1984: Unfading Scars


1984: Unfading Scars The massacre of nearly 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in November 1984 stands out as a blot among the events that mark the history of India after 1947. Riots had occurred in post-independent India before, but these had been in regions away from the centre. The violence that shook the capital and other cities over three days in the early winter of 1984 questioned the very notion of governance. The state and its institutions, which included an elected government and police, failed to protect people, either choosing to ignore or, as has been widely recorded in several instances, even conniving in the killing of its own citizens. It was a time when secularism shed all pretensions, as an easily identifiable minority was targeted in the vicious bloodletting that followed Indira Gandhi