Evolution of Love 2

Genocide

Remembering a genocide as Delhi burns again

I was a 10-year-old when the pogrom against the Sikhs started in Delhi in the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Some of my early memories are of extreme violence.

I saw houses being attacked, shops looted and men being killed. A Gurdwara was attacked and nearly burnt.

As my father and I walked home from a family friend's place a few days after the riots had started, we saw an army truck rush past. A jawan kept announcing on the loudspeaker that shoot-at-sight orders had been issued and we had only 10 minutes left to clear the streets.

My father and I ran home the rest of the way. More because he was worried something would happen to me than to him.

The next few nights the residents of the DDA colony we lived in met to take up some urgent measures. It was decided that the Hindu Bengali and Punjabi families in the colony would ensure complete safety of the few Sikh families living in the complex.

Patrolling duties were handed out to all males to ensure there was some resistance to any mob trying to enter.

My father, who as a 10-year-old had to leave his ancestral home in the just created East Pakistan had seen his share of violence during the partition.

His duty was between 1 am to 4 am. Every night he would wake up, pick up a stick and walk down to the gate. I would quietly get up and go to the window from where I could see him and keep a long knife with me.

To the mind of a 10-year-old it was a simple calculation. If I saw any impending attack I would rush down to my father and help him fight off any mob with my Gurkha Khukri.

I would struggle to stay away between 1 am to 4 am, but I managed to stay awake till he returned home every night. The few Sikh kids in the family took haircuts to look like Hindus and we would go out and buy provisions for them whenever the curfew was lifted.

One night a young man from the colony came to every house at 2 am. He had an urgent missive to every family not to drink the water. There was a rumour that the Sikhs had poisoned the water supply to Delhi and we couldn't drink it.

The next day was spent trapped at home, thirsty and waiting for confirmation that the water was safe.

Days later we understood that this was a ploy to make us distrust the Sikhs. Thankfully, it didn't work and the wiser people of the colony pointed out that any poisoning of the water supply would killed Hindus and Sikhs alike. The matter ended there and we drank to our hearts in the evening.

In the neighbouring area, ironically named East Pakistan Displaced Person's Colony (subsequently CR Park) corner houses were turned into fortresses. Terraces were lined with stones and sticks to fight off mobs if they attacked.

The principle was the same. Defend every street from the mobs.

Ironically, the fear and the hatred that a Congress-led pogrom against a minority group led many people to become staunch opponents of the party.

For years they voted for the BJP, and part of the reason they do so, is because of how the party is the only entity that will "not appease" another minority.

The "not appease" is an euphemism for othering a minority. A group that has been identified by their clothes, religious practices, food habits and names and made to bear the brunt of insecurities and fears that stemmed from attacks on another minority in 1984.

That is the irony we live with today.

The Congress Party never really recovered from the genocide of 1984.

But nor did we recover -- those of us who witnessed it first hand.

When 2002 happened, many were happy that a "lesson had been taught". That journey has now led to the riots in Delhi in 2020.

The same panic that we witnessed in 1984 is back on the streets of Delhi. The only difference is that we now have less wisdom and more fear.

We know who has fed us that fear. But we can't understand why we have become afraid. We are now consumed by hate.

This is sadly our legacy of this continuous cycle of fear and violence.

If India needs to aspire to be great, it will have to let go of its fears. It will have to embrace a confidence that we are one people, inextricably tied to one destiny.

We will rise or fall as one. That choice is for us to make.

Future generations will either thrive or perish depending upon what we do today.

That choice is yours and mine to make.