As The
Tree Fell
Three Days, Three Nights.
“I did not know who Indira Gandhi was, I rarely ever left my house to know what even Trilokpuri looked like,” recalls Harleen Kaur (name changed), now in her late-fifties, seated on the cot in a flat the government bequeathed her 38 years ago. Although the flat, now more of a home than a restitution, has been decorated with a selection of ceramics and paintings in her style, she still fondly remembers her jhuggi that burned down in Trilokpuri of East Delhi, 1984.
Isolated instances of violence had already broken out the same day Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards outside her residence on 31st October, 1984. For the most part, these instances were restricted to areas around the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where Gandhi was pronounced dead. The symbolic act of the crowd stoning President Zail Singh’s motorcade as he approached AIIMS, portented much worse to come and sent the message that no Sikh was to be spared. ‘Khoon ka badla khoon (seek blood for blood)’ and ‘kill the Sikhs, for they killed our mother’ were among the slogans that echoed in covert meetings where mobs organized themselves that very evening. Liquor, weaponry, kerosene, currency and more exchanged hands that night and every Sikh life was priced- 1000 rupees to 5000 rupees, depending on the profile of the victim. The ensuing carnage would start early in the morning of the first of November, and would reverberate throughout the capital for the next three days, three nights.
Harleen Kaur was 17 when she got married to her husband, 25 at the time. They had been married a mere fifteen months, and lived with his family in Trilokpuri, one of the first sites to be hit by the waves of mobs that dispersed across Delhi. She describes him as a tall, built man who abhorred violence. He left with his truck at four in the morning on November first, but came back early with a foreboding message, “they’re killing all the Sardars.” An elderly Sikh man had been murdered the night before, and doors of Sikh households were being marked with an ‘S.’ The men became easy targets, easily identified with their turbans.
“He asked me to make tea, and left the house to buy vegetables. I made rotis, rotis he never got to eat,” says Kaur. The decisive events that followed would upend life as she knew it, as her husband returned frantically, grabbed her by her arm and handed her over to her sister-in-law. “Didi, ye meri amanat hai, isko bachake rakhna,” (Protect her, sister, for she is my valuable possession) are the last words she remembers from her husband as he took off. For three days, Kaur lived in ignorance of her husband's whereabouts. However, wishful thinking could only guide her senses so far as her mother-in-law’s accounts reached her, of how she saw her son being attacked by the mob in the middle of the street, of how his body was split in half, smeared across either side of the road, of how she collected his bloody remains in her lap and wailed through the night.
Kaur and her sister-in-law became desperate for cover, as she witnessed another of her sister-in-laws being “taken away.” The first night, they hid under the roof of a Muslim family, the second night was spent at Chilla Gaon, and the third they walked to Kalyanpuri (both in East Delhi), from where they were taken on a bus to the Shahdara police station, where she would live in camps with other bereaved victims.
Lakshmi Kaur describes the unfolding of the events of 1984 as a storm. “When Indira got shot, we did not know if anything would happen, we were unsuspecting. As the morning dawned, they were already killing us, butchering our bodies, burning us alive,” says Kaur, who was 29 at the time of the attacks. “I felt blind, not knowing where to go. I roamed with no one to even give us water, bleeding and shivering. We had children in our hands, screaming out of hunger, thirst. How can a child live like that for three nights?” asks a poignant Kaur.
Lakshmi Kaur and her niece Pappi Kaur arrived at the widow colony together. Pappi Kaur lists the names of ten from her family that was murdered in the winter of 1984. The savagery she bore witness to at the age of 15 is something she does not wish any child would have to see. “Everybody had a weapon of choice. Some bore daggers while others carried chemicals. Not just people from the mob, but even the people from our own colonies were a foe. First they burned down our gurudwara, and then rushed in the hundreds into our narrow gullies, just to burn us alive,” says Pappi Kaur. She is seated at the vegetable cart she heads, stationed right outside the lane that leads to Block C of Tilak Vihar, while she narrates the events of the day her life irrevocably changed to strangers willing to lend an ear. “We have stepped over the dead bodies. Some were killers, some looters, and some rapists, but none were saviours,” says Pappi Kaur.
I felt blind, not knowing where to go. I roamed with no one to even give us water, bleeding and shivering.
Lakshmi Kaur
While Sikh men were indiscriminately slaughtered, the women were inflicted by not just bereavement, but also rampant sexual violence. The mobs did not stop at the live immolation of the men, but proceeded to burn and loot the houses which housed any Sikh. Women and girls were grouped together, and dragged out to the streets, and cases of public gang rapes have been reported en masse, as more and more sexual assault victims of 1984 come forward with their story. “At every point of the way to the camps like in Chilla Gaon, we were met with those looks; as if we could be taken away any moment,” recalls Kaur.
When the police station seemed a reprieve for Harleen Kaur, the police featured as a villain in Lakshmi Kaur’s accounts of the violence in Sultanpuri. She remembers the officers abetting the violence, which has contributed to her distrust in the enforcement system even today. “Why would I listen to the police when the police were the ones who killed my kind? Even when the military approached us women, we were terrified these were the police out to kill us,” says Kaur. The military would escort the women to a public park, and later to a makeshift camp at Farsh Bazar, North-East Delhi. By the time the army and police forces descended upon many affected areas on 3 November, there were no Sikhs left to salvage anymore.
Rajiv Gandhi addresses a gathering on the occassion of Indira Gandhi's birth anniversary on 19 November, 1984. The video, relased by H.S Phoolka and BJP leader R.P Singh on November 19, 2015 shows the newly sworn-in Prime Minister uttering the infamous quote, "when a big tree falls, the earth shakes."
As Indira Gandhi's lifeless body was set to flame at Rajghat on 3 November, hundreds of Sikhs were suffering from the same fate on the other side of the river. Trilokpuri and other Trans-Yamuna areas of Delhi were of the worst affected, with Sultanpuri, Mangolpuri, Karol Bagh, Janakpuri, Palam, Munirka and more localities significantly damaged. No attempts were made by the authorities to estimate the number of the killed, the widowed or orphaned. The former police commissioner, Subhash Tandon, at a press conference on 2 November even went on to assess that the number of dead were between 15-20, adding that the situation was "under control."
According to the findings of the Ahuja Committee, 2733 Sikhs were killed in Delhi between 31 October and 7 November 1984, leaving over 1300 widows and 4000 orphaned. Over 50,000 Sikhs reportedly fled Delhi after the massacre. In two narrow alleys of Trilokpuri itself, around 350 Sikhs were mutilated.
“People call it ‘riots.’ It was not a riot. Ye sarkari qatl-e-aam tha. (state sponsored mass murder)” adds Pappi Kaur. Although ‘riots’ retain frequent usage in parlance in references to the events of 1984, the atrocity has been noted as a pogrom, massacre or a Sikh genocide by notable publications.
We have stepped over the dead bodies. Some were
killers, some looters, some rapists, but none were saviours.
Pappi Kaur
For the Sikhs of Delhi, the violence did not cease with 1947. The throes of partition were still afresh in the milieu of the city when the tree fell, and the earth shook, as referenced by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when questioned about the debacle of November 1984. The Earth shook for over seventy-two hours before the bereaved had to embark on another misbegotten migration to what we now know as Tilak Vihar. One resettlement colony to another. However, the violence did not end with 1984 either.