsh (Mander), he made records,” Jung said.

“And on the basis of his records, the Nazi leaders were jailed, and given capital punishment. The Nuremberg trials happened.Times will change. The clouds will lift. The night does not last forever.”

He then said: “We have expectations from you (young lawyers who fight riot cases and file compensation claims) because your neighbours are with you. People from your localities will stand with you but you have to remove their suspicions.”

Jung added: “I have some friends who are not here right now. We have a group which has started talking to people from the RSS to somehow reduce disagreements between us. We have seen that the differences are not so much thatwe cannot reduce them with talks.”

Jung trained his guns at Delhi’s AAP government, which has been blamed by the Delhi Minorities Commission and others for delayed and inadequate compensation.

“Don’t have hopes from this (Delhi) government…. We saw the Eidgah (relief) camp (of the Delhi Waqf Board)after three days and there were still no arrangements. And then the camp was shut(after the pandemic began),” he said.

“The government’s intentions were clear from the beginning but you made a mistake by voting for this government. Now you have to decide where your vote will go, or you have to start a new organisation for your vote to go to the right place.”

He added: “Our Constitutional Conduct Group has retired IAS officers, around 200 of us. There are four Muslims, 196 non-Muslims. We all stand with you…. God willing, India will listen to us if our language and intentions are clean.”

Apoorvanand responded: “Itis true that every time violence happens we find people in whose name the violence is being done, but humanism is saved because of them. There are Hindus who helped Muslims.

“But the reality of the violence is not hidden and we shouldn’t hide it…. It is difficult to ascertain who commits the violence, there are many such people. But who prepares the ground for them, and how is it being prepared for the past century?”

The academic went on to accuse the RSS and its galaxy of mass organisations of “sowing the seeds of violence against Muslims”.

“To say that there is little difference in thinking between us and them is fooling oneself and others. It was said that ‘Hindus are with us’. But remember that Harsh Mander or Deb Mukharji or Amitabha Pande, if the RSS’writ runs, then all of them will be proven to be anti-Hindu and put in jail.”

Mander, co-organiser of the event, and Pande were in the IAS. Mukharji was a diplomat. In his speech, delivered before Jung’s, Justice Lokur recounted how BJP leaders had publicly called for the eviction of the Shaheen Bagh agitation against the new citizenship regime, even through violence.

“Why were policemen injured? Because there were too few police personnel deployed. The government thought, ‘If there is a riot, let it happen. Why should we send the police?’” the retired judge said.

The Delhi police report to the lieutenant governor, whois appointed by the central government. “It was not a question of police efficiency,” CPM politburo member Brinda Karat said.

“Figures (of police deployment revealed in the CPM’s report) show that this was part of a plan.”

Multiple fact-finding reports on the February 2020 riots have accused the Delhi police of bias and complicity in the violence.

Earlier this month, theUnion home ministry asked Delhi High Court to restrain such reports by “private” and “extra-judicial” entities.

In 2021, the Centre told Parliament that “dedicated and incessant efforts made by Delhi Police brought the riotous situation to normalcy within a short span of time and also prevented the riots from spreading across to other areas of Delhi/NCR”.