Article by Journalist Rahul Pandita Originally Published in “Open Magzine” on 06 March 2019
Since November 1984, Gurinderjit Singh has avoided walking past a particular street in the Kanpur neighborhood where he lives with his remaining family. On that street, on November 1, 1984, a murderous mob burned his two brothers alive using wood from a pushcart they had torn apart, even as Singh and his relatives begged for mercy from a short distance away.
“I did not even find their bodies,” he says, rubbing his temple in pain. “All I found at the site was one brother’s ‘Kara’ and the key my other brother carried.”
Gurinderjit Singh is part of a group of Sikhs gathered outside a small gurudwara in the center of the city’s Guru Nanak auto market. Most of them manage businesses here; many have known each other for years. They greet one another quietly, conversing softly in Punjabi.
“It has been 35 years, but we are now hopeful we might get some justice and closure,” says Ajeet Singh Bhatia, general secretary of the market union. Their renewed hope stems from the Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to form a four-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the 1984 Sikh pogrom in Kanpur, which occurred in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
Bhatia gestures toward a dilapidated building across the narrow road, its exterior blackened by smoke. “Saanu yaad dilaan waste (To remind us),” he says, his head trembling slightly.
Yet none of them truly need the building for reminders. Their lives are divided into two distinct periods: ‘Chauraasi ke pehle, Chauraasi ke baad’ (Before 1984, after 1984). When Indira Gandhi was declared dead in Delhi on October 31, 1984, Sikhs immediately became targets, starting right outside the All India Institute of Medical Sciences where she had been admitted. The violence soon spread to other parts of India.
In Kanpur, the attacks began on November 1, lasting two-and-a-half days and resulting in the deaths of 127 Sikhs. Mobs, often led by local politicians, roamed the city targeting Sikhs and their properties. Vilayati Ram Katyal, a member of the 1985 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, was a key perpetrator on Sikh Pogrom in Kanpur, which was later assassinated by Sikh Kharkus on April 5, 1988.
Much of the Guru Nanak market was burned on November 1. Kanwaljit Singh, like many others, preserved a section of his shop, Goodwill Motors, which was completely gutted in 1984. At the time, he was 28, running a successful auto spare parts business. When the mobs began systematically targeting Sikhs, he hid his family on the second floor of their home in Kanpur’s Lajpat Nagar. He asked his childhood friend, a Hindu named Sushil Kumar Sikka, to watch over the shop in the hope that the mob would leave it alone.
Meanwhile, a mob appeared at Kanwaljit’s house, torching the ground floor and several vehicles parked on the porch. “There was so much smoke upstairs where my family and I were hiding that we could not even see each other,” he recalls.
He and his family managed to escape. But his uncle’s family was not as fortunate. The uncle, Sardar Amrik Singh, had a daughter scheduled to be married in just 15 days. Her maternal grandparents had arrived from America with numerous imported gifts. “They proudly showed these things to their neighbors, and that’s where the information got leaked,” Kanwaljit Singh says. A mob that attacked their house had prior knowledge of these “imported Sammaan”, and they also planned to abduct the bride-to-be.
“They snatched my husband from my hands. I initially believed they were only interested in looting and would spare the men. But when I stepped out of the house, I saw him lying in a pool of blood,” says Harmahinder Kaur.
As the terrified family bolted their doors, the mob fired through the windows. Amrik Singh’s father-in-law and one son were killed, while another was left in a pool of blood with three bullet injuries. Amrik Singh’s wife made their daughter lie between the bodies of her grandfather and brother, then opened the door. According to Kanwaljit Singh, she told the attackers that the girl they wanted to kidnap had also died, urging them just to take whatever valuables remained.
The rest of the family was saved when the injured son hurried to a police station, where a sympathetic policeman provided him with a jeep. He then headed to another station to gather army personnel, who arrived in time to rescue those inside the house. Later at the hospital, Sushil Kumar Sikka tended to the wounded. However, he could not protect Kanwaljit Singh’s shop.
“They [the mob] had a complete list of properties owned by Sikhs. They warned me to leave or they would throw me into the flames,” Sikka says.
Kanwaljit Singh’s cousin’s son, Anshdeep Singh, who survived three bullets and was born in Ludhiana, is now part of former US President Donald Trump’s security fleet.
“My entire life was destroyed,” says Kanwaljit Singh. “It took me 20 years to get things back on track.”
For some victims, however, all sense of direction was lost during those two days. Manjit Kaur, Gurinderjit Singh’s wife, begins to weep at the mere mention of 1984. She recalls that the entire family had been together on November 1, planning to visit her younger brother-in-law’s future in-laws; he was to be engaged in two months. As she went into the kitchen to prepare tea, a group of Sikh neighbors arrived. “They asked for the three brothers, saying they were organizing a peace march,” she recalls.
The tea remained on the stove as the brothers left. On the street that Gurinderjit Singh now refuses to cross, the group encountered a mob. “Some in the group suggested that we approach them in strength so they would think twice about regrouping to attack us,” says Mokam Singh, who was 24 at the time and part of the march.
“We looked on from a distance. We spread our chunnis on the ground, begging them to spare our men. They were shouting: ‘Come here, we will kill you all,’” says Manjit Kaur.
As they got closer, someone in the Hindu locality fired upon the group, fearing the Sikhs were attacking. The bullet struck Gurinderjit Singh’s older brother in the leg. With him wounded, everyone else ran, but his younger brother stayed behind to help. Both were captured by the mob.
The women, including Manjit Kaur, rushed to the spot. “We could see them from a distance, but the mob kept hurling abuses,” she says. In front of their eyes, the two brothers were set ablaze.
The elder brother’s wife was paralyzed by grief soon after and died a few years later. Manjit Kaur raised their three children, then aged seven, five, and three.
“My father gave money to the police, pleading, ‘Please help me retrieve my sons’ bodies,’” recalls Gurinderjit Singh’s son, Gurpreet, who runs a mobile repair shop outside the house. “They took the money but did nothing.”
Mokam Singh, who runs a transport business, was expecting a child in 1984. His family had moved to Kanpur from Pakistan during Partition, in which he lost several relatives, including his grandmother.
He lived in a predominantly Sikh area. On October 31, as news of Indira Gandhi’s death spread, the police initially escorted Sikhs safely to their homes. But something changed on November 1. “We saw the police turning away,” he says.
The violence first erupted on the outskirts of Kanpur, with horrifying stories filtering in—of 11 members of one family killed in one incident, and 13 in another. From the night of November 1, Singh and his pregnant wife hid in a small brick enclosure on their rooftop. Rumors circulated that buses full of rioters were being organized to target Sikhs. “We spent 15 nights in hiding,” he says.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s speech referencing “When a mighty tree falls, the earth around it is bound to shake,” Sikh communities grew even more fearful. They started leaving Kanpur, with the majority heading to Punjab. “They sold their property for next to nothing and left,” Singh notes.
His two brothers relocated to Punjab soon after. “For weeks after the carnage, people would taunt us on trains, shouting aggressively, ‘Oye Sardarji!’” he recalls. Even once the violence subsided, senior police officials declined to reassure them. “I spoke to the local district police chief, and he said, ‘We cannot guarantee your safety.’”
Those who left included Iqbal Singh, who was just 18 during the pogrom. After his shop was looted, he moved to Punjab, returning six months later when he struggled to adjust there, and his business wouldn’t take off. “It was horrible. They took our washing machine and refrigerator. Later we realized they had no idea how to use them because these appliances were still uncommon in 1984. We found they had stored cattle fodder in the washing machine and old clothes in the refrigerator,” he says.
His friend, Kamaljeet Singh, nods. Along with four family members, he hid in the water tank of their house for two-and-a-half days, from the morning of November 1 until the afternoon of November 3. “We drank water directly from the tank just to survive,” he says.
Some shops owned by Sikhs—landmarks in the city—were destroyed in 1984. Many people still remember them like fragments of a distant dream: Kwality store, Chhabra electronics, and Arora general store.
The day the Kwality store burned, Harmahinder Kaur, then 34, was having breakfast with her husband, Bhagat Singh, 35, and other family members in Sharda Nagar. Her brother had come from Punjab for a visit. Suddenly, a mob attacked their house.
“They snatched [my husband] from my hands,” she says. Initially, she thought they just wanted to loot, and the men might be spared. Minutes later, she emerged to find him lying in a pool of blood, stabbed multiple times. “He looked at me with one eye; the other was covered in blood,” she recalls.
They rushed him to the hospital, but there were no experienced doctors available. “They said he needed a blood transfusion, so we ran to the blood bank, but it was closed,” she says.
Now (2019) that an SIT has been constituted, the biggest challenge for victims is to identify the perpetrators. “It’s not like Delhi, where people like Sajjan Kumar were identified from Day One,” says Mokam Singh. “I can still see the face of the main assailant,” adds Harmahinder Kaur.
One politician who allegedly led some mobs, Vilayati Ram Katyal, a Congress legislator, was shot dead by Sikh Kharkus in April 1988.
In 2014, Mokam Singh filed an RTI application with various police stations in Kanpur to learn the status of cases registered in 1984. While some stations did not respond, one (Nazirabad) claimed that no killings had occurred in its jurisdiction. “That is simply untrue,” says Singh. “We have identified a few individuals, and we hope survivors can say, ‘Yes, these are the people.’”
There are plenty of testimonies. At the Guru Nanak market, a man named Gurmeet Singh mentions his aunt’s two sons, who were burned with wood from their own dining table. In the Daboli area, Avtar Singh, a shopkeeper, lost four brothers, a sister, and both parents.
“1984 was worse than anything Aurangzeb did to our ancestors,” says Mokam Singh.
