 Summary of this article
- Survivors of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi’s Tilak Vihar recall decades of loss and survival.
- Women narrate stories of violence, resilience and rebuilding life in the widows’ colony.
- Justice for the 1984 massacre remains incomplete as key trials continue four decades later.
In the autumn of 1984, Delhi’s streets burned with a fury that left an indelible scar on India’s conscience. Following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31 that year, organised pogroms targeting Sikhs swept through the capital and beyond. Over 2,700 Sikhs were killed in Delhi, leaving over 1300 widows and 4000 orphaned. Homes were looted, gurdwaras set ablaze, and families torn apart in a wave of violence that survivors describe as a betrayal of the state itself. Forty years later, the wounds remain raw for survivors.
As The Tree Fell
“I did not know who Indira Gandhi was, I rarely ever left my house to know what even Trilokpuri looked like,” recalls Harleen Kaur (name changed), now in her late-fifties, seated on the cot in a flat the government bequeathed her 38 years ago. She still fondly remembers her jhuggi that burned down in Trilokpuri of East Delhi in 1984.
Harleen Kaur, 17 and newly married, lived in Trilokpuri, one of the first sites to be hit by the waves of mobs that dispersed across Delhi. She describes him as a tall built man who abhorred violence. He left with his truck at four in the morning on November first, but came back early with a foreboding message, “they’re killing all the Sardars.”
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“He asked me to make tea, and left the house to buy vegetables. I made rotis, rotis he never got to eat,” says Kaur. Her husband rushed back, gripped her arm, and entrusted her to his sister: “Didi, ye meri amanat hai, isko bachake rakhna (Protect her, sister, for she is my valuable possession).” Those were his last words. For three days, Kaur knew nothing of his fate. Then her mother-in-law recounted seeing him hacked in half by a mob, his body smeared across the road; she gathered his remains in her lap and wailed all night. Desperate for safety, Kaur and her sister-in-law hid as another relative was dragged away.
 Laxmi Kaur details her memory of the events listed in the book.
Laxmi Kaur details her memory of the events listed in the book.
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