Niha Masih: 33 years on, wounds of anti-Sikh riots victims haven’t healed
The camera is turned on
and a mic clipped. “Attar Kaur hoon main” (I am Attar Kaur),” says the woman.
She then narrates her story, exactly the way she has done year after year. The
voice of the 65-year-old sounds tired but the tears are fresh. As she wraps up her
interview to a Chandigarh-based Punjabi channel, Kaur says, “Har saal November
mein media wale aate hain, aankhein ro-ro ke dukh jaati hain, mudda utha hai,
phir saal bhar chutti. (Every November mediapersons come calling; my eyes hurt
from all the crying. The issue is raised for a few days and then forgotten for
the rest of the year).” It’s that time of the
year again.
October 31 marks 33
years of anti-Sikh carnage that started hours after Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards. Large mobs killed
around 3,000 Sikhs, most of them men. Delhi saw the worst of the violence that
swept many parts of India. In 2012, the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told a sessions court in Delhi that the then
Congress government, its leaders like Sajjan Kumar and the Delhi Police had
backed the massacre of Sikhs. Kumar was later exonerated by a court. Kaur’s neighbourhood
of Trilokpuri in east Delhi saw the worst carnage.
The Broken Middle (my article on the 30th anniversary of 1984)
She was chopping
cauliflower for pulao when she heard the news about Gandhi’s assassination. “We
were sad to hear of it as we were Congress voters,” she recalls. But, that counted
little for the mob that came the next morning. Her husband, Kirpal
Singh, a strapping young businessman who owned several shops, rushed to the
local gurdwara on hearing that some relatives had been attacked. She didn’t even have
the time to tell him to keep safe. She was busy rounding up her seven children,
some of whom were playing with friends, and her mother-in-law as rioters took
over the neighbourhood. Her eldest child, a son, was 12 and the youngest a
month-old girl.
In her cramped
three-room flat in Tilak Vihar’s Widow Colony in west Delhi, Kaur wipes tears
with her white dupatta, “Bhed bakriyon ki tarah maar daala sab aadmiyon
ko…zinda jala kar. (The men were slaughtered like animals… they were burnt
alive).” Her Muslim neighbours
took away her two older sons, chopped their hair, an article of faith for the
Sikhs, and hid them in metal trunks.
But the mob found the
eldest one and beat him with sticks, an assault that would scar him for life.
When the rioters left, a neighbour told Kaur that her husband had been killed,
burnt alive — nothing left for her to mourn over.
Along with her husband,
Kaur lost 11 members of her extended family that day. The same evening she
fled with her children and mother-in-law, as charred remains piled up in
Trilokpuri’s narrow bylanes. They sought refuge
three kilometres away in Chilla, then an uninhabited area. She doesn’t remember
if she or the children ate anything for the next two days. On November 3, they
made their way to the Farsh Bazar relief camp, where there were hundreds like
them. After a month and a half of living in tents, the riot-hit families were
moved to Tilak Vihar by the government.
It was a huge change. They were used to a
comfortable life, which her husband had worked very hard for, but now they had
nothing to start with. Before the riots,
theirs was the only family to have a video-cassette player in the
neighbourhood. “I lost everything that day. I left the house with nothing but
the clothes on our back,” she says. In her early 30s and
without a formal education, Kaur found a job stitching night dresses at a
factory in Naraina. It paid Rs 1,000 a month. The local gurdwara contributed
another Rs 250 and her mother-in-law sold vegetables to run the household.
“My neighbours still
make fun of how scared I used to be in those early days. I used to count my
children every night. One day, one of my sons was missing and I came out crying
on the streets, only to realise he had gone off to the neighbours,” she says... read more:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/33-years-on-wounds-of-anti-sikh-riots-victims-haven-t-healed/story-cNdTXWtKQ8D6Y3vtpX32TJ.htmlAlso see
The Abolition of truth - (on the 'parivar's celebration of Gandhis murder)
सत्य की हत्या
The Broken Middle (on the 30th anniversary of 1984)
CONSTITUTION OF the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan 1989
SVA Press Statement dtd 24 October 1990, following the arrest of LK Advani
Political Resolution of the Annual Convention of the SVA, Delhi, March 1992
Rethinking Secularism by Bhagwan Josh, Dilip Simeon & Purushottam Agrawal
Communalism in Modern India Terrifying implications of the Staines judgement
SVA Press Statement dtd 24 October 1990, following the arrest of LK Advani
Political Resolution of the Annual Convention of the SVA, Delhi, March 1992
Rethinking Secularism by Bhagwan Josh, Dilip Simeon & Purushottam Agrawal
Communalism in Modern India Terrifying implications of the Staines judgement
