India’s 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots: Waiting for Justice

On the surface, the line of two-room dwellings on a dusty street in west Delhi appears little different from thousands of other roads in India’s crowded capital. The paint flakes off buildings’ walls and the grass grows in parks that haven’t been mowed in months. Kids play cricket in the street, fruit and vegetable sellers push their wooden carts through narrow lanes and women busy themselves with housework and cooking. What sets this impoverished community apart is one remarkable absence: men.

C-block, or the “widows’ colony,” as it is more commonly known, is where Surinder Kaur, 65, lives today after she sold her house in Sagarpur and moved next door to her sister Harjinder Kaur, 57, a few years ago. Every morning, the women have tea together in a two-room house, where the only picture is of a newlywed Harjinder and her husband, killed 25 years ago in one of the darkest chapters in Indian history.

(See pictures of India’s tempestuous Nehru dynasty.)

The widows’ colony in Tilak Vihar is a cheaply built and neglected cluster of homes, which were given by the government to hundreds of women and their children who survived what have become known as the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. But as the grim event’s 25th anniversary nears at the end of this month, crime, addiction and prostitution have taken root in what was supposed to be a survivors’ safe haven. Residents say this is because of the damage to the mental health of children who were witness to their parents’ and siblings’ murders and who grew up in impoverished homes and weren’t given any medical help — physical or mental — for their problems. “They’ll slice a blade right through you if they know you’re new to the area,” warns Harjinder. “Even the autorickshaw drivers refuse to come here.”

Devender Singh, 26, an unemployed drug addict whose father was killed before his eyes in 1984, says his brother was murdered in the colony a couple years ago and that it’s likely he’ll meet the same fate. “We’re all thieves and addicts here,” he says. “When you get no work, what else will you do?” The lawless attitude of the young people is an echo, residents say, of India’s broken justice system. The young people saw no punishment for the crimes committed against their families, so they see no justice for the crimes they’ll commit in the future.

The anti-Sikh riots were four days of mayhem in the northern parts of India, particularly Delhi, in which armed mobs set fire to Sikh homes and businesses, killed unarmed men, women and children and attacked gurdwaras, Sikh places of worship. The violence, which left almost 3,000 people dead, was a reaction to the assassination of the country’s Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, on Oct. 31, 1984, by her two Sikh bodyguards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh. Earlier, in June, Gandhi had approved Operation Bluestar, a mission to flush out Sikh separatists who had amassed weapons in the Golden Temple in Amritsar in northern India. While the operation was considered a success, almost 500 Sikh civilians visiting the temple that day were killed by the Indian army, though unofficial reports suggest numbers much higher.

(Read TIME’s coverage of the riots’ aftermath.)

Surinder Kaur was at her home in Delhi when the rioters broke in. Diwali, the biggest festival of the season, had just ended, but she and her husband had left the lights around the house up. In just 15 days, their eldest son was getting married, and the celebrations were already getting under way. Then a mob of more than 2,000 people descended on their middle-class neighborhood, killing dozens of Sikh families and burning alive Kaur’s soon-to-be-married son and husband with petrol from the family’s motorbike. “It’s like a cyclone came through our lives and ripped it apart,” she says. “We’ve never celebrated another festival since.”

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Initially a response to the death of a beloved leader that unfolded mostly in the poorer parts of west and north Delhi, the events of the days that followed became much more organized, spreading strategically across the city, including upper-class and diplomatic neighborhoods. Eyewitnesses have repeatedly told stories of the police looking on as rioters murdered and raped, having gotten access to voter records that allowed them to mark Sikh homes with large Xs, and large mobs being bused in to large Sikh settlements. “On Oct. 31, there was primarily looting and arson attacks,” says Jaskaran Kaur, co-director of Ensaaf, a U.S.-based nonprofit that works in the predominantly Sikh state of Punjab. “On Nov. 1, you see that everything happened very methodically — there were simultaneous attacks following similar patterns where the gurdwara was often attacked first before the residences and properties, and the death squads were able to make extensive use of state infrastructure like buses and trains.” Despite this, the army was not called in until days later. “We saw what they did and who did it,” says Surinder Kaur. “We saw the local politicians marking up our homes. At the time, we didn’t know what it was for.”

But while 10 official commissions have been set up over the years to investigate the events of the four days, only a handful of minor convictions have been made, and not one major politician or police officer has been convicted. “The justice system is based on evidence, and people are scared to come forward or are persuaded not to,” says political analyst Amulya Ganguli. During the riots, Kaur of Ensaaf says the government “worked to destroy a lot of the evidence about who was involved with the killings by refusing to record [first information reports] or name those that family members mentioned.”

(See why fewer Sikh men in India are wearing the turban.)

Instead, in March 2009, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation filed its final report on the riots, clearing Jagdish Tytler, one of the accused who had major political ambitions and was announced as a candidate for Indian parliament elections in 2009. Tytler had been accused of leading mobs of thousands during the riots, and though he was named by several eyewitnesses, he was ultimately exonerated because of lack of concrete evidence. Hundreds of Sikh protesters gathered outside the courts afterward, and Sikh journalist Jarnail Singh threw a shoe at Home Minister P. Chidambaram during a press conference in April, following his remarks on the matter. The Congress Party was forced to drop Tytler, and another accused, Sajjan Kumar, as candidates for the election to protect its image.

Outside of India, too, Sikhs have been making a consistent effort to get more international attention to the lack of accountability for what happened. In the 2005 elections in Britain, the country’s 700,000- strong Sikh community banded together to make it a campaign issue. For the 25th anniversary of the event later this month, advertisements by Ensaaf — showing an old woman wiping away her tears, with the words, “25 years ago, our loved ones were burned alive in front of our eyes,” and in the next line, “Why has India, the world’s largest democracy, denied us justice?” — are scheduled for the month of November in the San Francisco Bay Area’s transit system.

(See pictures of Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi on the campaign trail in 2004.)

But many Sikhs in India seem to have been quick to move on. While there is still a large community waiting for justice and, in some cases, compensation, the deep distrust that once existed between the community and the Congress Party has dissipated. The party has been in power in Punjab for many years, and party chief Sonia Gandhi — daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi — helped by formally apologizing to the Sikh community in 1998. In September, India’s cabinet also extended a $1.5 million rehabilitation package for victims. “It doesn’t exonerate the Congress, but by and large the Sikh community agrees that it was a one-off thing and there is no anti-Sikh philosophy in any political party and [the incident] was not a result of a clearly articulated worldview, as it has been with Muslims in the country,” says Ganguli.

Many, however, feel that more compensation — which was insufficient and delayed to begin with — is not the answer. Jaskaran Kaur suggests starting with a truth commission, a special prosecutor’s office and a wide range of services, including rehabilitation of family members, physical and mental services and acknowledgement of the event in the form of museums, history books and convictions. “Apologizing doesn’t amount to much for family members unless the state is going to acknowledge its role in the massacres and then take serious steps for accountability.”

For Surinder Kaur, it no longer matters. The safe haven provided by the government made her community unsafe a long time ago. “We haven’t allowed our children to mix with anyone in this neighborhood,” she says of the widows’ colony. “One day, they’ll get out of here, and there will be a new beginning.”

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