Engaging with Women's Words and their Silences

Abstract

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.

Notes

1 Who Are the Guilty: Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November, People's Union for Democratic Rights – People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUDR-PUCL), 1984.

2 Newspapers which should have worked to dispel the widely circulating rumours, intended to engender an anti-Sikh sentiment, at times became instruments for spreading them. For instance on 3 November 1984, The Hndustan Times, a national daily, reported: ‘ … mobs (read violent Sikhs) entered into some colonies of south Delhi around midnight and attacked a women's college in the North in retaliation for a three day orgy of violence’.

3 1984 Carnage in Delhi: A Report on the Aftermath, Delhi: People's Union for Democratic Rights, November 1992. The estimate that 2733 lives were lost in Delhi in the 1984 violence was originally given by the Ahuja Committee report. This committee under R. K. Ahuja, the then Home Secretary of Delhi, submitted its report in 1987.

4 For explorations into histories of inter-community violence, it is extremely important to note the difference among various forms of ethnic conflicts which erupt from time to time – riots, pogroms and genocides. Paul Brass discusses ‘the production of riots and pogroms’ in significant detail. ‘The first carries the appearance of spontaneous, intergroup mass action, the second of deliberately organised-and especially- state-supported killings and the destruction of property of a targeted group.’ As per Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), genocide refers to a series of acts intended ‘to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. Brass illustrates how attempts are often made in India to project a systematic and well-planned pogrom targeting a specific community or group as a riot which is actually a more or less equal confrontation between two contending parties. For further reference, see Paul R. Brass, Forms of Collective Violence: Riots, Pogroms and Genocide in Modern India (Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2006), 1–9.

5 Interview with members of SEWA 84, whose names I do not have the permission to disclose, on 23/10/2013 at 11 am at Tilak Nagar Gurudwara. It is an organisation which works on issues of health care and education for 1984 survivors and their descendants. In Delhi it functions from the Tilak Nagar Gurudwara and its members are mainly Sikhs. They are employed in different sectors and volunteer for this organisation on a part-time basis. The donations which are collected from the Sangat (Sikh congregations) in UK Gurudwaras for 1984 victims and survivors are managed and disbursed by this organisation.

6 I have altered the names of the survivors whose narratives I have referred to in the course of the paper, in order to protect their identity and ensure their privacy. The names of the activists whose testimonies I have used here, have been retained unchanged.

7 Interview with Ms Charan Kaur on 26/10/2013 at 3 pm at her residence in Raghubir Nagar, Delhi. In 1984 she was a resident of Tirlokpuri. She lost 12 members of her family including her husband in the pogrom. Presently, she works as a nurse in a government hospital.

8 Fiona C. Ross, “Women's Testimony in the First Five Weeks of Public Hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” in Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery, ed. Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 250–279.

9 Veena Das, “The Event and the Everyday,” Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: California University Press, 2006), 7.

10 Madhu Kiswar, “Gangster Rule: The Massacre of the Sikhs,” Manushi 25 (November 25, 1984): 10–37.

11 Interview with Ms Jaya Srivastava on 12/08/2013 at 11 am at her residence in Gurgaon, Haryana. In the immediate aftermath of the 1984 pogrom, she coordinated the relief camp at Nanaksar Gurudwara off Wazirabad bridge across the Yamuna in Delhi. She is a social activist who has worked with a number of NGOs, including Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education, which she headed for nearly two decades starting from 1988.

12 Interview with Ms Rani Kaur on 30/10/2013 at 11 am at her residence in Tilak Vihar. In 1984, she was a resident of Block 32, Tirlokpuri. She lost 10 members of her family including her father and brother in the violence.

13 Interview with Ms Charan Kaur.

14 Charan Kaur narrated that her third and youngest child, who was barely a month, old got separated from her for three days during the violence but he was fortunately saved by another woman and was reunited with his mother somewhat later.

15 Interview with Ms Charan Kaur.

16 Interview with Ms Jaya Jaitley on 14/04/2013 at 4 pm at her daughter's residence in Nizamuddin, Delhi. She was the coordinator of the Farsh Bazar relief camp, the largest in Delhi, set up in the immediate aftermath of the 1984 pogrom. She is a social activist and writer who has been involved in Indian politics.

17 Uma Chakravarti, “Victims, ‘Neighbours’, and ‘Watan’: Survivors of Anti-Sikh Carnage of 1984,” Economic and Political Weekly 29 (42) (1994): 2722–2726.

18 Interview with Prof. Radhika Chopra on 06/01/2014 at 11 am at her office in Delhi School of Economics. She became involved in the relief operations, even before the violence had subsided. Currently, she is a Professor of Sociology at Delhi University.

19 Emma Tarlo has discussed at length how such forced clearances are carried out. For further reference see Emma Tarlo, “Welcome to History: A Resettlement Colony in the Making,” in Delhi: Urban Space and Human Destinies, ed. Veronique Dupont, Emma Tarlo, and Denis Vidal (Delhi: Centre de Sciences Humaines, 2000), 51–69.

20 Interview with Mr Santok Singh on 02/03/2014 at 11 am at his residence in Tilak Vihar, Delhi. In 1984 he lived in Block 32, Tirlokpuri. He lost his two brothers in the violence and was among the few male survivors from that area.

21 Chakkaravarty, “Victims, Neighbours, and Watan,” 2722–2726.

22 Ross, “Women's Testimony,” 250–279.

23 Deepak Mehta and Roma Chatterjee, “Boundaries, Names, Alterities: A Case Study of a “Communal Riot” in Dharavi, Bombay,” in World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery, ed. Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 201–249.

24 Interview with Mr Sohan Singh and Mr Gurpal Singh on 08/12/2013 at 11 am at the former's shop in Tilak Vihar, Delhi. In 1984 Sohan Singh stayed in Madangir, a resettlement colony in South Delhi. He lost many of his relatives including his grandfather, uncle and brothers-in-law in the violence. Gurpal Singh was a resident of Tirlokpuri then. He remained in hiding for two days to save himself and fortunately survived the attacks.

25 Interview with Mr Rahul Roy on 31/08/2013 at 11 am at his residence in Gulmohar Park, Delhi. He worked as a volunteer at the Farsh Bazar relief camp established at Shahadra, Delhi in the aftermath of the 1984 violence. Now he is an independent filmmaker.

26 Interview with Ms Jaya Jaitley.

27 Interview with Ms Charan Kaur.

28 Interview with Ms Charan Kaur.

29 Interview with Mr Santok Singh.

30 Interview with Ms Rani Kaur.

31 Interview with Ms Hardeep Kaur on 30/10/2013 at 12 pm in Tilak Vihar, Delhi at the residence of her friend Rani Kaur, who was also one of my respondents. In 1984, Hardeep Kaur was a resident of Tirlokpuri. She lost 11 members of her family (including her father) in the violence. She was about 15 years old then. Now she resides in Tilak Vihar and is a vocal participant in protest rallies and demonstrations voicing survivor demands and grievances.

32 Interview with Ms Charan Kaur.

33 Many of the survivors have over the years been able to secure compensation packages ranging from 10,000 to over 3 Lakh rupees. This to an extent has been made possible by court directives. Judgements, considerably enhancing the compensations in case of death and injury due to 1984 violence, have been delivered. For instance, the Delhi High Court on 4 July 1996 ordered the State Government to pay a compensation of Rs 3.5 Lakhs each, to the widows and families of those killed in the 1984 violence in the capital following Indira Gandhi's assassination. This judgement was delivered in response to a petition filed by Bhajan Kaur, a widow of the 1984 violence. Similarly, in response to a petition filed by another survivor Manjit Singh Sawhney, the Delhi High Court in May 2005 again ordered the central government to pay Rs 1.23 Lakhs in compensation to each person who was injured during the 1984 anti-Sikh violence. When the Nanavati Commission report was tabled in the parliament in 2005, two high power committees were appointed by the Union Home Ministry in August the same year to look into the issue of rehabilitation made available to 1984 victims and survivors as well as to suggest a formula for bringing about uniformity in the compensation package which was awarded later. A compensation package was announced by the central government on 29 December 2005 for the survivors and victims of 1984 anti-Sikh violence, amounting to Rs 714.76 Crores. The Union cabinet approved a package that allowed Rs 3.5 Lakhs as ex-gratia payment to the victim families in each case of death, besides what had been paid by state government. The injured were to get Rs 1.25 Lakhs minus the amount already paid to them.

34 Interview with Ms Rani Kaur.

35 Follow-up discussion with Ms Jaya Shrivastava on 10/06/2014 at 3:30 pm at her residence in Gurgaon, Haryana.

36 Das, Life and Words, 166.

37 Interview with Ms Reema Anand on 14/04/2013 at 11 am at her residence near Okhla in Delhi. She worked on a masala (spice) project in Tilak Vihar which intended to improve the financial situation of women survivors there. As a part of the project, which started in 2006, masalas (spices) were ground and packaged by the women and were then sold. An NGO called Hope by Orphans Charitable Society also developed out of this initiative. The experience of running this project and her interactions with two generations of women survivors have been recorded by Reema Anand in her book entitled Scorched White Lilies of 1984 (2009).

38 Interview with Ms Hardeep Kaur.

39 Interview with Ms Rani Kaur.

40 Interview with Prof. Mita Bose on 30/08/2013 at 11 am at Indraprastha College, Delhi. She was involved in the relief effort and later took lead in organising a summer school for children survivors which continued to work for a few years after the pogrom. She is currently a professor of English Literature at Delhi University.

41 Interview with Prof. Dinesh Mohan on 18/09/2013 at 10:30 am at his office in IIT Campus, Delhi. He was a part of the fact-finding team which compiled the report Who Are the Guilty? Presently, he is a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

42 Interview with Prof. Mita Bose.

43 Ross, “Women's Testimony,” 250–279.

44 Parvinder Mehta, “Repressive Silences and Shadows of 1984: Erasures, Omissions and Narrative Crisis,” Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 6 (2) (2010): 153–175.

45 Ross, “Women's Testimony,” 250–279.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Interview with Mr Santok Singh.

49 Roma Chatterji and Deepak Mehta, “Communal Violence, Public Spaces and the Unmaking of Men,” Living with Violence: An Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life (New Delhi: Routledge, 2007), 105.

50 Several instances of sexual violence took place when the 1984 pogrom was going on. But these instances have remained shrouded in obscurity and there has been a near total silence around this precarious question on the part of most survivors as well as activists. In the course of my field work, survivors refrained from addressing this issue directly, in spite of repeated queries to that end, and it was brought into the discussion with considerable reluctance.

51 Rowena Robinson, “I Can Harden My Heart to Bear This: Women's Words and Women's Worlds,” Tremors of Violence: Muslim Survivors of Ethnic Strife in Western India (New Delhi: Sage, 2005), 147.

52 Ibid., 130.

53 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 2.

54 Uma Chakravarty has written about the ‘dogged pursuit’ of justice, carried on by the 1984 survivors for so long. For further reference, see Uma Chakravarty, “Long Road to Nowhere: Justice Nanavati on 1984,” Economic and Political Weekly XL (35) (2005): 3790–3795.

55 Robinson, Tremors of Violence, 147.

56 Das and Kleinman, Remaking a World, 8.

57 Ibid., 4.

58 Robinson, Tremors of Violence, 145.

59 Das and Kleinman, Remaking a World, 4.

60 Mehta, “Repressive Silences and Shadows of 1984,” 153–175.

61 Robinson, Tremors of Violence, 146.

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Anshu Saluja

Anshu Saluja. Address: Ph.D Scholar, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India. [Email: [email protected]]