1984
Nobel Laureate Recalls New Delhi’s 1984 Anti-Sikh Pogrom:
Kailash Satyarthi
I P SINGH
Nearly 30 years have passed since Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi saved his Sikh neighbour and his family in New Delhi from mobs in 1984.
"But images of their scared faces have never gone out of my memory," he said on Tuesday, October 28, 2014, on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the country-wide anti-Sikh pogrom.
Speaking over the phone from Delhi, he added, "Had I not saved Gurcharan Singh's family that day it would have been a burden I would have had to carry for my entire life. I would have held myself guilty for not rising up to my duty as a human being."
Satyarthi, who worked as a volunteer and provided relief to victims, said, "Great injustice has been done to the victims. Their minds and lives have been greatly wounded. They are deeply scarred. People should realize this and look for ways to heal these wounds."
He believes that it is not just the Sikh community that needs to heal its wounds. "The entire country needs it as it is a collective responsibility," he said. "I have not been tracking individual cases but a delay of three decades is definitely there," he added.
A strong believer in Gandhian values, Satyarthi said, "The crime was not only against the Sikh community, but against humanity at large, against the nation, against the democratic spirit of the country. Justice is the collective responsibility of society."
Satyarthi said although many non-Sikhs worked to help their Sikh neighbours, "I think people should have turned out in larger numbers to oppose the [murderers] and save the hapless victims."
"Sardar ji (Gurcharan Singh) and his family stayed at our home for two days," he said, recalling the first day of the violence. "He was not at home when the violence started. He had three daughters and they were so traumatized they were unable to speak anything. I went out on a bike with another neighbor to look for Sardar ji. After a few hours he returned on his own after sacrificing his hair and beard."
On the third day of the massacres, Satyarthi went to the Lajpat Bhawan. People brought in relief items were starting working their in the camp. "It was here that I met advocate H S Phoolka for the first time and we joined the effort for relief and justice," he said.
Satyarthi’s son Bhuwan who is now a lawyer was five years old during the violence.
He says that his first memory of those days is of seeing his father and others marching in the streets raising slogans for peace and unity.
"We left the house in 1987 but those memories have not gone away," Bhuwan said.
[Courtesy: Times of India. Edited for sikhchic.com]
October 29, 2014
Conversation about this article
1: Kulvinder Jit Kaur (Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada), October 30, 2014, 12:46 AM.
We need more people like Kailash Satyarthi speaking up for the Sikhs and the injustice meted out to them even after thirty long years.
2: Kaala Singh (Punjab), October 30, 2014, 4:26 AM.
Wish there were more people like him, but India as a whole is a nation of lemmings and unlike other countries that lay claim to being civilized and democratic societies with the rule of law, India does not have a significant section of the population that is independent and right thinking and that is the real reason why there will be no justice in India. Rajiv Gandhi, the chief architect of the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide, won a thumping majority in the elections that took place right after the carnage, which goes to show that the Indian civil society condoned the genocide. The shameful conduct of the Indian judiciary and law enforcement agencies all these years acting under the orders of the politicians and other powerful people responsible for the massacres is a testimony to the complicity of the State and the fact that India is a lawless jungle where the minorities will never get justice. A compliant and subservient media is equally complicit in the crimes.