A dead end in Delhi—November 1984

A friend’s courageous stand to protect a Sikh family during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi.

In the days following October 31, attacks that targetedthe Sikh community had begun in the capital.  | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStock

“They are in flames, they’reall burning!” screamed the man running by, his turban askew and his face blackened with ashes and cinders. Like an apparition from a dark fantasy, he crossed the road and continued in his flight, without a glance backward.

I came to an abrupt halt. I had set out on foot from home as on many a day, headed for my friend Damandeep’s house. But today was unlike any day ever before, after the assassination of the Prime Minister by her Sikh bodyguards. In the days following October 31, attacks that targetedthe Sikh community had begun in the capital. Gangs were still roaming the streets of Delhi, looking for Sikhs to punish and loot. This was one of the survivors, escaping in any way possible. The Sikh man’s fear and expression of dread were further reminders of the perils ahead.

To my dismay, Daman had declined when I urged him to leave his house for some days. There was his elderly grandmother to consider, besides his sense of pride and conviction that he would not be harmed in that locality in north Delhi, Vijay Nagar. Somehow the family had survived till today while staying indoors. Now there was a murmur in the wind that enough was enough, and that the time had come for decisive action. Even as deployment of the armed forces was further delayed, and the death toll climbed, mobs were moving into areas that had been calm till now.

The streets were mostly empty, as I once again began to slowly make my way across from the University area. Columns of smoke still ascended high in the air on every side, remnants of systematically planned arson attacks on Sikh businesses and homes.Sikh men were being burned,tyres placed around their necks and ignited with petrol, witnessed by the fleeing survivor. The city seemed strange, unrecognisable, as it reverted to violence reminiscent of the Partition era. While I was too young to have memories of that time, I had heard tales of atrocities shared by my father, who had migrated from west Punjab in 1947.

I carried a lathi as I strode onward. I’d had a fine teacher at the dojo where I studied judo. We had been instructed in the basic techniques of stick fighting, always with the proviso that the weapon was only to be used in self-defence. Grappling with this philosophically was difficult for me, especially given my background as a bit of a brawler during my schooldays. Sensei had spent hours conveying the roots of martial arts thinking, which I eventually grasped, or so I hoped. In the process I’dworked through some of the edginess of my adolescent years.

I had no clear idea of what awaited me at Daman’s home. Fellow feeling had drastically eroded with the build-up of tension in Punjab. Now there was an omnipresent sense of fear and apprehension in the city. Assumptions held dear since childhood no longer carried weight. The sense of inadequacy returned from time to time, as the body reminded me of its frailty. What could an individual do in the circumstances, given the spread of virulent hatred in recent times, enveloping even those who had seen such emotions playing outin earlier times. And such “righteous” emotion could so easily become the justification for widespread violence and law-breaking, with patronage from the highest level. Even so, the imperative to keep walking in the chosen direction remained with me, impossible to ignore.

Law enforcement or military oversight was conspicuous by its absence. Were all Sikhs now to be designated enemies of the state, targets of misplaced ire? It was difficult to fathom the abrupt change of outlook towards the community, always regarded as sharing ties of kinship, which had not come about overnight. I inhaled the acrid smell of burning rubber, and flinched at the sight of wisps of hair and beard blown about by the wind. Just a few days had elapsed; the city had metamorphosed into a necropolis.

Rumours about Sikh terrorists poisoning the water supply had begun to circulate. I understood that this was a canard, deliberately spread to reinforce growing distaste for the Sikhs, while strengthening the case for reprisals. Then there were the functionaries in bush shirts moving about from colony to colony with official records, including the census records. The mobs were quick to follow in the wake of these sinister figures wearing sunglasses. Hard to countenance, in the city in which I had grown up and found my way, despite hardships and our family’s initial financial insecurity as former migrants.

It was as if the tarmac road posed an impediment to movement forward, as it mirrored such dark thoughts. It would have been so much easier to follow father’s advice to remain at home until the danger had passed. But as I was well aware, it was not my family or community that was at risk. And Daman was a beloved friend, after all; our shared memories reached back to childhood days of truancy and mischief,leavened bySardarji jokes which Daman was the first to laugh uproariously at. Daman’s father and his family too had been uprooted from west Punjab, from a village not far from their family hometown, Bhera.

Perhaps it was the shared history of displacement that had initially brought us together. There was the mystery of the silence about those days of terror and flight across the Wagah border, a silence rarely broken in either family. As young friends we had tried to piece together a partial understanding about the past, reading the stories of Manto, Bedi, Ismat and others. In these stories, we had glimpsed the descent into depravity at the time, as well as the occasional glimmer of hope. Was the reluctance to confront the ghosts of the Partition era one of the reasons for the repeated flaring up of such emotions and the tendency to use violence to settle scores with the imagined enemy? Minority groups had been on the receiving end previously. Now it was again the turn of the Sikh community.

As I neared the gullies near Daman’s home, the changes wrought in the last few days became apparent, with barricades and uncollected garbage strewn around the area, the first the aftermath of majority paranoia and the other an outcome of civic breakdown. The municipality had forsaken any responsibility for trash collection, and the task of maintaining a level of civic cleanliness, weak at best, had been abandoned altogether. Those who were assigned such jobs, often from the Dalit community, were not to be seen. Not surprising, given the dreadful reports coming out of places like Trilokpuri, where Sikhs who had converted from lower castes lived in large numbers. The attacks were concentrated on such areas, and on somemiddle-class colonies at the outset.

Now the outliers were being sought out in a systematic way. Although there had been reports about the courageous peace marches conducted by the Nagarik Rahat Samiti, with its base in Lajpat Nagar, the tide was yet to turn.

As I skirted the piles of rubbish I kept a lookout for signs of trouble. It was early in the day, and the mobs seemed to prefer the evening now that the more obvious targets had been torched and looted. The lane in Vijay Nagar where Daman lived was a cul-de-sac, his home almost at the end. It was a relief to be there at last, to see the house securely locked from inside. There were no identifiers that might mark the religious identity of the occupants, but I was well aware of the ugly mood that prevailed, making it impossible for Sikhs to escape detection, especially if they were longtime residents.

I took up a position next door where I could get a clear view of the entrance to the house. No need to alert Daman and his family, who must already be extremely anxious. The modest dwelling was two stories high, with a small garden in front. The landlord lived on the top floor but had been away for some time. The garden was carefully maintained, despite the perennial shortage of water in the capital city, with a few rows of desi gulab, not yet in season.

A scene from Delhi during the anti-Sikh riots of November 1984. The picture shows buildings which were set on fire by mobs. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives/ GAMMA

My solitary vigil continued through the day. I had never experienced such silence in the big city before this, barring the sound of war cries from afar, and the occasional explosions coming from gas cylinders once the fires invaded the kitchens from which the occupants had fled or had been brutally evicted. I found a place of shade under the awning of the neighbouring house’s verandah, locked for now, even as the November sun beat down through the long afternoon. I had long since ceased to think about food and drink, all attention consumed by the slightest movement in my field of vision. Sensei had trained us students well in the arts of meditation and concentrated attention. There was consciousness of the body, the rhythm of breathing and exhaling, and with this an awareness of the surroundings in minute detail. There were sparrows playing,although diminished in number, and kites wheeled ominously high in the sky as they celebrated the surfeit of carrion that had come their way. Scattered clouds drifted slowly above this secluded neighbourhood, while the stench from the nearby ganda nala was unmistakable when the wind direction changed.

Who knew that such innocuous colonies designed for the resettlement of refugees from the west Punjab region would one day become killing fields? It was difficult to wrap my mind around the transformation of such colonies into places of risk and danger for those I had grown up regarding as close confidants, like Daman. He always had a stubborn streak, the Surd never backed down in fights in the schoolyard. Later, our group had even faced down goons who had come from their haunt in nearby Chandrawal to rig college and university elections. But this was a different situation, unprecedented for both of us, as if we had entered a nightmare from which there was seemingly no waking.

Eventually the sun relented and began its descent to the horizon, obscured by high-rises and the urban sprawl. Now was the time for heightened vigilance in the gully leading up to the end of the street. As if following an infernal timetable, here came the forerunners, scouting the scene, with the mob behind carrying weapons like knives, makeshift sticks and chains and a few canisters of kerosene. At the end of the cluster of young and middle-aged men, were the specialists, directing the action.

No further need for concealment. I stepped out of the shade of the awning, taking the lathi, entered Daman’s wooden gate and stood on the path leading up to the entrance. The scouts were not far, and I could sense a flurry of communication reaching back to the end of the mob. One of the scouts at the head approached.

“Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“What are you doing here?”

“A friend’s duty.”

“Best that you leave now, friend.”

“Not going to happen. See this lathi? Another good friend. Now it is up to you to decide whether you wish to come one by one or all at once. Not a single person in this house is going to be hurt today, while I am still standing.”

“Leave now. This concerns us and the Sikhs. They will be taught a lesson today.”

“My lathi has taught a few lessons in its time, and I know how to wield it when the need arises. Come and test your strength, if you are so keen.”

The scout retreated to consult with the rest of the mob and the specialists at the back. I could hear the sound of animated deliberations, with some aggressive hand gestures accompanying the heated debate.

Now was the moment of truth. I knew that I could not withstand a concerted onrush of purposeful attackers, even though I could take a few of them down. I steadied my breathing, focussing on the intake of air, poised on the balls of my feet, adrenaline beginning to pump in my veins. I held the lathi in the prescribed position, hands clasping wood in line with the discipline of stick fighting in which I had been trained. Was it worth it to this rag-tag lot moving around restlessly, the risk of injury or even death, with just one Sikh family as eventual reward for the effort? Mobs were made of hotheads as well as cowards, and the anti-Sikh violence had been orchestrated in a cold-blooded and vindictive fashion so far. The heated passions of a full-blown riot were missingand the violence was unidirectional. The question, this evening, was whether the balance would tilt one way or the other.

“Better quit now while you are still ahead. You have made your point, now go home, boss,” came from one of the middle-aged men in the front rank, looking uneasy with his distended paunch and holding his garden rake as tightly as possible.

“I am here to spend the evening with my friends, I am not going anywhere. Ever heard about the dharma of friendship?”

The group retired a few steps to confer again.

I heard the sound of the main door opening behind me. Glancing back, I saw Daman looking out. I signaled to him to stay within.

“I should be with you…” said Daman.

“Don’t come out now, it might provoke them. This is my concern. Remember my martial arts training. Think of your family.”

This exchange seemed to have been overheard by the nearest aggressors. The whispers became more agitated and the body language began to alter.

As I stood there facing the now uncertain participants in a would-be pogrom, there was a point of stillness, a quiet pool within. The assembled attackers, the loosely held weapons in their hands, and behind me the presence of Daman at his most vulnerable, all seemed to be at a strange, even uncanny distance, as if in another zone in time and space.

The mob began to melt away, wraiths in the twilight, and with this came a gradual restoration of a sense of the here-and-now. I began to feel the accumulated tiredness of hours of anticipation, of waiting for the conflict to come, deeper than muscle fatigue, rising to the surface.

Daman stepped out of the doorway, as if someone had freed him from an occult spell.

Notwithstanding this moment of respite, the realisation began to well up that unlike in a fairytale, in the wake of such attrition, time might never flow again in quite the same way. In the dim light cast by the overhead bulb across the dead end in Vijay Nagar, Daman’s gaze met mine. Neither of us spoke. 

The miasma from those days in November 1984 would suffuse our lives for many years to come. 

*This story is dedicated to my uncle, Sanjeev Rampal, who knows the tale’s origins well.

Tarun K. Saint is an independent scholar and anthologist. His interests include the literature of Partition, science fiction, and detective fiction. He is the author of Witnessing Partition: Memory, History, Fiction (2nd edition, 2020), based on his doctoral dissertation. He edited Bruised Memories: Communal Violence and the Writer (2002) and co-edited (with Ravikant) Translating Partition (2001). He also co-edited Looking Back: India’s Partition, 70 Years On (2017), with Rakhshanda Jalil and Debjani Sengupta. He has most recently edited the two-volume Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction (2024).