On August 11, 2005, a Sikh Prime Minister rose in the Rajya Sabha and bowed his head. A day earlier, Manmohan Singh had spoken of 1984 in the Lok Sabha. Now he went further. He apologised not only to the Sikh community but to the whole nation. “I bow my head in shame,” he said. No prime minister before him had said those words about 1984. The prime minister who followed never said them about any massacre ever.The apology didn’t come out of nowhere. In January 1998, Sonia Gandhi had publicly expressed her regret for Operation Blue Star and for the killings that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination. “No words can heal the wounds of the riot victims,” she said. The next year she went to Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple in Amritsar. She walked the parikrama. She bowed her head before the holiest seat of the Sikh faith, the very shrine the Army had entered 15 years earlier.The Sikh community noticed. The wounds did not vanish. Such wounds never do. But the gesture came like a healing touch – Zakhmon par narm faaha (a soft dressing on wounds). When Singh spoke in 2005, The Tribune headlined its editorial “PM applies balm.” A balm does not erase the injury. It tells the injured that their pain has been noticed and will be taken care of.This was reconciliation in its true sense. You name the wrong. You own it. You bow. And then you walk forward together, with a clean heart and a clean mind.Acts before wordsWhat followed would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. In 2002, Sonia Gandhi made Captain Amarinder Singh the chief minister of Punjab. He had a history. In 1984, he had resigned from parliament and from the Congress itself, in protest against the Army entering the Golden Temple. The party he had walked out of now handed him its most sensitive state. That was not a reward for loyalty. It was an acknowledgement that his anguish in 1984 had been the anguish of the Sikhs, and that it had been legitimate. He went on to earn the reputation of a staunch nationalist. Whatever road he chose much later, the choice of 2002 said something no words could ever have expressed.Then came 2004. Sonia Gandhi led the single largest party. The office of prime minister was hers to take. She stepped aside and chose Manmohan Singh. Twenty years after the turban had become a target on the streets of Delhi, a man in a turban took the oath as prime minister. His religion was not a disqualification. It was not even a question. The message to every Sikh home was loud and clear. India was for everyone.Also read: Sonia Gandhi’s Tutorial to Narendra Modi on Indian Culture and PhilosophyManmohan Singh passed away in December 2024. The tributes since then have done what his critics refused to do in his lifetime. They have affirmed his integrity, his ability and the worth of his decade in office. History has vindicated him. In doing so, it has also vindicated the woman who chose him.The trust did not stop at the post of the prime minister. In her memoir, Sonia Gandhi records that in 1984 Army units near Delhi were not sent in at once because they had Sikh soldiers among them. Barely 12 years later, General J.J. Singh became the first Sikh to lead the Indian Army. Nehchal Sandhu, a Sikh officer, headed the Intelligence Bureau. The institutions that once looked at Sikhs with suspicion were now led by Sikhs. That is what reconciliation looks like when it moves from mere words to the machinery of the state.The test of philosophyTo understand the weight of these acts, try a simple exercise. Imagine Narendra Modi standing on the floor of parliament to apologise for Gujarat 2002. It is hard to imagine. It has never happened. The courts have ruled on his personal culpability. But an apology is not a legal admission. It is a moral act. And a moral act needs a moral philosophy behind it.Apologies do not flow from political expediency alone. They flow from what a party believes about the people it governs. Seen in retrospect, the words and acts of Sonia Gandhi establish her secular credentials more firmly than any manifesto could.Her conviction did not stop at gestures. In 2011, the National Advisory Council (NAC) she chaired drafted a law against communal and targeted violence. It sought to hold officials accountable when they looked away from mobs. It sought justice and reparation for victims, whichever community they belonged to. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fought it bitterly. It never became law. It is worth asking why a party that weeps for 1984 every election season opposed a law designed to prevent the next 1984.Sonia Gandhi could do because she is a staunch secular at heart. Not just she herself, but her children too believe in basic human values of equality and empathy. A family that can forgive the killers of Rajiv Gandhi, a family whose son can walk the streets without fear, cannot have violent beliefs. They have not just spoken of reconciliation, but also lived it themselves.In January 2023, Rahul Gandhi bowed at the Golden Temple, Harmandir Sahib, before starting the Punjab leg of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. In October 2023, he went back and quietly stayed at the Golden Temple campus, washing utensils, doing seva at langar, cleaning shoes at Joraghar, where devotees shoes are stacked. All without any security ring. It was an act of courage and submission, both at once. No one would ever fathom that grandson of Indira Gandhi could ever come and stay there. Rahul Gandhi could. Not because he was trying to boast any courage. But because he believed in reconciliation and was willing to take any risk for it; and also believed in trust from both sides.All during his Yatra through Punjab. he spoke of love against hate, and of the duty to stand up to tyranny. In Punjab, these are not borrowed slogans. They belong to its soil: Sarbat da bhala, the well-being of all; Nirbhau, nirvair, without fear and without enmity, these are values that every Sikh prays for every day.In the Sikh tradition, seva is not a photo opportunity. It is the surrender of the ego. Sikhs who watched him understood that.What the book saysSonia Gandhi may have written about 1984 only now. But her actions have been speaking for a long time. In Belonging, she calls the violence “a tragic and shameful chapter in the history of our nation.” She writes that more than 2,000 people were killed in Delhi alone, cruelly and in cold blood. She admits that four commissions, nine committees and two special investigation teams have still not delivered justice. These are not the words of someone sugarcoating history. They are the words of someone still carrying it.I know this from my own personal experience. Before I joined the party full time, I met her. I had not raised 1984. She did, of her own accord. We spoke about it for a long while. She ended with words I have never forgotten:“I still can’t forget it. It’s a chip on my shoulder. I don’t know how Modi can sleep peacefully.”An apology, once more?Today some voices, many of them aligned with the BJP, are demanding an apology all over again. They conveniently forget that the prime minister tendered it at the highest platform of India, the floor of it’s parliament. And that Sonia Gandhi had expressed at the Golden Temple, the highest spiritual seat of Sikh religion.An apology demanded afresh every election season stops being an apology. It becomes a ritual of political games. That is not what the victims asked for. They asked for justice, and for the assurance that it would never happen again.Also read: Sonia Gandhi Says She Fears For Rahul, Priyanka Because of ‘Ruthless & Unprincipled’ Rivals With Right-Wing AgendaPersonally speaking, opposition to the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 is non-negotiable. It always will be. But my opposition is not limited to violence against Sikhs. It cannot be. What I oppose is the very idea of political violence. The mob. The organised riot. The use of a community’s blood as an electoral tool. Against anyone, anywhere.A true Sikh cannot condemn the riots of 1984 and yet stand beside a party that has sanctified violence against other communities as a political instrument. That is selective condemnation, and it runs against everything that Sikhism teaches.The Gurus spoke of the well-being of all. Guru Tegh Bahadur gave his life to protect the right of others to practise their own faith. The Khalsa was born to stand against oppression, whoever the oppressed might be. Anyone who believes in the tenets of Sikhism and opposes the killings of 1984 is bound, by that same faith, to oppose the killing of anyone.The gifts Sikhs pray forEvery Sikh ardas asks the Guru for gifts. Among them are vivek daan, visah daan and bharosa daan. It’s can be translated as the gift of judicious thinking. The gift of endurance. The gift of trust. These are not abstractions. They shape how a community thinks and responds.Vivek allows Sikhs to tell sincerity from theatre. Visah has carried them through four decades of grief without surrendering to bitterness. Bharosa is what they extend, once it has been earned.It is these values that guide the larger Sikh response. The community can tell the difference between those who bowed their heads and those who only point fingers. It understands the sincerity of Sonia Gandhi, and now of Rahul Gandhi, in fighting communalism and standing for the rights of every Indian.The balm was laid on the wound 20 years ago. Those who want to tear it away now are not seeking justice for 1984. They are only seeking a political use for it.Gurdeep Singh Sappal is a Permanent Invitee to the Congress Working Committee and former editor/CEO of Rajya Sabha Television.