Pav Singh

The debate on how we name crimes against humanity such as genocides have long been contentious. The UK’s new Foreign Secretary, David Lammy recently got into hot water by refusing to call out the a ‘plausible’ genocide unfolding in Gaza.1

According to David Lammy:  “Those terms were largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the way that they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term.”2

But the Foreign Secretary’s framing of the definition of genocide around numbers goes against the Genocide Convention which contains no threshold into the definition of genocide.3

In fact, both mass crimes that occurred in Srebrenica in 1995, where more than 8,000 were killed4 and the massacres of 5,000 Yazidis by the Islamic State group in 2004 to 2017 are internationally recognised as genocides by the international community.5

The violence against the Sikhs of India in November 1984 following Mrs Gandhi’s assassination, resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths in New Delhi alone. However, independent estimates put the figure as at least 8,000 dead6 throughout Northern India, half in the Indian capital.7

On the recent 40th anniversary, the BBC’s lead article on the events was headlined as ‘In pictures: Remembering Delhi’s anti-Sikh riots.8

The framing of the events of November 1984 as ‘riots’ have been a constant in BBC reporting. In 2013, when I suggested to them that ‘pogrom’ would be more appropriate, this was their reply:

We feel that ‘anti-Sikh riots’ is a neutral term, which is widely used by most media and understood by audiences.

BBC Complaints, Audience Services, Reference CAS-2110766-FC6343.

Things have moved on from 2013. It is widely acknowledged by experts and first-hand responders that the word ‘riot’ was deliberately used by the perpetrators to shield them from any responsibility for the violence. If the violence is deemed spontaneous and unorganised, it is hard to pin the blame on any individual or political party.

Even the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, assigned the events to ‘some riots’ in his speech at the Delhi Boat Club on December 19, 1984, a speech which many see as justifying the violence against the Sikhs.9

Clashes between communities, such as between Hindus and Muslims, are not uncommon in post-independence India. But when the violence is so one-sided, premeditated, systematic, and carefully orchestrated against one particular group, as stated by the last official inquiry into the events, the Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, it problematic to label as ‘riots’.

In his report, submitted to the Indian Parliament in 2005, Judge Nanavati concluded that:

‘What had initially started as an angry outburst became an organised carnage’. None of this could have occurred without the help of influential and resourceful persons who helped with the provisions of weapons and transportation of killers [which] required an organised effort’.

Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, 2005.10
Many children were subject to burnings. These lucky ones survived, many did not. Ken Rees reporting from New Delhi. ITN News. November 4, 1984.

The BBC is right in saying the term ‘riot’ is popularly used, but that doesn’t make it correct. The term is suspect because it implies random acts of disorganised violence and invokes images of chaos that overwhelmed the police11 and government whereas according to witnesses, the police and politicians12 were working in an organised manner, hand-in-hand with the mobs.

Witnesses testified that they saw groups of surveyors marking Sikh homes on the night of October 31, 1984 with the letter ‘S.

This failure to properly define the violence has also meant that it has not received the appropriate response; neither the Indian government nor the international community has treated the violence for what it is – a crime against humanity, which includes pogroms on a wider scale and genocidal acts in specific locations. In his study into the violent, the Anti-Sikh Pogrom of October 31 to November 4, 1984 in New Delhi, Lionel Baixas reiterated this by saying:

The official as well as popular or academic naming itself of the events tends to undermine and to distort the nature of the violence perpetrated in Delhi between November 1 and 4, 1984. The commonly used term of ‘riots’ is a misnomer meant to reduce the violence to a simple and spontaneous outburst of grief and anger and to describe it as a conflict between ethnic and religious groups. Actually, the obviously orchestrated and evidently targeted nature of the violence, and also the fact that the Sikhs of Delhi could and indeed have barely retaliated, make it far more accurate to define it as a pogrom.

The Anti-Sikh Pogrom of October 31 to November 4, 1984, in New Delhi13

Recently there has been a shift of language in India itself. The Punjab Congress MLA, Sukhpal Singh Khaira has asserted that the violence were not riots between two communities, but one-sided massacre and genocide.14

In 2012 senior advocate R. S. Cheema, Special Prosecutor the case of Congress MP, Sajjan Kumar used the term ‘genocide’ in his arguments. In 2014, the then-Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also used the word to describe the events.15

The Delhi Assembly became the first assembly to pass a bill, moved by the late MLA, Jarnail Singh to recognise the Sikh Genocide in June 2015, with the support of the BJP MLAs.16

Yet the issue continues to create controversy. In July 2024, in the Borough of Slough in the UK, protests erupted as a motion on the ‘1984 Sikh Genocide’ was dropped by the council and by council leader, Dexter Smith of the Conservative Party.17

How we grapple with history changes over time, as does the vocabulary used to talk about it. For a number of years, a debate has taken place around the anti-Jewish violence that occurred between the 9 and 10 of November 1938 in Nazi Germany and Austria. This is popularly known as ‘Kristallnacht’, or the Night of Broken Glass of November 1938, a term some see as minimalizing its memory and grave reality to the November pogroms.

The violence of 1938 has similarities with the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984. Both occurred in the month of November. Both were premediated but, at the time, described as spontaneous ‘riots’ and ‘justifiable reactions’ to an assassination.

Both involved state actors, politicians, and the police, with places of worship and businesses the first targets of attack. Yet both were far from spontaneous or random. The former were organised by sections of the ruling Indian Congress Party, while the latter by Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers.

News footage from both ITN News and AP, November 1-3, 1984

Whilst the anti-Jewish pogroms resulted in hundreds of deaths with thousands detained in concentration camps and heralded the beginnings of the Holocaust, 1984 resulted in thousands of dead in four days and included unprecedented acts of sexual violence.

Last week, the remembrance event at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) in London launched the 1984 Sikh Archive, which aims to document first-hand materials on the events of 1984.

At the event, Professor Gurharpal Singh, Emeritus Professor in Sikh and Punjab Studies questioned ‘how profitable it is to code it as a genocide, but we can debate that’. He also added that ‘the Delhi violence needs to be placed in an historical context: it ranks along with the great massacres of Sikhs in the eighteenth century in 1746 and 1762, the two gullugheras in which 40,000 Sikhs were killed by Afghan and Mughal rulers; the partition of India violence; and organised mass violence in South Asia since 1947, however that is defined’. ’18

I welcome the debate, which has a wider international implications.

Recently, Four US Congressmen, including co-chairs of the Sikh American Congressional Caucus, introduced a resolution to recognise and commemorate the Sikh Genocide of 1984 formally.19 In Canada, a petition was tabled in the House of Commons for the Government of Canada, to formally recognize 1984’s ‘state-organized killing spree as genocide; and as per the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’.20

Last year, The California state assembly passed a resolution, requesting the US Congress to formally recognise the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India as ‘genocide’. The resolution also urged the US Congress to condemn the violence.21

During the trials of Congress leaders and workers during the course of 2018, the Delhi High Court ruled the following crimes took place in 1984, including genocide:

The large-scale rioting, mob violence, arson, plunder, genocide and looting has been duly proved and established.

Justice R. K. Gauba. Delhi High Court. 28 November 2018.
Sikh shops in Chandni Chowk, Delhi burn during November 1984. Photograph: Sondeep Shankar

A month later, another Delhi High Court case ruled on Crimes against Humanity:

The mass killings of Sikhs between 1st and 4th November 1984 in Delhi and the rest of the country, engineered by political actors with the assistance of the law enforcement agencies, answer the description of Crimes against Humanity.

Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel. Delhi High Court. 17 December, 2018.
Sikh neighbourhoods were wiped out in many parts of Outer Delhi.

The bar is set high to establish that a genocide took place, that there was an intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part. It must be proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.22

In my research, based on over 450 sworn affidavits that were originally submitted to the two official enquiries, the majority of attacks can be described as pogroms—organised attacks where intent is not proven. However, in both West and East Delhi, then under the control of Congress MPs, HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar, and Dharam Das Shastri, through their speeches to their followers that took place on the first of November, we can prove the intent to unleash genocidal attacks against Sikhs, to wipe out all Sikh men, women, and children in a given area.23

The incitement to commit genocidal acts was borne out in these areas with Sikh men and boys24 burnt alive and mass rape and sexual violence unleashed against the surviving women and girls25 in order to damage them both physically and mentally, a crime that, in itself, amounts to genocide and a crime against humanity.

Women and girls were subject to horrific sexual violence, and in some case genocidal rape.

I was privileged to initiate this vital debate at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London on November 6, 2024, which hosted an event on the 40th anniversary of 1984 with survivor Bobby Friction of the BBC.26

What can be done?

Words and language have meaning. They shape how people feel about an issue and how they remember events. We owe it to the victims and survivors that we acknowledge what took place and that these crimes were not spontaneous. They didn’t just happen; they were made to happen. The surviving sworn affidavits testify to that.27

Firstly, the Indian state should recognise the violence of November 1984 formally as a genocide. Inter-government organisations such as the United Nations, through fact-fining missions or Special Rapporteurs, can play their part in acknowledgement, as can the International Criminal Court, although currently India, along with China, Israel, Russia, and the United States, are not party to the ICC or signed the Rome Statute.28

In the heart of New Delhi lies the colony of ‘Tilak Vihar’ – the ‘Widow’s Colony’.

So in the first instance, India should take state responsibility for the genocide and crimes against humanity that involved the ruling party at the time, the police, administration, and judiciary. It should also aim to include the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity in its legal statute books, as recommended by Justice S. Muralidhar of the Delhi High Court while pronouncing the judgement in State v. Sajjan Kumar in 2018. This will allow mass crimes to be prosecuted correctly and also act as a deterrent to future perpetrators.29

  1. Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect ↩︎
  2. Three dozen UK NGOs call on David Lammy to clarify his position on genocide ↩︎
  3. Statement on Foreign Secretary Rt Hon David Lammy MP’s discussion of the term genocide in relation to Palestine and Gaza ↩︎
  4. Srebrenica Genocide: No Room For Denial ↩︎
  5. John Kerry: ISIS responsible for genocide ↩︎
  6. The Killing Fields ↩︎
  7. Body count ↩︎
  8. In pictures: Remembering Delhi’s anti-Sikh riots ↩︎
  9. 4-19 November 1984 ↩︎
  10. Nanavati Commission of Inquiry (2005) ↩︎
  11. The Police ↩︎
  12. Congress Party leaders ↩︎
  13. Lionel Baixas: The Anti-Sikh Pogrom of October 31 to November 4, 1984, in New Delhi. ↩︎
  14. In 1984, it wasn’t a ‘riot’ but a Sikh genocide: Congress MLA Khaira ↩︎
  15. 1984 anti-Sikh riots were genocide says Home Minister Rajnath Singh ↩︎
  16. ‘Carnage’ to ‘genocide’: Vocabulary around ’84 riots sees major shift ↩︎
  17. ‘1984 Sikh genocide’ motion dropped in UK council, fury follows ↩︎
  18. Day of Commemoration of the November 1984 massacres of Sikhs and honour the victims of genocide. ↩︎
  19. US house resolution introduced to formally recognise Sikh genocide of 1984 ↩︎
  20. Petitions: 441-02550 (Foreign affairs) ↩︎
  21. California assembly passes resolution urging US Congress to recognise 1984 anti-Sikh riots as ‘genocide’ ↩︎
  22. Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. ↩︎
  23. A Case of Genocide. ↩︎
  24. Fate of the Children. ↩︎
  25. Sexual violence. ↩︎
  26. 40 Years On – Witness to the Anti-Sikh Massacres of November 1984 ↩︎
  27. Victims. ↩︎
  28. The role of the ICC. ↩︎
  29. Crimes that India’s statute books have failed to define. ↩︎

Published by Pav Singh

Author, 1984 India’s Guilty Secret. 1984 Sikh Genocide. 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots

Leave a Reply