After the Dark

1984: The Anti-Sikh Violence and After

Suri holds Rajiv Gandhi primarily responsible for the massacre. However, unlike many Sikhs, Suri does not believe that there was an active command to kill. Instead, he says, it was Gandhi’s passive aggression that encouraged the carnage. Commenting on Gandhi’s metaphor for the killings of the Sikhs in Delhi — “when a big tree falls, the earth shakes”, Suri says: “The metaphor sought to turn the killings on the streets and in homes into an inevitable, even automatic consequence of the assassination of Indira Gandhi, with no possibility of intervention between cause and consequence. The tree metaphor, in effect said this; two assassins who happened to have been Sikhs had assassinated Indira Gandhi; the murder of a few thousand innocent Sikhs was therefore the logical result; the murders were the shaking of the ground, the tree having been felled.” The imagery absolved the Congress leaders of any hand in the killings, the police of preventing it and Gandhi of failing to protect his people.

Suri says there was a method in the madness. Till late evening on 31st October 1984, there were only occasional skirmishes on the streets, especially around the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where Indira Gandhi’s body was kept. By midnight, things took a dramatic turn for the worse. Announcements were made over loudspeakers that the city’s water supply had been poisoned by the Sikhs and they were grouping inside gurdwaras to launch an armed attack. All these steps were meticulously carried out even as Congress politicians in Delhi made elaborate plans to loot and kill Sikhs in various parts of Delhi. On November 1 morning, orders went from the police headquarters to disarm all the Sikhs in Delhi’s police force and take them off duty.

Some of us, including Suri, who filed affidavits before various commissions and enquiries know how the witnesses and victims have been treated. I appeared before various commissions and enquiries. The Mishra Commission not only considered me unreliable, but also treated me almost like a mischief maker. Suri has included interviews with a few retired police officials who held key positions in1984 and after. The interviews reinforce the role of Congressmen in the unprecedented carnage.That the guilty have gone scot free and those who helped in the cover-up through commissions and omissions have been amply rewarded is apparent. However, Suri seems to believe that even at this late stage, it is possible to prosecute the guilty and bring a closure to the injustices meted out to thousands of innocent people. Yet, what use are these revelations today? The lives of the survivors of the ’84 carnage have been shattered beyond repair and even the enhanced compensation announced by the Modi government is eluding them inspite of a friendly Aam Admi government in Delhi.

Joseph Maliakan is a former journalist with The Indian Express. He covered the 1984 anti-Sikh riots extensively for the paper