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If Kiran Bedi is made LG of Delhi, the Modi government will be sending a message that riots will be stopped then and there
January 31, 2021, 9:47 AM IST
A journalist who has lived all over India and is now based in Bangalore
Contrast these two scenarios: On November 15, 1978, a 31-year-old DCP (deputy commissioner of police) called Kiran Bedi (India’s first woman Indian Police Service officer) repeatedly lathi-charges a mob of stone-throwing Akali Sikhs who are trying to break through a security cordon near India Gate to attack a cngregation of Nirankaris, when a Nihang Sikh armed with a sword runs towards her and she stops him with her lathi, despite being inured in the leg and the elbow: On January 26, 2021, a mob of Sikh youths, a few of them armed with swords, overwhelms the Delhi Police cordon at the Red Fort and hoists first the Nishan Sahib (the Sikh community’s religious flag) on the flagpost and then the banner of peasants protesting against three farm laws of the NDA government led by Prime Minister Modi. The November 15, 1978, photograph shows India’s first IPS woman officer fendng off an attack by a sword-wielding Nihang Sikh. The January 26, 2021, image (telecast to the world) shows a Sikh youth hoisting the Nishan Sahib on the Red Fort flagpost where the national tricolour would be traditionally unfurled by India’s prime ministers on Independence Day.