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Editorial
Let’s complete the narrative
 Men possessed by
a zeal to do God's work scour the streets of Trilokpuri, Sultanpuri
and several such areas in Delhi, trying to understand where they can
make their contribution best.
Institutions
like the Nishkam Trust are making their own efforts. A Reema Anand
is trying to make a dent to improve a few lives. Do good samaritans
are rustling up individual resources to provide for a few mouths.
As a community,
we may have fallen far short of efforts to provide relief and
rehabilitation, but on an individual level, stories of hope and
humane feelings abound.
But right now,
we are on to a rather sorry aspect of the entire debate on 1984
pogroms. Readers of the World Sikh News who have been following our
coverage for quite some time now would have noticed the number of
individual accounts we dug out from the resettlement colonies, nooks
and crevices of Trilokpuri, the tenements in Sultanpuri and the few
who found shelter only in gurdwaras.
This issue
features a tale from a family in Mohali. In a recent edition, we
brought you the pogrom that happened in Kanpur. A large number of
readers have been writing in, keeping up a nearly continuous
narrative of one after another horrendous tale.
Journalist
Jarnail Singh's book reveals a few more such stories, including the
role played by some of the Akali Dal leaders in
Delhi.
Manoj Mitta and H S Phoolka's book had earlier brought out many such
stories.
Recent efforts
of a dedicated journalist from Ajit newspaper who reported from
Delhi for his newspaper brought out some horrendous tales, including
one of a family that saw 21 widows in just one home. The WSN this
time has come out with the story of a Satnami Sampardai family that
went through hell simply because it dared to help save the Sikhs
during the pogrom and then insisted on being part of a quest for
justice.
All these
stories point to a major lacunae in our work and approach. As a
community, we should not have left a single story unrecorded. Not a
single account should have been ignored or allowed to go unaccounted
for. Twenty-five years a long long time. Many memories become
foggy, many a remembrances hazy. Soon, many accounts within the same
family will not match each other.
We have seen
this happening earlier in the case of Partition.
There is a
genuine tendency among the victims to try and erase the painful from
the mind’s slate. It is difficult to live with the scene of a
husband being burnt to death or a daughter being raped. That scene
is replayed time and again in one’s mind. And every time the
community recalls the horrors, every time a scholar tells the people
that they must preserve their memories, it makes the victim go
through the horrors once more.
There is thus a
need to evolve a narrative, gather the various accounts, prevent our
collective loss that passage of time often brings upon any
community, and there is an even urgent need to sensitise our
community members, the victims included, about what lessons these
accounts have for us, and why these must be preserved. If need be,
we must learn from the Jews and from all the persecuted people.
As that cult
American journalist author Joan Didion titled her much admired book,
We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live, the accounts are the
life blood of a community that needs to learn from a holocaust as
bad as the Sikhs faced in 1984. We cannot remain dependent on the
good sense of the Badals to have a memorial. All of us need our own
personal memorials in our hearts, for only these can goad us to do
good work in future.
And only such a
meticulous recording of accounts will bring out the many stories
like that of Bajrang Singh where the community’s debts are still
due. We are grateful to the voices that shrieked at the Indian
establishment and called a spade a bloody shovel. We need all those
voices now, once again, to help us complete the narrative of the
pogrom.
11
November 2009
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