On the day votes were being counted in Delhi, I drove with my family and friends to all the seven centres. Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg was packed with people watching the results on the huge boards put up by the Times of India, Indian Express and other newspapers, and as it became clear that Indira Gandhi’s Congress had been routed, there was jubilation. I can never forget the sight of Ayub Syed, the editor of Current and one-time favourite of Mrs Gandhi, dancing in the street. As we drove through Delhi we saw crowds out on the streets overcome with a sense of liberation. To me that reaction best expressed what the Emergency had been all about.
There can’t be too many people who lived in Delhi during the mid-1970s without some story to tell about the Emergency. There certainly can’t be a single politician from the time who will ever forget it. Twenty-six years after the Emergency, politicians in this country still relate to where they were in 1975-77, and biographical sketches of many MPs and MLAs still have a line saying, ‘Jailed during Emergency’.
31 October 1984
JARNAIL SINGH
Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh security guards in the compound of her residence on 31 October 1984. Over the next two weeks mobs attacked and killed Sikhs all over northern India. It is estimated that over 1,200 people were murdered in the riots. Delhi saw the worst of the rioting. The following extract is taken from I Accuse …: The Anti-Sikh Violence of 1984, and has been translated by Vaishali Mathur.
Before Partition my grandfather used to live in a village close to Lahore. When he came to India, he came empty-handed and was allotted a house in Lajpat Nagar that had a tin roof which made it very cold in winter and very hot in summer. But my parents felt that at least it was a home. The roof abutted the neighbouring house and it was possible to reach every house nearby by simply climbing on to it.
My father got a job as a carpenter, and with that a regular income started to come in. As time went by, we improved the house and it felt like a home. Our family was a large one—I have five brothers and three sisters. When we were growing up, we would roam around Lajpat Nagar the whole day and it never worried my mother.
Lajpat Nagar was a refugee colony for the Hindus and Sikhs who had come from Pakistan after Partition. They all shared the same experiences of pain and separation which gave a sense of common purpose—no one felt alienated here. One of our neighbours was an elderly lady called ‘Bhabhiji’ by everyone. She was from Multan and was especially close to my mother. In fact, after Bhabhiji died, her daughter-in-law treated my mother like her motherin-law, as that is what Bhabhiji would have wanted. Some years ago when Bhabhiji’s grandchildren got married, my mother took on the role of the grandmother-in-law though Bhabhiji had been a Hindu and my mother was a Sikh.
It had never mattered. But on this day, 31 October 1984, there were those who wanted all such relationships to be severed. Bhabhiji came to the house several times that day. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said in Multani, but she clearly didn’t believe her own words. Rumours were rife in the neighbourhood that after Mrs Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards, mobs were attacking Sikhs in several areas of the city. But in quiet Lajpat Nagar on the afternoon of 31 October, that seemed distant, even if worrying. Nonetheless, Mother removed our father’s nameplate from outside the house and warned Bhabhiji not to come too often for her own safety. Ours was the only Sikh house in the entire lane, though there were others across the nallah.
At home the worry lines on Papa’s face were apparent. In the evening my aunt, who lived in Arjun Nagar near Safdarjung Enclave, called and related an incident about her Sikh neighbour. He had been crossing the road at the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) when he saw an angry mob pulling Sikhs out of their vehicles and beating them up; their pagris were being torn off. He himself had escaped by a whisker. We heard that President Giani Zail Singh had gone to AIIMS to pay his respects to the slain prime minister and the mob threw stones at his cavalcade. When Mother came back after taking my aunt’s call in the neighbouring house of Kabul Singh (we did not have a telephone), she looked very uneasy. However, no one could imagine then what was to take place the next day. Since Indira Gandhi was the prime minister, national mourning had been declared. Radio and television (only AIR and Doordarshan in those days) were only broadcasting mournful veena music. We kids were not happy with this at all. Mourning was for grown-ups; as far as we children were concerned it was a holiday and we wanted to see the normal programmes on television.
On 1 November, early in the morning, we went out to play cricket in the nearby Shiv Vatika park with our friends from the neighbourhood. This park was to one side of the colony and we would play for hours—unchecked and unaware. It was only when we got tired that we would remember we had homes. This was entirely usual—we would be so engrossed in the game that we would forgot that we had not eaten and would return only to be scolded by our mothers who would say, ‘Why! You didn’t find a mother in the park to feed you? Stay there!’ We knew they weren’t really angry. But today was different.
We had just reached the Sindhi school when we heard shouts and raised voices. A crowd was screaming. We looked at each other and decided that we would investigate further—I suppose all kids would have the same reaction. We were curious—and till then we’d had nothing to fear. However, just then my elder brother, who was thirteen years old at that time, said, ‘Do you want to get scolded by Mother? Let’s go straight home, we haven’t even had breakfast this morning.’ He was the strongest amongst us and generally no one opposed him. We had just reached our lane when we saw that Mother was standing outside the house, looking frantic with worry. I still remember the scolding that we got that day. She even slapped us once or twice. Mother was extremely worked up and the relief of seeing the three of us safe and sound somehow made her angrier. A neighbour’s son, Raju, had actually been sent to look for us. He had searched the parks nearby but could not find us as the Shiv Vatika park was a little distance away. When we could not be traced for a long time, Mother became frantic. Even so, my brothers and I could not understand why she was so scared.
Before we could ask any questions, my two brothers and I were locked up in a room right in the back of the house. Its door had not been closed in a long time so it was difficult to lock. Father used all his force and shut it tight. We could not understand was happening, but we realized that whatever it was, it was serious. Satvinder Kaur, my eldest sister, told us that there was some looting and Sikhs were being beaten up. This was the first time I had heard the word ‘loot’. Curious, I watched from the window: Mother was now washing clothes but clearly also keeping a watch on events in the street.
When the noise of the mob began to get louder, Mother told us to climb up to the ‘oltee’, the small space at the head of the staircase, and hide there. Usually we only went up there while playing hide-and-seek—and we were always scolded for it; but today we were actually being told to do so. For a long time my two brothers and I—we were then thirteen, eleven and ten years old—crouched in that dark, cramped place. My elder brother, Jasbir Singh, had been sent off to a neighbour’s house—Mother had heard that adolescent boys were being especially targeted and she felt he’d be safer out of our house. It was suffocating up in the attic. Mother had been too distracted to give us any food and we had not even had our breakfast that morning—we’d run off to play cricket without eating anything. We were famished till we found a large tin box full of wheat flour biscuits from Chander bakery. Mother had got them made planning to give us a couple every day on winter mornings as atta was said to keep you warm. This tin was stored in the oltee. We finished almost the whole box—I can still remember how good they tasted. We were so young, so unscarred then. It never occurred to us to wonder why we had to hide like criminals in our own house inside a colony we had lived in all our lives, surrounded by neighbours with whom we’d always had good relations. How could this have happened? Even today, I don’t know. While we were still locked up there, Bhabhiji h
ad turned up again. She told Mother that the gurdwara had been set on fire and Sikh shops in the nearby Krishna Market were being looted and set ablaze. Bhabhiji had just seen a neighbour’s son carrying boxes of shoes out of the looted shops. He had picked up twenty pairs for himself from the Central Market shop Volga which belonged to a Sardar. It is a different thing that he found he had stolen twenty pairs of the same type of shoe. He was an exception. Most of our neighbours in the colony did not participate in the mob frenzy; but they did not do anything to stop it. Nor did they actively get together with the looters and plunderers, though some boys seized the opportunity to pick up things.
We were taken out of the room late in the night. Then our eldest brother, Gurcharan, who had a bad leg due to a childhood attack of polio, decided to go to Niwaspuri. Our father had recently been allotted a government quarter in Niwaspuri as he was in the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) and Gurcharan was staying there as it was near his college. Despite being plagued by polio he had been studying hard and after completing his B.Com. he was planning to study further to become a company secretary. People at home told him not to leave the house because the situation was not good. He dismissed their warnings: ‘I am disabled and going on a tricycle, who will say anything to me?’ His confidence in the kindness of strangers was misplaced that day: 1 November 1984. He was attacked a short distance from the house. His three-wheeled cycle was overturned. His pagri was pulled off and the mob started beating him, heedless of his cries of pain. His disability made it impossible for him to run. He was lying in the dust, while the blows rained down on him. The mob left him bleeding and shaken on the road. A few shopkeepers, who knew him but hadn’t intervened when he was actually being beaten up, came forward once the mob had left. They put the cycle straight and helped him back on it. He came home somehow but for a long time he was in a state of shock. He had always been treated with consideration. That day he learnt that the only thing that mattered was that he was a Sikh.
We spent the entire day taking God’s name. The next day, 2 November, Mother looked even more worried. Our aunt had called up with some shocking news. Mother’s younger brother, our uncle, Gulzar Singh, and other Sikh drivers had been attacked by the mob at the Hyatt Regency hotel’s taxi stand. Mama, our uncle, used to run his taxi there, a taxi bought with the money saved by our maternal grandfather when he had worked in Baluchistan before Partition. The mob had beaten up all the Sikh taxi drivers at the rank very badly, leaving them bleeding and bruised, their clothes covered with blood. They had been left for dead. Uncle was a strapping young man. If there had been only five or even ten against him, he could have tackled them alone. But the attackers ran into hundreds.
Despite his severe injuries, we had learnt that it was useless to take him to a government hospital. AIIMS was the nearest hospital, but news had spread that President Zail Singh’s motor cavalcade had been attacked by angry mobs when he had come to the hospital to pay his respects to the slain prime minister. If that was the treatment meted out to the head of state, what hope did ordinary Sikhs have. Government hospitals were not admitting injured Sikhs; we heard that such hospitals had actually closed their burns unit—so that the many Sikhs who had been set ablaze by the mobs were unable to get the treatment that they so desperately needed.
One of the most inhuman acts of the mobs was to fit car tyres over their victims’ heads and then set the tyres alight. There were many Sikhs with burn injuries, but even if a victim managed to reach a government hospital, he would have been turned back. In fact, several Sikhs who were turned away from hospitals fell victim to mobs on their way home. My uncle, despite his injuries, had to be kept at home. My aunt could not find a doctor to treat him—many were too scared to go to the house of a Sikh, fearing retribution from the mobs. A private nurse—a Christian—who lived nearby, agreed to come every day and dress the wounds. It was such gestures—the courage and compassion of strangers—that no one who has been through those days can forget.
That day, 2 November, a police jeep went around the colony announcing that a curfew would be imposed within half an hour. They advised everyone to stay home.
Mother was relieved. ‘Everything will be okay now,’ she said; after all, the mobs could not gather to attack during a curfew. But the curfew was not implemented. Anyone who breaks a curfew is liable to be shot at sight, or at least apprehended. But from what I saw on 2 November, no sooner had the jeep announcing curfew passed by than more and more people would spill out of their homes. People told me later that local Congressmen were responsible for the attacks on the Sikhs of Lajpat Nagar. Some even alleged that the two sons of a local leader were seen brandishing the voters’ list, so that the mobs could be directed to Sikh houses. The Hindus in our neighbourhood decided to set up patrols at night so that they could protect their lives and property.
This patrol was set up close to our house and all the people on it were from our neighbourhood, so I knew them all. Escaping from my mother, I reached the spot where they had gathered. That is when I came to know that our non-Sikh neighbours were also scared. Rumours were rife that to avenge Sikh killings a trainload of Sikhs were coming from Punjab ready to attack innocent Hindus and that many Hindus were being killed in Punjab. Another rumour, also widespread, was that the Sikhs had mixed poison in the city’s drinking water supply. I actually asked someone how he thought this was possible and he pointed to the reservoir which supplied water to Lajpat Nagar. But even I, a child at the time, knew immediately this was ridiculous. In the first place, who could climb such a huge tank? And if they had managed to poison the water, wouldn’t the water flow to Sikh houses too? But it was such a strong rumour that I half believed it too. I had just drunk some water at home and I was scared—this is how the disinformation was working. The purpose of the rumour was to make everyone believe that the Sikhs were on a rampage, to incite public opinion against them, to quell any sympathy that might be developing for them because of the mobs’ killing spree.
We didn’t know then the extent of the horror that had taken place. Reports in the newspapers were few; but our family and friends would hear about the violence from their families and friends. The stories we heard were unbelievable; but we had to believe them. We had seen the spires of black smoke from burning taxi stands from our roof; we had heard about innocent Sikhs being brutally beaten; accounts of the massacres in Kalyanpuri and Trilokpuri were beginning to come out. All this was frightening, because no one knew why this had happened; who was behind it. Shock and worry had gripped my parents; my brothers and I were scared as well, but we were children and we did not really understand the full extent of the violence.
After ten days when life began returning to normal we were allowed to go and play in the park again. We were tired of staying home. The park was our life. All three of us went to play and we found the other kids in the park were in the middle of a game of touchball—where you have to hit the other players with the ball. The ball used to cost just fifty paise but the hits really hurt. The three of us took a while to realize that we were being hit the hardest and most often. It dawned on us that the other boys were making us targets. It was not a game; it was a form of making us scapegoats. None of the other children were being treated that way. The balls thrown at them were ones they could catch easily; the ball wasn’t being thrown at them with the intention to hurt. Perhaps we should have just stopped playing—but we were children too. We were not in the habit of running away. Swiftly, the three of us targeted the others, one by one. It was a war, not a game. The hits were painful, but we three pretended they didn’t hurt. We didn’t stop playing with the kids in the park—we had played with them all our lives. But that day we all realized that the question of being a Hindu or a Sikh had entered even children’s games.
We were all in the same age group and went to the same school. We spent our free time together and plucked Ramchandra Aunty’s and Roshini Aunty’s guavas together. We used to fight earlier too but now we became the objects of t
aunts, ‘Sardaron ke barah baj gaye,’ they would shout. They’d said this to us before, but this was different; this was not a joke, but a taunt. One of the boys, Titu we called him, said, ‘If you fight too much, I will call the same people who killed Sikhs on 31 October and 1 November. Your house got saved in the riots but this time I will tell them the correct address.’ Titu was in my class, his mother and my mother were friends. Children have fights, it’s natural; but it was also natural that we started reacting aggressively too. Today I am still friends with many of those boys; we don’t speak of that time. When I was younger, I thought I would forget. I know now that things will never be the same again.
Now the Tears Have Dried Up
DHIREN BHAGAT
This was first published as an article in the Sunday Observer on 25 November 1984.
On 9 November when a senior minister’s wife turned up with two hundred blankets at the refugee relief camp set up by Sardar Mehtab Singh by his house in Karol Bagh’s Ajmal Khan Park, things weren’t quite as smooth as she would have liked. ‘We accorded her whatever reception was required,’ Jaspal Singh, the organizer’s son, recalled, with what I took to be a faint touch of irony, ‘but the volunteers who had been working here since the camp was started, they were all agreed that no government assistance should be accepted.’ This seems to have been a fairly standard response: all over Delhi volunteers and residents of camps have reacted this way to what they perceive to be the government’s callousness in delaying aid. One volunteer made a similar point about the Congress party: ‘The Congress says we haven’t organized the riots. Okay. But then tell me, when a calamity like this occurs all workers of all parties come to help. Where have the Congress party men gone?’
City Improbable- Writings on Delhi Page 18