Forty years ago, Delhi witnessed some of the worst violence since 1947. It was the events of October-November 1984, that prompted Urvashi Butalia to revisit the Partition of 1947 and to excavate the history of the violence that was perpetrated towards women. Both 1947 and 1984 have left indelible scars on the people and region. The opening in her book, The Other Side of Silence (1998), is worth quoting detail:

“Then, in October 1984 the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her security guards, both Sikhs. For days afterwards Sikhs all over India were attacked in an orgy of violence and revenge. Many homes were destroyed and thousands died. In the outlying suburbs of Delhi more than three thousand were killed, often by being doused in kerosene and then set alight. They died horrible, macabre deaths. Black burn marks on the ground showed where their bodies had lain. The government – now headed by Mrs Gandhi’s son Rajiv remained indifferent, but several citizens’ groups came together to provide relief, food and shelter. I was among the hundreds of people who worked in these groups. Every day, while we were distributing food and blankets, compiling lists of the dead and missing, and helping with compensation claims, we listened to the stories of the people who had suffered. Often older people, who had come to Delhi as refugees in 1947, would remember that they had been through a similar terror before. ‘We didn’t think it could happen to us in our own country,’ they would say. This is like Partition again.” (Page 4-5) “It took 1984 to make me understand how ever-present Partition was in our lives too, to recognize that it could not be so easily put away inside the covers of history books. I could no longer pretend that this was a history that belonged to another time, to someone else.” (page 6)

But history keeps repeating itself, again and again. In 1984, people still had fresh memories of 1947, and so those three days of carnage evoked the spectre of Partition once again. Yet each time this happens, there is collective amnesia and each time there is no justice for the “chief sufferers”, the women who bear the brunt of political-communal violence. Below are a selection of articles and abstracts available on the subject and organised chronologically. At the end, there is a recent documentary by The Quint on “The Kaurs of 1984” which brings to the fore the accounts of the women who endured this and who have continued their fight for justice. .

The Justice G.T. Nanavati commission was a one-man commission, a retired Judge of the Supreme Court of India, appointed by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in May 2000, to investigate the “killing of innocent Sikhs” during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The report was finally published in 2005.

Mander, Harsh. “Conflict and Suffering: Survivors of Carnages in 1984 and 2002.” Economic and Political Weekly (2010): 57-65. Even through these were separated by 18 years of history, there is tragically a great deal in common between the communal massacres that played out on the streets of Delhi in 1984 and in settlements and bye-lanes across Gujarat in 2002. This paper documents some of the findings of the research conducted with survivors of these two major pogroms over more than a year in the widows’ colony established by the Delhi government in Tilak Vihar and in four of the worst-hit district of Gujarat. It examines the paths of suffering, renegotiation and healing separately for the direct victims and the vicariously affected.

Kaur, Ravinder. “Wound, Waste, History Rereading 1984.” Economic and Political Weekly (2014): 34-38. Wounds are expected to heal. Our very conception of victims and victimhood is based on this hopeful axiom. But not all wounds heal, some remain in a constant state of decay, degenerate, and ultimately risk turning into waste too. It is this possibility of waste that this article explores. The 1984 violence is one of those historical wounds that has neither faded from public memory nor fully healed. At the heart of this unhealing wound is the question of justice that has long been denied to the victims. The judicial affidavits prepared in early 1985 not only narrate the violence that unfolded systematically, but three decades later testify to the inability of the state apparatus to help heal its wounded citizens

Saluja, Anshu. 2015. “Engaging with Women’s Words and Their Silences: Mapping 1984 and Its Aftermath.” Sikh Formations 11 (3): 343–65. doi:10.1080/17448727.2015.1102554. In studying the 1984 pogrom and its aftermath, I have attempted to capture the voices of women of succeeding generations of the victim families and to gauge some sense of the arduous path which these women have had to tread on. In the present paper, I have examined and assessed the ways and means which women survivors of the 1984 pogrom have relied on to cope with their sense of trauma and hurt, and to negotiate everyday existence. In accounts seeking to document and map the experiences of trauma survivors, the themes which they raise and the issues that they speak of are taken into cognisance, while the gaps in their speech often remain unnoticed and unexplained. But these silences and gaps need to be recognised and highlighted as much as the speech of the survivors. Women survivors of 1984 also do not speak of their own agency, leaving it mostly unarticulated in words. Gauging a sense of this requires going beyond the words that are spoken and attempting, even if tentatively, to unravel and interpret the silences.

Kaur, Ishmeet. “Narrating the Experience: Oral Histories and Testimonies of the 1984 anti-Sikh Carnage Victims.” Journal of Punjab Studies 23 (2016). http://giss.org/jsps_vol_23/6_kaur.pdf This essay attempts to understand the word “testimony” and asks how oral histories can also become testimonial. It considers how new histories can unfold from oral accounts of the victims in the context of 1984 anti-Sikh carnage in Delhi. It argues that formal testimonies may misrepresent events by diminishing the gravity of the violence experienced by the victims, while oral narrations may be considered useful historical sources. As a case study, we consider selected affidavits submitted to Nanavati Commission in 2000, as well as oral narratives of the survivors recorded during a field visit to the Tilak Vihar widow’s colony in April 2015.

Arora, Kamal. “Legacies of violence: Sikh women in Delhi’s” Widow Colony”.” PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2017. https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0343994 This dissertation examines how Sikh women who survived the anti-Sikh massacre in 1984 in Delhi, India, cope with the long-term legacies of violence and trauma amid the backdrop of the urban space of the city. After the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, approximately thirty-five hundred Sikh men were killed in October and November 1984. Many of the survivors, Sikh widows and their families, were relocated shortly after to the “Widow Colony,” a designated slum also known as Tilak Vihar, within the boundary of Tilak Nagar in West Delhi, as a means of rehabilitation and compensation. The work arises from fieldwork carried out between December 2012 and March 2014. I begin by discussing in depth the space of the Widow Colony and its relation to the rest of the city of Delhi. I then analyze the events of the 1984 massacre through the narratives of Sikh widows and how they remember their experiences of violence. I discuss how violence can have long-term ramifications for everyday life in arenas such as kinship networks, economic stability, health and wellness, and social life. These experiences are further amplified by gender, caste, and class. I also examine the impact of the stigma of widowhood in this community. This research seeks to interrogate how memories of violence inform, and are constituted by, embodied, affective practices carried out in a gendered space produced by the state. I argue that Sikh widows cope with long-term trauma by creating new forms of sociality and memory through their everyday lives and religious practices in the Widow Colony. The memory of the 1984 violence figures heavily among the Sikh diaspora. Thus, I also explore the relationship between the Widow Colony and Sikhs in the transnational arena.

Arora, Kamal, ““I Get Peace:” Gender and Religious Life in a Delhi Gurdwara” Religions 11, no. 3: 135 2020. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11030135 In October and November of 1984, after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, approximately 3500 Sikh men were killed in Delhi, India. Many of the survivors—Sikh widows and their kin—were relocated thereafter to the “Widow Colony”, also known as Tilak Vihar, within the boundary of Tilak Nagar in West Delhi, as a means of rehabilitation and compensation. Within this colony lies the Shaheedganj Gurdwara, frequented by widows and their families. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I explore the intersections between violence, widowhood, and gendered religious practice in this place of worship. Memories of violence and experiences of widowhood inform and intersect with embodied religious practices in this place. I argue that the gurdwara is primarily a female place; although male-administered, it is a place that, through women’s practices, becomes a gendered counterpublic, allowing women a place to socialize and heal in an area where there is little public space for women to gather. The gurdwara has been re-appropriated away from formal religious practice by these widows, functioning as a place that enables the subversive exchange of local knowledges and viewpoints and a repository of shared experiences that reifies and reclaims gendered loss.

Agarwal, Yamini. Urban Marginalization, Exclusion and Education-the Widows’ Colony in Delhi. Bonn: Max-Weber-Stiftung-Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, 2020. This paper examines the many exclusions and marginalities experienced in urban neighbourhoods which are formed as a result of communal violence. It draws on an ethnographic study of Tilak Vihar, also known as the Colony of Widows, where the survivors of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence were resettled. By examining their life histories, the paper explores how women survivors have been caught up in a vicious circle of poverty and lack of educational and occupational opportunities due to their location in a highly stigmatized and gendered space. This has affected the education of their children, as reflected in limited school choices and poverty forcing young people to drop out of schools to fend for their families. The paper also looks into the role of community groups in Tilak Vihar, which have become the main source of support for families given the retreat of the state from this space. The paper underscores the everyday violence that survivors experience due to their gender and spatial location.

Saluja, Anshu. “Gendered Erasures in Memory: Silencing of Cases of Sexual Violence in 1984.” Sikh Formations 20 (3): 149–63, 2024. doi:10.1080/17448727.2024.2384843. In this paper, I have addressed the issue of sexual violence in the specific context of the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage in Delhi. Though a significant number of cases of sexual assault took place in Delhi in November 1984, they have largely remained shrouded in obscurity. I have attempted to analyse the reasons, prompting a near total silence on these instances. In undertaking this inquiry, the paper reflects on the selective, and often disempowering, nature of memory-making and preservation. It goes on to ask the critical question: what constitutes legitimate memory?

Kaur, Jasleen, and Vinita Mohindra. “Spectral Wounds of 1984: Sikh Massacre in Harpreet Kaur’s The Widow Colony: India’s Unsettled Settlement.” Sikh Formations, March, 1–11, 2024. doi:10.1080/17448727.2024.2321416. In 1984, Sikhs were massacred following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Cultural expressions attempt to foreground the haunting legacies of this genocide. This paper explores Harpreet Kaur’s documentary, The Widow Colony- India’s Unsettled Settlement which unfolds as trauma testimony of the understudied conflict, contextualizing the spectral wounds of Sikh widows and their struggle for survival. Using hauntology and postmemory as critical lens, this article examines the spectral wounds of 1984 Sikh genocide. It also focuses on the gendered dimensions of violence against Sikh women by enunciating their doubly victimized sensibility through their experiences of shame, trauma and suffering.

Kaur, Jasleen, and Vinita Mohindra. “(Un)Dead Past of 1984 Sikh Massacre in Jaspreet Singh’s Helium.” Sikh Formations, September, 1–19, 2024. doi:10.1080/17448727.2024.2408859. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination followed the 1984 state-sanctioned massacre of Sikhs. This historical violence haunts survivors, and its mediation in cultural texts reshapes the interplay between history and memory, voicing forgotten narratives. However, the complex historical agency and collective silences on the 1984 Sikh genocide leave its cultural and literary representations undertheorized. Jaspreet Singh’s Helium (2013), serving as a cultural archive, delves into the haunting legacies of this genocide, highlighting its role in memorializing historical loss. Applying hauntology and Agamben’s homo sacer, this article investigates how spectral wounds reveal dystopic violence, excluding Sikhs from legal protection.