‘This work has been long overdue in coming since there is far too little writing on 1984. Now, 33 years later, Pav Singh provides a new way of looking at the targeted killings of Sikhs by placing it within the developing international jurisprudence on state-sponsored killings of specific communities and sexual violence upon its women. Other unique aspects of the book are the accounts of what happened to the victims in hospitals, police stations and trains.’

Dr Uma Chakravarti, Indian historian and feminist

‘This book is a timely reminder of India’s shameful inability to account for that explosion of racial and religious hatred after Mrs Gandhi’s assassination, when eight thousand Sikhs were butchered and burned. The failure to punish this crime against humanity remains India’s guilty secret’.

Geoffrey Roberton AO, KC, human rights barrister, founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers, London

‘A well-researched work…categorising the specific crimes of targeted killings and mass rape, which point to a planned genocide’.

H.S. Phoolka, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India

‘This is a powerful and compelling study of an appalling case of mass violence in the world’s largest democracy…this careful study is a vital response to those whose denial of the crime continues to wound survivors and their descendants’.

Professor Philip Spencer, Emeritus Professor in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

‘Read this harrowing account of the four days that changed India and weep’.

Professor Swaran P. Singh, Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry, University of Warwick

‘Pav Singh’s book makes for necessarily difficult, yet necessary, reading. He illuminates events still too little understood, not least in the UK, and painstakingly discusses their aftermath and memory’.

Dr. Paul Moore, Deputy Director, Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust & Genocide Studies

‘A comprehensive and fluent account… it is difficult to dispute Singh’s contention that 1984 is an indelible stain on India’s record as a pluralist democracy’.

Keshava Guha, Literary Review

‘Exhaustive and relentless… [Pav Singh’s] healthy obsession with speaking truth to power puts him on par with any established investigator. Like any apparatus of scholarship implemented correctly, we’re left wanting to continue the investigation ourselves.’

Gary Singh, Los Angeles Review of Books

‘One of the darkest chapters in the history of India is the 1984 massacre — a wave of brutal, unprecedented violence against the Sikhs that swept through the nation, leaving thousands dead, burnt, butchered, widowed, raped, homeless. Author Pav Singh too was one of those affected. Feeling deeply for the cause, his new book investigates the truth behind the gruesome year.’

Suridhi Sharma, The Asian Age

‘1984: India’s Guilty Secret’ does something most books in its genre can’t – it keeps its promise. It’s a scathing and almost brutal journalistic read rich with data and mention of instances that have become a permanent fixture in the memories of one of the largest communities of our country, unfortunately.’

Nilesh Mondal, Kitaab

‘This book will open readers eyes to a horrifying picture of the extent to which power will go to silence dissent through fear… impossible to put down’

Shabd Singh Khalsa, The One

How to purchase India’s Guilty Secret

UK version (print and eBook)

India

India Amazon

Punjabi version

Hindi version

1984 India’s Guilty Secret reviews.