1984-2020 — Politics of bestiality

The year we are unable to forget
Charu Soni

Charu Soni

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To describe what happened in Delhi between October 31 to November 3, 1984 is unbearable.

It was around 10.30 am on October 31, 1984, that special security officers arrived at the school gate. I was in my last year of school. Priyanka Gandhi was in class 5 (if I remember correctly). She was taken away as we watched. So, less than an hour after Indira Gandhi was shot, we knew she was dead. But there was disbelief and confusion. The nation was yet to know.

The body of the PM was taken to AIIMS, which I crossed in my school bus around 1 pm. Thousands of people had gathered around the premier hospital.

There was a traffic jam, caused by the milling crowds. The news had not yet been broadcast to the nation.

The official time of her death was 2.20 pm as declared by AIIMS. I am told, Adam Michnik, the Polish journalist was the first to break the news to the world (he beat the press agencies, BBC, Reuters, or so he claimed in one of his interviews to me a decade later).

There was a gloom in Delhi. The Nellie massacre of February 1983, was held responsible for Indira’s hysterical reaction to Punjab.

Operation Blue Star (named after a refrigerator company) would not have occurred had there been no Nellie. The general consensus was Indira had lost her bearing.

The first intimation of violence against Sikhs in the capital occurred the same night. The city was deceptively calm. The next day, I was in Mandi House with my father. It was around 6 pm when we got on to a bus heading to Kalkaji. A young, perhaps 16 year old Sikh boy was heckled on the bus. My father got up to defend the boy. The three of us were ejected from the bus. Fear stalked the capital.

Next day, father made a short list of people to visit. We used to live in a Railway Colony enclave (mostly made up of West Punjab refugee employees of the North-Western Railway) of tony Greater Kailash, in South Delhi. Round the corner from our home, the residence of Texla TV owner, Joginder Singh Oberoi had been set aflame.

We bought provisions, made the rounds on Dad’s list of Sikh friends. Mother was engaged in social work among Sundar Nagri – Nand Nagri area, another vast enclave of Punjab refugees from Partition . Mostly lower class (caste) Punjabis. It was a day of massacre in the area.

There were trucks packed with lumpen ferried across the city. We watched the trucks pass. Waiting, anticipating that they will disembark at our doorstep. Madangiri, a settlement of people re-settled by Sanjay Gandhi was one source of reckless youth bundled into these trucks. Madangiri was barely 2 km from Greater Kailash. Narasimha Rao the future PM, was the Home Minister.

Between October 31 to November 3, 1984 Delhi was on fire. No one has till date been able to pin down Rao’s callousness to the genocide of Sikhs that ensued. There is a lot of hearsay but nothing concrete. Like Modi in Gujarat riots or Amit Shah’s role in Delhi.

To describe what happened in Delhi between October 31 to November 3, 1984 is unbearable. Still. It altered my generation forever. We all bore witness to viciousness of party politics. North-East Delhi riots in February this year brings us to another cycle of politically engineered bestiality. In the first round in 1984 it was the Sikhs (neither Hindu nor Muslim) and the 2020 riots in Delhi, squarely targeted the Muslims. In both cases, it was the Hindus that held aloft the flag of patriotism.

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Also Read:

The Comfort of Objects – Walking the streets of Trilokpuri

Three Women of 1984

SAD-BJP rumblings: what about Sikhs who live in India but outside Punjab?

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Charu Soni

Charu Soni

Charu Soni is a senior journalist and historian.

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