The recent commemoration of Guru Tegh Bahadur’s 350th martyrdom – attributed to the policies of the Mughal rulers of India due to his stand to protect the religious freedom of Hindus – has seen widespread participation across the country, especially in New Delhi and Punjab, under the current BJP-led and AAP governorships respectively.

In contrast, roughly forty years ago, during a Congress-led administration, respect for the 9th Sikh Guru, for Sikh religious symbols, and for Sikh communities in general was gravely lacking, most notably during the Sikh genocide of November 1984 following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. During that period, numerous reports and investigations have documented the involvement of Congress leaders, the complicity of police forces and local Hindus in the attacks on Sikhs.

The violence of November 1984 ushered in the attacks on gurdwaras, several of which were burnt down. In Delhi alone, hundreds of Sikh places of worship were damaged. Many more across northern India were hit in a manner chillingly reminiscent of the burning of synagogues during the 1938 Kristallnacht (‘Night of Broken Glass’) pogroms in Germany.

Gurdwara Rakab Ganj

A major shrine in the heart of New Delhi only a few hundred yards from the nation’s Parliament buildings. It is historically significant as it commemorates the spot where Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh Guru’s body was cremated following his execution by order of a Mughal emperor in 1675.

On 1 November 1984, Congress MP, Kamal Nath was accused of allegedly leading an armed mob that laid siege to Gurdwara Rakab Ganj.  A member of the gurdwara staff, Mukhtiar Singh, had seen an angry crowd approach and then begin pelting stones at the shrine and those inside its boundary walls. Delhi police officers were present but showed no interest in intervening.[1]

Within half an hour the crowd had swelled in size to around a thousand-strong. At noon an attempt was made to storm the building, but staff and devotees collectively managed to push the mob back. An elderly Sikh devotee then decided to appeal for peace and approached the mob with folded hands. He was dragged out of the boundary and severely assaulted with stones. While he lay on the ground, white powder – most probably phosphorus – was thrown on his body causing it to catch fire. His son ran to attempt a rescue but, like his father, was also injured and set alight. The Sikhs managed to drag them, still alive, into the safety of the gurdwara but they died a few hours later for lack of medical treatment – the shrine being surrounded on all sides and the police unresponsive to calls for assistance.[2]

Further attacks were mounted. With the assistance of several police officers the mob eventually succeeded in entering the sacred building. Mukhtiar Singh and others drove them back again, this time pelting the intruders with the same stones that had been hurled at them. Another tactic used to hold them back was the setting off of fire crackers with a gun-like launcher, which the mob mistook for actual gunfire. Still though, more attacks followed.

In desperation one of the Sikhs fired his licenced pistol into the air. It was soon after this that a much larger force approached the gurdwara, Mukhtiar Singh claimed he clearly saw Kamal Nath and other Congress men including Vasant Sathe, former minister of Information and Broadcasting, at its head. According to him, the police fired several rounds at those inside the gurdwaras after receiving instructions from Nath.

Observing from the street was crime reporter for The Indian Express, (Monish) Sanjay Suri. He had set out that morning on his scooter and reached the gurdwara by following a combination of the columns of smoke that rose above the city and some tip-offs from police contacts. On arriving he stated under oath to have seen Nath standing near to the front of the crowd, which was repeatedly surging forward as it attacked again and again. The police watched on, among them the additional commissioner of police, Gautam Kaul, who was carrying a bamboo shield. It was clear to Suri that the management of the crowd had been left to Nath – when he signalled, the crowd listened. This level of control led to Suri to conclude that they were Congress party workers who accepted him as their leader.[3]

Kamal Nath remained MP for the Congress Party in the subsequent decades, holding a number of cabinet posts and the position of Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. Ironically, more than forty years later, amidst the commemorations marking Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom in November 2025, Kamal Nath released the following message on his X feed (translated from the original Hindi):

Listen to Sanjay Suri’s interview at the launch of the 1984 Sikh Archive.

Gurdwara Sis Ganj

Mobs arrived intent on assaulting the shrine on 1 November 1984, which marked the place where Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed. However, here, Sikhs were still able to rely on some police officers who were intent on fulfilling their duty.

On 1 November, Maxwell Pereira, the additional deputy commissioner of police based in the north district of the capital, had that morning been pulled out of his area and sent to Teen Murti House. When he heard over the radio that disturbances were taking place at the historic Gurdwara Sis Ganj near the Red Fort in the northeast of Delhi, he rushed to the spot.

When he arrived, he saw hundreds of people marching towards the shrine. The Sikhs inside responded by coming out brandishing their swords. At that point, Pereira intervened by convincing the Sikhs that he was responsible for their safety and that they should remain within the gurdwaras premises. He also escorted several Sikhs who had been hiding in nearby lanes to the shrine.

With twenty or so policemen, Pereira managed to keep the two groups separated. On hearing that Sikh-owned shops in Chandni Chowk to the west of the gurdwara were being torched, he headed off to disperse the arsonists. But they lingered, becoming increasingly menacing and continued to burn properties. Pereira ordered a colleague to open fire and one person dropped dead, which had an immediate impact on the crowd. Potentially hundreds of people had been saved by Pereira’s actions.[4]

When he reported the firing to the police control room, no one responded. When he attempted to bring the matter to the attention of his superiors, Additional Commissioner Hukum Chand Jatav and Commissioner Subhash Tandon, their ‘pin-drop silence’ troubled him.

Read: Case against Congress Leaders

[1] Manoj Mitta and HS Phoolka, ‘The case against Kamal Nath’, Outlook, 8 April 2010.

[2] Mukhtiar Singh, Rakab Ganj Sahib, Justice Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, 2005.

[3] Sanjay Suri, Witness Statement. Justice Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, 2005.

[4] Sanjay Suri, 1984: The Anti-Sikh Violence and After, 2015.

The bombing of Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985, was one of the most despicable crimes carried out by terrorists [1]. 329 people, including 82 children, perished when a bomb exploded onboard the Boeing 747 over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Montreal to London. The flight included people of all faiths—Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs—including the pilot.[2] 268 were Canadian citizens, mostly of Indian descent; 27 were British, 24 were Indian, and 33 were Sikhs.

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In the first few hours of the tragedy, it was left to the sailors who were in the area of impact to retrieve the bodies into their lifeboats. Two decades later, a British merchant seaman, Daniel Brown, revealed a scene of unimaginable horror:

“I snatched the hair, and it was my intention to wait for assistance, but I realised it was very light, and I brought the body of a young girl, probably about 8 years old, in the lifeboat… Passing by on the starboard side, I glimpsed a body with long grey hair. I was just expecting an old woman. It was a Sikh gent, eyes open, mouth wide open in a scream, and he had a look of horror on his face… I said a prayer. I was thinking, the families don’t even know what’s happened to them. ” [3]

Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003 and a charge of aiding in the construction of a bomb that exploded on board the aircraft and also at Narita Airport, Japan. His lawyer, David Gibbons, shared his client’s regret over his role in one of the largest terrorist attacks involving commercial airplanes, only to be surpassed by 9/11.

“He thinks about it every day. Remorse is not a word large enough to get near what he feels for their sorrow, and it falls on deaf ears sometimes. It’s a huge tragedy.”

David Gibbons, Inderjit Singh Rayat’s lawyer.[4]

Furthermore, in the Air India trial, the prosecution, the defence, the judge, and the bomb-maker, Rayat, all agreed that Talwinder Singh Parmar of the militant Babbar Khalsa group was “the leader in the conspiracy to commit these crimes. “[5] The Canadian security authorities had wiretapped his phone at the time he ordered the booking of the plane ticket used to check in the suitcases carrying the bombs. He and the Rayat were even followed into the forest, where a ‘test blast’ was detonated three weeks before the Air India plane exploded over the Atlantic.[6] Parmar died at the hands of the Punjab police in 1992. Two others were acquitted in March 2005.

Another suspect, Ajaib Singh Bagri, an associate of Parmar and the co-founder of the Babbar Khalsa group, had in the previous year at the founding convention of the World Sikh Organisation in New York appeared to be saying: “Until we kill 50,000 Hindus, we will not rest!”[7] He was subsequently acquitted of all charges.

However, in 1995, a newspaper publisher, Tara Singh Hayer, recorded in an affidavit that he heard Bagri admit to a friend that he was involved in the bombing. Three years later, he was dead.[8]

The terrorists planned to down two Air India planes, but the second bomb went off on the ground at Tokyo’s Narita airport, where a second bomb was in the luggage bound for a connecting Air India flight to India.[9]

In 1989, journalists Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew wrote a controversial book that fueled conspiracy theories. In it, the authors claimed that India’s spy agencies had for years been engaged in operations to destabilise Canada’s Sikh community and pointed the finger at the Indian government for the bombing.[10]

The Commission of Inquiry would later regard the allegations as ‘fiction’, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) insisted there was no evidence to support the allegations.[11]. However, the journalists were denied cross-examination by Justice John Major, the head of the Inquiry, much to the disappointment to those who have continually raised issues surrounding India’s alleged involvement.

The second edition was published in 2005, in which the authors alluded to links between the Babbar Khalsa and the Indian government while citing one of the alleged bombers, Ripudaman Malik, who was later acquitted of having secured a $2 million line of credit from the State Bank of India to help finance his organisation, and Parmar and cited two anonymous Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) sources claiming:

“In the fall of 1985, CSIS had viewed the Babbar Khalsa as the biggest security threat among Sikhs in Canada. Now it was suddenly discovered that the Babbar Khalsa had links with the government of India. As a result, agents were not surprised that Parmar’s associates could visit India with ease despite his fiery views about Khalistan.”[12]

Nevertheless, despite two thorough and open legal proceedings that took eight years to finish, conspiracy theories abound, claiming it was a “inside job” by Indian intelligence, much like in the case of the September 11 2001 attacks almost twenty years later. The veteran journalist Terry Milewski explains that the Indian government didn’t need to execute a plan to ‘make the separatists look bad’.[13]  They were already doing ‘a great job’ at this through sectarian killings, assassinations of opponents, and bombs in trains and markets throughout this period in the Indian state of Punjab.

What was shocking, though, which surfaced some two decades later, during John Major’s judicial inquiry, was that the Canadian authorities were warned time and time again about an imbedding attack, despite blatant denials by successive governments. The first of these warnings came from a French-Canadian criminal by the name of Gerry Boudreault, who told the RCMP that ‘some Vancouver Sikhs offered him $200,00 in cash to smuggle a bomb onto Air India’s flight from Montreal to London—Flight 182.’[14]

The second warning relayed to the Vancouver police came from Harmail Singh Grewal, a Sikh who corroborated Boudreault’s testimony, adding the plan ‘involved two planes and two bombs.’[15] Both warnings were ignored. Justice Major also castigated the CSIS for erasing the tape recordings from Parmar’s phone, which could have shed light on the planning of the bombings.

Recent revelations of Indian government collusion with criminal elements within Canadian society have made many Sikhs suspicious again of actions of the Indian state and how their community has been targeted and, in some cases, violently.

The Sikh community in Canada was just as deeply shaken by the terrorist attack that claimed 329 innocent lives as any other affected group. Many still believe that the full truth has yet to emerge. Yet, forty years on, it is a time for reflection and unity—to honour the memory of this tragic event and, above all, to remember the victims and their families with the dignity and compassion they deserve.

“My dead versus your dead is a false dichotomy. The taking of human life is wrong. Should we examine and understand the oppression of Sikhs? Yes. Should we glorify Parmar as a martyr? No. Should we celebrate the beauty of the Sikh religion? Of course. Sat Sri Akal. Truth is eternal.”[16]

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[1] After 36 years, families of 1985 Air India blast victims struggle without closure. Jatinder Kaur Tur. The Caravan. 2 July 2021.

[2] No justice was done: Bombed Air India Kanishka pilot’s widow. Bhartesh Singh Thakur. Hindustan Times. 29 January 2016.

[3] Terry Milewski, Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project, HarperCollins, 2021. Page 100-101.

[4] Reyat pleads guilty to manslaughter. CBC News. 10 February 2003.

[5] How the 1985 Air India bombing could tie into the 2019 federal election in Canada. Charlie Smith. Georgia Straight. 12 November 2017.

[6] ‘Air India ki flight mat lo’ — how Canadian neglect led up to Kanishka bombing 38 yrs ago. Humra Laeeq, Vandana Menon, Raghav Bickchandani. The Print. 23 June 2023.

[7] Bloodthirsty speech returns to haunt suspect. Robert Matas. The Globe and Mail. 3 December 2003.

[8] A timeline of the Air India case, from the bombings to the death of an old suspect. CBS News. 14 July 2022.

[9] Getting close to my son who died on Air India 182. BBC News. 22 June 2015.

[10] Journalist Zuhair Kashmeri wrote extensively about the Air India bombing. Ron Csillag. The Globe and Mail. 16 January 2019.

[11] Soft Target: How the Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada, Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew. Danielle Crittenden Frumpiest. HuffPost. 28 September 2011.

[12] How the 1985 Air India bombing could tie into the 2019 federal election in Canada. Charlie Smith. Georgia Straight. 12 November 2017.

[13] Terry Milewski, Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project, HarperCollins, 2021. Page 91.

[14] ibid, page 106.

[15] ibid, page 106.

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Although he issued an apology as the head of government, there was no accountability for the complicity of his party’s senior leadership—whether through action or inaction—in the anti-Sikh pogroms and genocidal massacres of November 1984. By absolving the then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and others in his party, he failed to provide closure to the thousands of victims and survivors.

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Dr. Manmohan Singh’s recent passing, coming not long after the 40th anniversary of the tragic events of 1984, has reignited scrutiny over how successive Congress-led governments addressed one of the darkest episodes of collective punishment in India’s history. This horrific chapter unfolded under their watch in the aftermath of Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination by her two Sikh bodyguards.

There is no doubt that Singh was a visionary statesman. Serving as India’s Prime Minister for two terms, he also made his mark as an accomplished Finance Minister. As the architect of modern India’s economic reforms, he played a pivotal role in liberalising the economy, setting the foundation for the country’s growth and transformation for decades to come.¹

He was also known for his efforts to assist the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence in the years that followed, offering support and seeking to address their suffering.²

Dr. Manmohan Singh became India’s first Sikh Prime Minister in May 2004 and served until 2014, making him one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers in the country’s history. In February 2005, the Nanavati Commission of Inquiry into the so-called 1984 anti-Sikh ‘riots’ submitted its findings under Judge Nanavati. However, the Congress-led coalition government, with PM Singh at the helm and Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, as the party president, delayed action on the report. It was finally tabled on 8 August 2005—on the last possible day permissible by law for submission to parliament.

Singh spoke for many at the time when he confessed that:

“Years have passed and yet the feeling persists that somehow the truth has not come out and justice has not prevailed.”

Lok Sabha, 11 August 2005³

During a parliamentary debate on the Nanavati report in August 2005, Singh issued a heartfelt apology for the tragic events of 1984, acknowledging the pain and suffering endured by the victims and expressing regret for the failure to prevent such atrocities.

“I have no hesitation in apologising not only to the Sikh community but the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood and what is enshrined in our Constitution.”

Lok Sabha, 11 August 2005⁴

Despite the sincerity of Singh’s apology, many observed that it came from a leader who had no role in the government during the massacres. The Gandhi family, particularly Rajiv Gandhi—who had once metaphorically justified the violence—remained silent on the issue throughout his lifetime, as did his wife, Sonia Gandhi, leaving critical questions of accountability unanswered.

But then he made the following remarks, which seemed to be an attempt to deflect blame from the upper echelons of a Congress government that they were in any way responsible for the events of November 1984:

“The Report is before us, and one thing it conclusively states is that there is no evidence, whatsoever, against the top leadership of the Congress Party.”

Lok Sabha, 11 August 2005⁵

It is here that he dismissed allegations against the then-PM, Rajiv Gandhi, under whose watch the anti-Sikh massacres took place:

• Dismissal of Allegations Against Rajiv Gandhi: Singh, as a senior leader in the Congress Party, dismissed allegations against Rajiv Gandhi, despite the serious accusations of complicity and negligence in handling the aftermath of the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership faced widespread criticism for failing to curb the violence, and many alleged that there were direct or indirect connections between the Congress leadership and the violence that was inflicted on the Sikh community.

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• Denial of Army Deployment: The records indicate that during the period of the violence, Rajiv Gandhi’s office was slow to deploy the Indian Army, which further escalated the violence. There were reports that the Army was not called in until the situation was already out of control, and this lack of timely intervention contributed to the scale of the massacre. The delayed response from the government reinforced accusations of negligence and inaction.

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• Rajiv Gandhi’s “Big Tree” Remark: The statement “When a big tree falls, the earth shakes” by Rajiv Gandhi in the aftermath of his mother’s assassination was seen by many as an indirect justification of the violence. This remark, made in the emotional and charged atmosphere following Indira Gandhi’s death, was widely interpreted as minimizing the horrific violence that occurred. Instead of unequivocally condemning the killings, Rajiv Gandhi’s words seemed to suggest that the violence was an understandable or inevitable reaction to the assassination.
• Promotion of Perpetrators: Despite the violence and the many allegations against those responsible for it, some of the individuals linked to the massacres were not only allowed to go unpunished but were actually promoted within the Congress Party.

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Jagdish Tytler was one of the ministers in Singh’s cabinet and amongst several Congress leaders indicted by the Nanavati Commission for his role in the massacres. Yet the Prime Minister went out of his way to shield his minister by referring to him as a ‘valued colleague’.⁶

The Action Taken Report (ATR) was made public on 8 August 2005 along with the Nanavati Report. In the ATR, it was clear the government had no intention of implementing the recommendations of Judge Nanavati. It promptly rejected much of the commission’s findings including taking action against sitting MPs, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar. The Opposition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by L.K. Advani of the BJP decided to seek adjournment motions in opposition of the government’s refusal to take the Nanavati Report seriously and allow a discussion on it. The Communist Party of India (CPM) and some of the reginal parties, who were part of the governing coalition declared that it would also vote against the government in the proposed adjournment motions.⁷

There is no doubt the action by the opposition parties forced the government to concede the demand to review the ATR and allow for a debate the next day. By the end of 9 August 2005, both Tytler and Kumar had resigned.

The death of H.K.L. Bhagat in November 2005, just two months after the resignations of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, was a deeply controversial moment, particularly in the context of the 1984 anti-Sikh massacres and the ongoing political discourse surrounding accountability. Bhagat, the former Member of Parliament (MP) for East Delhi, had been indicted by the Nanavati Commission for his involvement in the Trilokpuri massacre, one of the most brutal episodes during the anti-Sikh violence that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Sikhs in his constituency. Despite these grave allegations, Bhagat’s death was marked by tributes from top political leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi.⁸

Eight years later, another example of Congress Party commitment to shield alleged perpetrators from justice came in the case against Jagdish Tytler in 2013, when an Indian arms dealer, Abishek Verma, deposed before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that Tytler had in 2008:

‘Boasted of having met the Prime Minister [Manmohan Singh] who in turn would ask Director/CBI to get the investigating conducted in his favour’.

The Economic Times, 3 June 2015⁹

In 2019, now former PM, Singh blamed the then Home Minister Narsimha Rao for not calling out the army on the advice of Inder Kumar Gujral, another former Prime Minister:

“Gujral Ji was so concerned that he went to the then Home Minister Narsimha Rao that very evening .. the situation is so grave that it is necessary for the government to call the army at the earliest. If that advice would have been heeded perhaps the 1984 massacre could have been avoided.”

India Today. 5 December 2019.¹⁰

Yet what seems to be missing is the absence of action by the then Prime Minister and his cabinet. According to the lead lawyer for the victims, Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court, H.S. Phoolka, Rao wanted to call out the army, but was prevented by the Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

“We have evidence that Narasimha Rao wanted to call the army, but the Prime Minister did not allow.”

H.S. Phoolka. NDTV. 5 December 2019.¹¹

Dr. Manmohan Singh’s apology for the 1984 massacres in 2005 was a rare and significant gesture in Indian politics, signalling a recognition of past wrongs and a desire for reconciliation. It highlighted a contrast with the current administration under Narendra Modi, who has failed to take similar responsibility or offer an apology for the 2002 Gujarat pogrom despite serious allegations of state complicity.¹²

While Dr. Singh’s apology was a goodwill gesture, it did not meet the expectations of the victims for action. His inability to translate the apology into real consequences for those responsible meant that the government’s failure to address the issue became a source of further frustration for the victims.

This chapter in Indian history underscores the importance of justice and accountability, not just for the victims of the violence, but for the integrity of the political system itself. Without accountability, historical wounds remain open, and the trust between citizens and the state can be severely eroded.

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Read more: Dr. Manmohan Singh’s Legacy and the 1984 Anti-Sikh Pogroms

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1. Manmohan Singh obituary. Mark Tully and Randeep Ramesh. The Guardian. 29 December 2024. ↩︎
2. Manmohan Singh’s PhD thesis to help for Sikhs after 1984, gems surface online about former PM. The Telegraph India. 27 December 2024. ↩︎
3. ‘PM’s intervention during the debate in Lok Sabha on motion for adjournment on need to take action against persons indicated by Nanavati Commission’, Lok Sabha, Press Information Bureau, Government of India, 11 August 2005. ↩︎
4. ibid. ↩︎
5. ibid. ↩︎
6. PM apologises for 1984 riots. Business Standard. 14 Jun 2013. ↩︎
7. When a Tree Shook Delhi. Manoj Mitta, H.S. Phoolka. Roli Books (New Delhi 2007). ↩︎
8. PM paying homage to Cong leader HKL Bhagat. DPCCm office, New Delhi. 30 October 2005. Photo: Anu Pushkarna. ↩︎
9. ‘Jagdish Tytler got clean chit after meeting Manmohan Singh The Economic Times, 3 June 2015. ↩︎
10. 1984 riots could have been avoided, if Narasimha Rao had listened to IK Gujaral: Manmohan Singh. Anand Patel. India Today. 5 December 2019. ↩︎
11. “Had IK Gujral’s Advice Been Heeded…”: Manmohan Singh On ’84 Riots. NDTV. 5 December 2019. ↩︎
12. Manmohan Singh’s Apology, Narendra Modi’s Silence: The Tale of Two Carnages. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. The Wire. 30 December 2024. ↩︎

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What actions did the late Dr. Manmohan Singh take as Prime Minister of India in regards to the anti-Sikh pogroms of November 1984?

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By Rahul Bedi [one of the journalists who stumbled across the massacre in East Delhi].

The anti-Sikh pogrom that raged unchecked for nearly three days across several parts of India, but especially in New Delhi after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by two of her Sikh bodyguards on the morning of 31 October 1984, ended only with her cremation on 3 November.

During these seventy-two hours, droves of Sikhs, including women and children, were hunted down and corralled by Hindu mobs on the streets, their homes and workplaces in the capital, and slaughtered like animals. Some Sikhs were even ‘necklaced’ by pinioning them with rubber tyres drenched in kerosene oil or petrol around their chests and arms and setting them on fire.[1]  

By the time some semblance of order was enforced in the city by the Indian Army, the organized massacres had led to the killing of some 2,733 Sikhs in Delhi alone1—though human rights organizations put this number closer to 4,000.

Thereafter, a mix of some fifteen inquiry commissions, committees, and special investigation teams (SITs) over the following thirty-four years, determined variously beyond reasonable doubt that these killings had been engineered by Congress party loyalists.[2]  These slayings were duly supervised, in many instances, by Delhi Police personnel. Yet, a token few of those eventually deemed guilty were convicted, and even fewer ultimately sentenced and jailed.

These probes also determined that the extended slaughter was executed by a cross section of largely Congress party minions along with their underlings, sympathizers, and especially dragooned bands of criminals. Reportedly carrying voter lists to identify Sikh households in Delhi neighbourhoods and armed with crude swords, scimitars, cleavers, scythes, kitchen knives, and even scissors, these groups executed their retribution without let or hinderance.[3] [4]

Significantly, the latter implement was wielded widely over these three murderous days to shear the kesh (hair) of thousands of Sikhs in a gratuitously sacrilegious and heretical endeavour at demeaning and humbling this proud and outwardly distinctive community, for whom uncut hair is one of the five symbols of their faith ordained by their tenth and last guru, Gobind Singh, in 1699. Kesh not only symbolizes faith for the egalitarian Sikhs, but also manifests the denial of all vanity and pride in their appearance.[5]

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Justifying this slaughter, if such were possible, the assassinated prime minister’s son and political successor Rajiv Gandhi complacently declared at a public rally at Delhi’s Boat Club on 19 November that ‘Jab bhi koi bada ped girta hai, to dharti thodi hilti hai’—When a big tree falls, the earth shakes a little. The new prime minister had fittingly delivered the Congress party’s metaphor for the pogrom, even though in officialese and in media reports at the time—and even now—it continues to be euphemistically referred to as the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.[6]

And whilst unbridled chaos and mayhem proliferated unimpeded across the capital, the calculated slaughter of some 300 indigent Sikhs in the trans-Yamuna resettlement of Trilokpuri Colony in East Delhi was, without doubt, the most brutal. The charred and hacked remains of the hundreds that perished in Trilokpuri’s Block 32 over forty-eight hours between 1 and 2 November depicted an implausible tale of state-sponsored carnage, the memory of which continues to haunt me nearly four decades later.[7]

Face to Face

On the morning of 2 November, around 11.30 a.m., one Mohan Singh, who had sought refuge in our office canteen, told me and my Indian Express colleague Joseph Maliakan of the Trilokpuri massacre, which was then ongoing. He himself had shaved his head and beard only hours earlier. Terrified of the police and local officials, who were obviously complicit in these killings[8], he had feebly hoped that a paper like the Express may somehow, through its influential pages, assist in ending the bloodbath that had been raging uninterruptedly along two narrow, adjoining alleyways in Trilokpuri’s Block 32. Each of these lanes was no more than seventy metres long and five metres wide. They were lined with one-roomed tenements on either side that were inhabited largely by poor Dalit Sikh families, many of whose menfolk wove string beds for a living.

Vacantly, Mohan Singh told us how scores of Sikhs in Trilokpuri had unhurriedly been butchered in these twin streets by bands of sword, axe, and chopper-wielding men who went about their task with gory determination. In between their killing spree, they found time to rest and take breaks for meals, before resuming their butchery with renewed vigour.

Unlike Mohan Singh, there was also no possibility of any other resident of the two streets bolting to safety, as an impenetrable cordon of locals armed with lathis had girdled the area to block any runaways. Neither was there hope of succour from surrounding Hindu households in the colony, or from local police and block officials, many of whom, it later transpired, were in varying degrees of omission or commission complicit in the Block 32 slayings.

Almost immediately, along with Maliakan and Alok Tomar of Jansatta, the Express Group’s Hindi newspaper, we rushed to Trilokpuri—one of numerous resettlement colonies established in East Delhi during the twenty-one-month long Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975. The entrance to it was blocked by massive concrete pipes, with lathi-wielding men standing guard above. They stared menacingly at us but made no move to hinder our progress further into the labyrinth of Trilokpuri’s criss-crossing alleys, providing us the first indication that something horrific and sinister was underway within.

A short distance from Block 32, our way was blocked by a lathi-wielding mob, also armed with bricks and rocks. But before they reached us, two policemen astride a motorcycle burst through them, coming from the direction to where we were headed. We flagged them down. Has any unrest been reported in Block 32, we asked the head constable driving the bike.

Smiling mockingly, he said shanti (peace) prevailed in the area. However, on insistent questioning, he gruffly admitted that two people ‘may’ have died there. Before they could be quizzed further, they sped away. We did not realize it then, but over the next few days as we witnessed the mayhem in Delhi, mostly in East Delhi, a host of similarly conniving police officials would use the word ‘shanti’ to define the surrounding chaos.[9] We also did not comprehend at the time that these two policemen from the local Kalyanpuri police station were in reality a reconnaissance team for mid-level local Congress party functionaries[10] who had  been tasked with determining whether the retaliatory Sikh killings in Block 32 were progressing as planned.

As we proceeded down the narrow brick-tiled road towards Block 32, our car was stopped by a mob that turned nasty and began stoning us when we asked to be let through. A spokesperson for the crowd, a short vicious-looking man dressed in a grubby white blood-splattered kurta and pyjamas, told us to leave or ‘face the consequences’ if we insisted on moving any further.

Block 32, he ominously said, was out of bounds.

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Night of the Dead and Living Dead

[On our turn to Trilokpuri] around 6 p.m. on 2 November.

We walked wordlessly, as if in a trance, in the light of a few hurriedly procured hurricane lanterns, down the two alleyways littered with bodies and body parts. It was impossible to place one’s foot flat on the ground for fear of stepping on either a dismembered body or hacked head or limb, all of which were swathed with the kesh of the dead. Both lanes were awash with blood, most of it a black coagulated mass by now, over which flies and winter insects laconically buzzed. It could not even flow into the drains, inefficient at the best of times, as they too were choked with human remains and clumps of hair.

Halfway down the lane sat a young polio-afflicted mother on the doorstep of her two-roomed tenement tightly clutching her infant daughter in numb silence, all emotion drained from her face and sightless eyes. Her blank, uncomprehending gaze took us in unseeingly, in what we took to be a plea for help. And, as one of us bent down to lift up her child, her emotionless look momentarily changed to one of unmitigated terror, and her paralysed limbs too seemed to recoil in sheer panic and alarm.

Some doors down the same street, an infant girl, stepping over the bodies of her father and three brothers and countless others lying in the street, clung helplessly to one of us reporters, pleading mutely for assistance. ‘Please take me home,’ she wailed, standing uncomprehendingly, thigh-deep in corpses. There was nowhere for her to go. She was already home; but it was one littered with the bloated bodies of her parents and older siblings, killed and partially burnt several hours earlier.

Read the full text and other stories about the peacemakers—activists, journalists, politicians, leaders, and regular citizens—who offer us hope that it is possible to rise above the hatred and violence that have characterized India for much of its life as an independent nation.

The Peace Maker by Ghazala Wahab

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Watch: The anti-Sikh Pogrom of 1984: Three Days of Horror

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[1] India: No Justice for 1984 Anti-Sikh Bloodshed. Human Rights Watch. 29 October 2014.

  38 years on, wounds not healed: Victims of 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The Tribune. 1 November 2022.

[2] Delhi Police officials were complicit in 1984 anti-Sikh riots: Cobrapost sting. India Today. 22 April 2014.

[3] 1984: Thirty-Five Years On, Sikh Survivors of India’s Deadliest Massacre Await Justice. The Wire. 31 October 2019.

[4] Wounds of 1984. Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta and Venkitesh Ramakrishnan. Frontline. 4 December 2009.

[5] Delhi Riots – 1984 Eyewitness Accounts. Gateway to Sikhism. Case 5.

[6] India: No Justice for 1984 Anti-Sikh Bloodshed. Human Rights Watch. 29 October 2014.

[7] In tinderbox Trilokpuri, residents cling to peace. Adrija Roychowdhury., Hindustan Times. 2 March 2020.

[8] Delhi Police officials were complicit in 1984 anti-Sikh riots: Cobrapost sting. India Today. 22 April 2014.

[9] Exposing the powerful and influential men behind 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms. Pav Singh. Daily O. 19 January 2018.

[10] 1984 riots: Witness alleges Delhi police helped rioters. Times of India. 15 November 2010.

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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 40^th anniversary of 1984 with survivor Bobby Friction of the BBC.²⁶

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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

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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

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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. ↩︎

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By Sanam Sutirath Wazir

Published by HarperCollins India, June 2024.
Book excerpt

Lakshmi Kaur, who has been living in Tilak Vihar for the past thirty years, was fifty-eight years old when I met her, but she looked much older. ‘Stress has aged me,’ she said. ‘My husband was killed right in front of my eyes and we were looted of all that we had. Our boys’ hair were cut off and our women were raped. They lit rubber tyres and threw them around our homes.
Thirty years have passed since then, but I still panic sometimes.’ Lakshmi’s words testify to the suffering that the victims of the 1984 massacres have had to endure.

‘Our families have been butchered,’ she continued. ‘We are still caged in the memories of 1984 while the people responsible are still free. Ask the women who had to jump over their family members’ dead bodies in order to save themselves, ask them what they feel when they remember such incidents. No one came to empathize with us in our time of suffering and grief. All I ask is for some closure. Can anyone direct me towards my dead husband’s
ashes? Where are his remains? Was he buried or was he cremated? Am I not a citizen? Who will answer my questions?’

Lakshmi Kaur’s questions reverberate across generations. The children of 1984 have grown up with trauma and violence being their first memories. With fathers and brothers lost to the killings, many of these children have had to abandon their studies and take on the roles of breadwinners. Indeed, the rate of school dropouts substantially increased in the aftermath of 1984, yet no official linkage has been made between the massacres and the number of children who dropped out. I filed an RTI seeking answers to these questions. I haven’t received a response so far.

The year 1984 remains a shadow on the lives of even those who were not old enough to remember the killings. Those who were babies in the winter of 1984, for instance, confess to hazy feelings of loss—they don’t remember their fathers. For their mothers, widowed in the pogrom, the insecurity and stigma of living in Widows’ Colony in Tilak Vihar has never left.

Following the tragic aftermath of the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre, Sikh children became targets of relentless racial slurs and discrimination. In the wake of the community’s profound loss,
these innocent children endured the torment of derogatory remarks and hateful taunts hurled at them solely because of their Sikh identity. These scars of massacre were not just physical but also deeply psychological, as these children faced a hostile environment where their very existence was met with scorn and prejudice. Such targeted verbal abuse inflicted further pain on a community already grappling with the trauma of violence and loss.

Raja, thirty-five years old, told me, ‘Everyone used to talk about their fathers in school. Other students used to call me Seekh Kebab. They would say, “He is from the fatherless Widows’
Colony.”’

These children, who are adults now, have lived with the perpetual fear that like their fathers, they too might be killed one day.

Surjeet Singh was seven years old in 1984. His mother dressed him in a frock and hid him inside their house in order to save his life. When I asked about his father, he started to sob. His father was killed in Sultanpuri, Block C. ‘I have studied till Class X, but I did not appear for the final matric examination. I was in depression throughout my schooldays. We never had enough money to support our education or even to buy books or uniform,’ said Surjeet. His childhood was traumatic and filled with the memories of his father’s brutal killing.

‘People used to donate clothes and we used them as our uniform.’ Surjeet was worried about the family’s financial condition and to support his mother, he started working at the age of fourteen.

‘The only thing I miss the most is the presence of my father in our lives. We have lived like orphans.’ He remembers when they were at the Farash Bazaar Relief Camp, six to seven families were accommodated in those small rooms. ‘Food was also not properly
available for all of us. Discussing 1984 is like opening a painful wound,’ he said.

‘All of a sudden, our lives were ruined and our family setup became unstable. If you lose someone in your family, it shakes everyone. Imagine, I have seen my father being burnt alive.

‘I was angry yet helpless. We are five siblings and our mother was the sole breadwinner in our family. Today, after thirty-two years, I am again helpless. I can’t provide for my kids. I have spent half my life fighting against these odds and my memories of 1984. I am undereducated, but I am trying my best to make ends meet.’

The current generation of youth living in Tilak Vihar have inherited the scars and trauma of the anti-Sikh massacre. Nothing much has changed here.

In 2019, when I visited Tilak Vihar, it was the second day of the three-day prayers that are held annually for the victims of the carnage. Women and children of the locality gather near the Tilak Vihar gurdwara and prepare langar for everyone who visits. There is a photo museum in the gurdwara that the survivors of 1984 built in the memory of those killed in the massacre. This museum is a bridge between the young and the old, and it is the only way
for a third generation to meet their relatives.

There were many different emotions on display when I visited the gurdwara. Some had tears streaming down their faces. Others had bowed their heads in tribute to the lost ones. In a bittersweet gesture, some of the younger generation were introducing their friends to photographs of their grandparents—people now gone but never forgotten.