1984 Sikh Genocide

Dear Visitor,

Welcome and thank you for making the time to visit my exhibit on the 1984: Sikh Genocide in India, The Victims of November.

It is called The Victims of November because these men, women and children, more than 5,000 of them by official count, were killed in the most barbaric way over three days starting 1st November 1984. That is one killing every minute for 72 hours.

The pogrom followed the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, then prime minister of India, by her Sikh bodyguards at her official residence in New Delhi.

She loved the Sikhs but she had been in their crosshairs for some time, particularly after she ordered the Indian Army to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984. Golden Temple is among the holiest places of worship of the Sikhs.

Mrs. Gandhi wanted to take out a rustic preacher, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and his group of armed supporters who had been challenging her and spawning a spate of killings in the Punjab state and who had taken refuge inside the complex to evade arrest.

In fact, Bhindranwale had been propped up and patronised by Mrs. Gandhi's political party, the Congress, including her younger son Sanjay Gandhi, to tackle her opposition in Punjab, the Akalis, and neutralise them.

Codenamed 'Operation Bluestar', the army operation badly damaged the Golden Temple complex, including the Sikh temporal seat, the Akal Takht, and infuriated the Sikhs across the world. They, in turn, avowed to take revenge on her.

I personally think that Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination by her own bodyguards was an act of treachery. But what followed her killing was worse. The Congress, under the leadership of her elder son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, decided to teach the Sikhs a lesson.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in fact, endorsed the violence and said on Mrs. Gandhi’s 67th birth anniversary on 19th November at Boat Club in New Delhi that “when a big tree falls, the earth does shake.” He did not agree to an inquiry into the killings until July 1985.

More than thirty-six years later, the families of the victims, which include hundreds of widows, are still struggling for justice and a life of dignity. All four pillars of the Indian democracy have failed them due to ongoing institutional apathy.

It is in that backdrop that I have set out to use the tools of oral history and record the survivors, many of whom are old and gradually withering away.

I am putting out a handful of these trauma testimonies in this exhibit. But given the anticipatory grief in watching these audio and video excerpts, I will understand if you decide not to view them today.

I would, however, request you to check them out when you have sufficiently armoured yourself emotionally and are in a steelier state of mind.

It would also be great if you leave a word on your first impressions in the feedback avenue. If you like, you can answer my poser about where you were when Mrs. Indira Gandhi was killed. That’s a great place to start engaging with what I have put together.

My best,

Harpal Singh

OHMA

Columbia University

New York

SoundWalk: To Hell & Back

Testimonies to Trauma

PRITAM KAUR, 81

Delhi, India

"Over the years, I have lost the vision of my eyes crying. My only regret is that I couldn’t even cover my husband’s dead body in a shroud."

Mrs. Pritam Kaur was 44 years old when she last saw her husband, Arjan Singh, a tailor, in 1984. He was lynched, ‘garlanded’ with an automobile tyre, covered with petrol and then burnt to death. She has struggled for a life of dignity and justice for 37 years.

MAYA KAUR, 53

Delhi, India

"My husband told the attackers ‘you kill me but let me meet my daughter one last time for two minutes.’ But they did not listen to anybody and set him on fire."

Mrs. Maya Kaur’s husband was a daily wage rickshaw-puller in Trilokpuri. She saw him being dragged out of their home, poured with petrol and burnt. She was 16 and had an eight-month-old daughter and became one of the youngest widows of 1984.

POPRI KAUR, 70

Delhi, India

"My husband would have been alive today if Sajjan Kumar had not come with his men and dragged him out of our Sultanpuri home. He is the one who killed him."

Popri Kaur saw five Sikh men being killed by Sajjan Kumar’s goons. When they dragged her husband out, she sprawled herself over him to save his life but was picked up and thrown aside. She fell unconscious. That’s the last she saw of him.

GOPI KAUR, 65

Delhi, India

“I pleaded with Sajjan Kumar with folded hands. I asked him what our fault was. He said kill the Sikhs. They are snakes. They will sting us if they survive.”

The mob dragged out Mrs. Gopi Kaur’s truck-driver husband in Sultanpuri and broke his legs. Then they poured petrol over him and set him on fire. Besides her husband, she lost 35 members of her extended family in the violence against the Sikhs in 1984.

TARLOCHAN SINGH, 88

New Delhi, India

"My car was stopped by the mob at R.K. Puram. They broke the glass and threw a burning torch inside. My alert driver picked it up and flung it out. I was lucky to survive."

Mr. Tarlochan Singh was Press Secretary to the President of India. His car was in the President’s convoy when it was attacked in New Delhi. The President had cut short his visit to Yemen and was going to AIIMS where Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s body lay.

PRITPAL SINGH, 49

Delhi, India

"That episode has left a very bad scar in my heart. It is very difficult to forget those incidents. I have visions of that scene when it was ransacked and looted."

Mr. Pritpal Singh was just 22 years old when his newly started pharmacy was ransacked and looted. He showed tremendous courage to re-establish it from a scratch after a few months. But he could never expand it because he feared a repeat of 1984.