1984 Anti-Sikh Riots in Delhi

I was 13 years old, on October 31st 1984, the day Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards' Beant and Satwant Singh. The bodyguards did it to avenge, the destruction of the Golden Temple, in Amritsar, by the Indian army, on June 5th 1984.
Schools had shut down, and people were not going to work, regular Indian TV, Doordashan, in black and white, had gone off the air with their regular programs, replaced by a sad musician crooning on the screen. My parents were tunning their radio to BBC world service to figure out what was happening in our backyard, Indira Gandhi had been shot and was most probably dead.
My parents had gone to our farm which is in the outskirts of Delhi. They were planning to spend the night, but changed their mind and were driving back passing A.I.M.S., the hospital where the Prime Minister had been hospitalized. Ten minutes earlier, in the same place, a mob had stoned the car of a Sikh. President Giani Zail Singh of India. We are from the Sikh faith. We were all in a state of shock, none of us gloated or celebrated, Indira Gandhi’s death. We heard later that some Sikh immigrants in Britain and Canada had gone out and celebrated. The new Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, son of Indira Gandhi made a statement "When a big tree falls, the earth is bound to shake" on the Sikh carnage. This allowed mobs organized by local politicians to kill over 3,000 innocent Sikh men, women and children in North India.
The next morning, November 1st 1984, we were sitting outside in our garden having breakfast, when I heard the sounds of drums beating. It felt like Holi, the Indian festival of color, where the groups of young intoxicated men stalked the streets to harass women. I went to the edge of the lawn and looked out through the bamboo fence, and saw men, angry, drunk and chanting khoon ka badla koon (blood for blood), Indira Gandhi ki ek he asha . . . , sardaro ko maro . . . The voices were getting louder and more stringent khoon ka badla khoon, I rushed and called my parents.
My parents were having breakfast with a Muslim film maker. They rushed me and my younger brother into the house. We lived in a residential colony built by my great grand father, named Sujan Singh Park. My father's brothers lived on the 2nd floor, so we called them up and told them the situation, and we went upstairs to the home of my uncle, and his Egyptian wife. My younger brother, and two younger girl cousins were holed up in the bedroom, watching videos for many hours. I am not sure what we spoke about, we were not afraid, but more in a state of shock, thinking it must be a temporary aberration, before things went back to normal.
A couple of hours later I saw my mother come into the room brandishing a Kirpan (Sikh sword). She took it out of its red curved case and started rubbing it to the floor so that it retained its sharpness. What are you doing with his ma? I asked, she responded if they (the rioters) do anything to you, I will kill them before they get to you. That day I felt all Sikh women were powerful and strong and brave like my mother.
We all laughed in a way that was not entirely funny. The next day the adults decided that staying in my uncle's house was not safe, so we needed to move to Hotel Ambassador, next door.
The hotel was no longer taking reservations by Sikhs, for fear of reprisals. So the Muslim film maker made a reservation in his name, and we were ushered in the early evening to Ambassador Hotel. We were not allowed to go out, or let anyone in. We entertained ourselves by playing some board games, but I was afraid for my parent's lives. A few days later we were moved to a Sikh bureaucrats house in Vinay Marg, a government colony. We all kept wondering why the army was not called in? Why were innocent Sikhs being tortured and burnt alive, for a crime they did not commit? The army will protect us we felt, it has a lot of Sikhs in it. But for four days Delhi burnt, Tirlokpuri Block 32 and Kalyanpuri in East Delhi, Sultanpuri and Nangloi in West Delhi sizzled, with unprotected Sikhs being murdered by mobs, sanctioned by the great indian state.
My father refused to move, and stayed back and, kept all night vigils with other Sikhs in the colony and servant quarters.
Khushwant Singh deposed before the Nanavati Commission what he saw outside his house in Sujan Singh Park
"On October 31, 1984, I came out of my house, near Ambassador Hotel and from the gate near the road, I saw a mob burning a taxi, belonging to a Sikh. From a distance of 10 yards, I saw around 30 policemen, an inspector, who was armed and a sub-inspector, standing across the road. The policemen did nothing to prevent the mob from burning the taxi," Singh told the commission. The mob had burnt shops in the adjacent Khan Market and had attacked a gurdwara nearby. Thereafter the mob burnt cars sent to repairs to Sukhwant Singh, a mechanic, he added”. The next day we heard that at my uncle's farm, trees had been chopped, he decided to sell the land, and mouthed drunken abuses at the attackers. We later learnt that our farm house had been burnt, the fridge, furniture, tv, oven and cooker had been looted by the local Gujar villagers organized by Sajjan Kumar the politician of the area. All sardar farms were attacked. Our farms is still called Sardar (Sikh) farm in the area. Just in case there is another riot, they will not need electoral rolls, the houses are already marked for attack.
H.K.L Bhagat the politician, who always wore dark glasses gave the sweeper colony, next to our complex, alcohol, weapons and electoral lists of Sikhs in our neighborhood.
The rioters had arrived in our factory in NOIDA (an industrial suburb of Delhi), but their supplies of Kerosene, to fuel the fire, had been depleted after burning the Sikh businesses before ours. The workers also convinced the mob that the factory was not owned by Sikhs, and by burning and destroying the factory, the worker's livliehood would be destroyed. Interestingly the workers, mostly Muslims protected the factory against the Hindu mobs.
I went back to a school after a week, and some of my Sikh classmates had cut their hair. The boys were teased and harassed. The boys and girls whose families were probably forced and had to protect themselves by cutting their hair to blend it, were now subject to harassment by their classmates. I don't remember any teacher saying anything that made the Sikh students feel safe or protected or any psychological services being provided. I felt most of the teachers believed that the Sikhs deserved what they got.
Nagrik Ekta Manch was an organization that had been created to bring relief to the injured and to shelter the homeless. Once we got back to our homes, we cousins decided to help the Manch and collect relief supplies, so we went to our neighbors, and were shocked when some banged their doors at our faces, and said the Sikhs deserved what they got. My mother helped the widows fill up forms at government offices for compensation and relief. One of the widows asked my mother why did they kill my husband and child, Indira Gandhi was ours too? . I went with my grandmother to a gurdwara that had became a relief camp. I just saw women and children their, the men were all dead. We donated blankets, warm clothing and food.
The Nagrik Ekta Manch formed a team to investigate the riots, a black colored pamphlet was released of which we had quite a few copies and my father distributed it to people that were interested. It is searing indictment of politicians who incited the riots and the police who watched as rioters burnt, looted and destroyed.
This anti-Sikh pogrom was seminal in changing the course of our lives. It challenged our sense of an Indian indentity, and we were now different we were SIKHS. When I used to sing the national anthem with full throated pride I had never felt separate from a Hindu, or different. But that week we became a visible minority. The idea of the Indian nation was torn at its seams.
My grandparents felt that they were reliving the trauma of partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. My grandparents who had fled overnight, leaving homes, properties, lives and their souls in Lahore, Rawalpindi, North West Frontier Province and Sargodha were losing their belongings and livelihood again.
Movies like Kaya Taran and Amitva Ghosh's article the Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi have tried to understand and show accurately the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, many years later. Safina Oberoi’s documentary My Mother India, shows the effects on the riots on her Sikh father, who decided to regrow his hair and retie his turban.
After the riots we felt the need to have options, next time the cipher of violence spiraled out of control, we would have somewhere to escape. We were sent out of Delhi to study, and then to America for college.