pps309
Prime VIP
If there is a day I remember as vividly as September 11, 2001, it is October 31, 1984. I was a college student, living in a boy’s hostel in New Delhi. We rushed to the TV room when we heard that Indira Gandhi had been shot by two of her security guards and rushed to All India Institute of Medical Sciences. When her death was announced, my friend and I decided to go next day to Trimurthi Bhawan and pay our respects. Not in my wildest dream did I imagine what a turn events would take.
We made nothing of some reports of violence against Sikhs, whether it was a taxi driver being beaten up, a scooter or a car burnt. In the evening I was about to go for a stroll with a friend when the watchman at the gate suggested that I not go outside the campus. In fact, he told my friend, I should stay indoors. For the first time I felt that I was different.
Reports of violence kept coming throughout the next morning, Nov. 1. In the afternoon we heard of the first killing. Students who went outside the campus, came back and told us about mobs everywhere, attacking Sikhs, their homes, businesses and gurudwaras. Those who witnessed these incidents were shell shocked, and the gory details they told were unbelievable. Then we heard that even those who were sheltering Sikhs were being attacked by mobs, and I was really scared.
One of my father’s friends came in his car and offered to take me to their house. But my roommate and others in the hostel said I was safest where I was. I felt lucky to be amongst friends who cared enough to risk their own well being. My father’s friend gave me news of my family and promised to let them know that I was safe too.
For three days I stayed indoors. I kept my hockey stick by my bedside.
My asthma became bad and a friend had to go and buy some medicine for me. I could not reach my aunt who lived in Punjabi Bagh. I was told even the affluent and posh areas didn’t escape the fury of the mobs. But the reports of the worst carnage were coming from far flung areas like Trilokpuri, Mongolpuri, Palam Colony and Sultanpuri.
I think it was on Nov. 4 that some of us went to Shahadra and visited one of the relief camps that had been set up for the victims — survivors, I should say. Students had collected about Rs. 4,000 and bought toiletries, tinned milk for babies and other items of daily use.
The camp was a sad sight. On most faces there was an expression of shock and total disbelief, of not understanding how something like this could happen. I was surprised to see many non-Sikh families there. Their crime, I learnt, was that they had tried to save their Sikh neighbors. Most of these were lower middle class families, and even at such times, they felt miserable accepting alms.
Everybody talked about how organized the mobs were. The removal of obstacles, breaking locks, the looting, burning, the killings, it was all quite systematic. And people talked about how our police did nothing and how the army could do nothing. There was supposed to be a curfew, but it could not stop the killings. For the first time I understood the stories my Grandmother used to tell of the Partition in 1947, I could feel the horror and the hopelessness.
Our family had been lucky. My parents back home in a town in what is now Uttaranchal state were safe and my aunt’s family had a narrow escape, thanks to their neighbors.
On Nov. 8 I went to a village in Haryana, about three hours from Delhi. We had many relatives there and I had not been able to get in touch with any of them. There were burnt remains of trucks, buses, cars and scooters everywhere, like rotting carcasses after a natural calamity. On reaching the cluster of houses that belonged to Sikhs, I found them, one after the other, abandoned, bolted, not damaged, but with no one there. This was one of the scariest moments for me, coming after a nerve-wracking bus journey, during which I had not seen another Sikh on the roads. To my great relief, I found everybody in the village gurudwara, and they were as relieved to see me as I was to see them all safe and sound.
I knew I should have been thankful to God, but that is not what I remember feeling. I felt something had changed. My position of privilege, that of a student of a prestigious college, suddenly meant nothing. People looked at me differently, like I was an outsider, as if I had betrayed my country. Away from the shelter that the hostel provided, I felt very unsafe. I saw some of the Sikh students cut their hair soon after. I was a small-town kid in Delhi, studying in one of the best colleges in the country and very proud of it. Now, suddenly, I wanted to go home. But it would be weeks before the full enormity of the situation would sink in, slowly, one painful episode at a time.
Back home, I got into a brawl with two guys who called me uggarwadi or terrorist. I could not believe this was happening to me in my hometown. The two men were drunk and many people on the street witnessed how they cornered me and attacked me first. But when I fought them off and hurt one of them, the crowd that gathered blamed me and came for me. I ran to a police station and was saved from a lynching. But I knew things had changed at home too.
I had never been to the Punjab and we had no relatives there. But a year later when I got a job opportunity in Anandpur Sahib, I jumped at it. For the first time in months, I was happy to be amongst so many other Sikhs, where people did not look at me as if I was an outsider. But more than once I heard comments about Bhapas ( a somewhat disparaging term for Sikhs from cities) arrival leading to troubles for those who had always lived there. I knew I was a refugee.
I have been away from India for more than 12 years, an outsider in foreign lands, and have adapted quite well. In the U.S. I had felt safe, till the hate crimes against Sikhs started taking place in the aftermath of 9-11. Come to think of it, Sikhs have faced this many times in history, surviving state-sponsored efforts at extermination during the Mughal regime in India. And like a poet said, “We grew again and again, better, stronger even as we were chopped into pieces.”
1984 WAS NEVER A HINDU-SIKH RIOTS. IT WAS STATE SPONSORED GENOCIDE OF SIKHS. GUILTY WAS STATE AND ASPIRATORS OF POWER.
SIKHS DO NOT FEEL HATRED FOR HINDUS. SIKHS ASPIRE TO TAKE JUSTICE AND THAT IS OUR RIGHT AS HUMAN BEING AND CITIZEN OF LAND.
We made nothing of some reports of violence against Sikhs, whether it was a taxi driver being beaten up, a scooter or a car burnt. In the evening I was about to go for a stroll with a friend when the watchman at the gate suggested that I not go outside the campus. In fact, he told my friend, I should stay indoors. For the first time I felt that I was different.
Reports of violence kept coming throughout the next morning, Nov. 1. In the afternoon we heard of the first killing. Students who went outside the campus, came back and told us about mobs everywhere, attacking Sikhs, their homes, businesses and gurudwaras. Those who witnessed these incidents were shell shocked, and the gory details they told were unbelievable. Then we heard that even those who were sheltering Sikhs were being attacked by mobs, and I was really scared.
One of my father’s friends came in his car and offered to take me to their house. But my roommate and others in the hostel said I was safest where I was. I felt lucky to be amongst friends who cared enough to risk their own well being. My father’s friend gave me news of my family and promised to let them know that I was safe too.
For three days I stayed indoors. I kept my hockey stick by my bedside.
My asthma became bad and a friend had to go and buy some medicine for me. I could not reach my aunt who lived in Punjabi Bagh. I was told even the affluent and posh areas didn’t escape the fury of the mobs. But the reports of the worst carnage were coming from far flung areas like Trilokpuri, Mongolpuri, Palam Colony and Sultanpuri.
I think it was on Nov. 4 that some of us went to Shahadra and visited one of the relief camps that had been set up for the victims — survivors, I should say. Students had collected about Rs. 4,000 and bought toiletries, tinned milk for babies and other items of daily use.
The camp was a sad sight. On most faces there was an expression of shock and total disbelief, of not understanding how something like this could happen. I was surprised to see many non-Sikh families there. Their crime, I learnt, was that they had tried to save their Sikh neighbors. Most of these were lower middle class families, and even at such times, they felt miserable accepting alms.
Everybody talked about how organized the mobs were. The removal of obstacles, breaking locks, the looting, burning, the killings, it was all quite systematic. And people talked about how our police did nothing and how the army could do nothing. There was supposed to be a curfew, but it could not stop the killings. For the first time I understood the stories my Grandmother used to tell of the Partition in 1947, I could feel the horror and the hopelessness.
Our family had been lucky. My parents back home in a town in what is now Uttaranchal state were safe and my aunt’s family had a narrow escape, thanks to their neighbors.
On Nov. 8 I went to a village in Haryana, about three hours from Delhi. We had many relatives there and I had not been able to get in touch with any of them. There were burnt remains of trucks, buses, cars and scooters everywhere, like rotting carcasses after a natural calamity. On reaching the cluster of houses that belonged to Sikhs, I found them, one after the other, abandoned, bolted, not damaged, but with no one there. This was one of the scariest moments for me, coming after a nerve-wracking bus journey, during which I had not seen another Sikh on the roads. To my great relief, I found everybody in the village gurudwara, and they were as relieved to see me as I was to see them all safe and sound.
I knew I should have been thankful to God, but that is not what I remember feeling. I felt something had changed. My position of privilege, that of a student of a prestigious college, suddenly meant nothing. People looked at me differently, like I was an outsider, as if I had betrayed my country. Away from the shelter that the hostel provided, I felt very unsafe. I saw some of the Sikh students cut their hair soon after. I was a small-town kid in Delhi, studying in one of the best colleges in the country and very proud of it. Now, suddenly, I wanted to go home. But it would be weeks before the full enormity of the situation would sink in, slowly, one painful episode at a time.
Back home, I got into a brawl with two guys who called me uggarwadi or terrorist. I could not believe this was happening to me in my hometown. The two men were drunk and many people on the street witnessed how they cornered me and attacked me first. But when I fought them off and hurt one of them, the crowd that gathered blamed me and came for me. I ran to a police station and was saved from a lynching. But I knew things had changed at home too.
I had never been to the Punjab and we had no relatives there. But a year later when I got a job opportunity in Anandpur Sahib, I jumped at it. For the first time in months, I was happy to be amongst so many other Sikhs, where people did not look at me as if I was an outsider. But more than once I heard comments about Bhapas ( a somewhat disparaging term for Sikhs from cities) arrival leading to troubles for those who had always lived there. I knew I was a refugee.
I have been away from India for more than 12 years, an outsider in foreign lands, and have adapted quite well. In the U.S. I had felt safe, till the hate crimes against Sikhs started taking place in the aftermath of 9-11. Come to think of it, Sikhs have faced this many times in history, surviving state-sponsored efforts at extermination during the Mughal regime in India. And like a poet said, “We grew again and again, better, stronger even as we were chopped into pieces.”
1984 WAS NEVER A HINDU-SIKH RIOTS. IT WAS STATE SPONSORED GENOCIDE OF SIKHS. GUILTY WAS STATE AND ASPIRATORS OF POWER.
SIKHS DO NOT FEEL HATRED FOR HINDUS. SIKHS ASPIRE TO TAKE JUSTICE AND THAT IS OUR RIGHT AS HUMAN BEING AND CITIZEN OF LAND.
hhh
