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Deathly Silence
Sultanpuri still simmers with hope and agony
Jagmohan Singh
 A funeral
procession of a Sikh man greeted us when we entered the main street
of Sultanpuri in Delhi. Life became a simile. Sultanpuri was death
personified. The sound of saying the word Sultanpuri was like a wail
of death.
With a heavy
heart and anger seething inside me, riding the pillion of a social
activist’s scooter, with camera in hand, I dared to set foot on an
alien territory to overcome my own pain and shame for not having
visited the place, all these twenty-five years.
As I glanced
around, the faces that I saw –men and women, there was something
wrong with them. They did not look in the eye when they talked. To
me every one looked like Gupta, Nathu and Islam. To me, they were
‘others’ and not ‘my own’. The looked as they were on the prowl
waiting to pounce.
Walking on the
main road and the bylanes of the various blocks of Sultanpuri, I
tip-toed for I felt that I was walking over blood-splattered and
burnt dead bodies of Sikhs.
The 22 square
yard houses of Sultanpuri –which was in 1984 an overgrown suburb far
from the upcoming clean and green environs of the growing metropolis
but now is part of the city and home to families with no less than 7
to 10 members. The squalour and filth of the area makes one wonder
whether one is in Delhi which is to host the Commonwealth Games next
year.
The endless
stream of young boys idling on the roadside, out-of-school girls,
womenfolk busy chatting and the elderly playing cards, discussing
nothing, children listening to loud speakers blaring latest Hindi
songs or watching the latest movies on Cable TV welcome you the town
of Sultanpuri.
 Many of the boys
are skinny and frail, unlike their brethren elsewhere who are
traditionally strong, vigorous and hard-working. Those working in
make-shift foundries right outside their houses suffer from
tuberculosis, women and children are undernourished and
malnourished. Some elderly men were selling toffees and biscuits,
to kill time rather than to earn, for they are so fatigued and ill,
they cannot do physical work anymore.
In the whole
bunch of people, you could see women and girls with Dupattas over
their heads, but had to ask the male population to know whether they
were Sikhs and why the turban and hair was conspicuous by their
absence. When I switched on the video camera, a man who had worked
in Kuwait and Iran, sensing my question said, “Main Sikh haan,
Waqt de maare hohe haan, nahi te saanu vi kesh te pagri rakhan da
bahut dil karda hai te shauk vi hai” I felt a little pleased.
Another young man when asked about his appearance, said, “Ab aap aa
gaye ho, main kes jaroor rakhoonga. Mujhe kaam chahiye.”
The Gurdwara on
the road still bore marks of what it witnessed two decades back.
Nihal Singh the octogenarian Granthi, who with his son, at the full
risk to his life, saved three Saroops of Guru Granth Sahib on 1st
November 1984, when police-led mobs attacked the Gurdwara in
Sultanpuri, when asked to recall the times nonchalantly said, “Ki
Yaad kariye, police aayi si, phir lok aaye sann, jaan-pehchaan vale
lok, ik haneri aayi te sadhe kunbe de kahi lokan ni aapne lappet
vich lai gayi. Assi log maare gaye sann A block vich”.
Nihal Singh, who
lives in the Gurdwara complex reminisces that he had been warned by
someone from amongst the ‘others’, but he was not afraid.
He narrated how
migrating from Sindh in Pakistan in 1948, wandering in Mumbai,
Jodhpur, Jaipur and Alwar, they had finally settled in Prem Nagar
in Delhi, from where they were evicted and resettled in Sultanpuri
in 1977.
 The old Granthi,
who is now overlooking the Gurdwara being rebuilt by Australia-based
Sikhs Helping Sikhs, fondly tells me that his wife and he had taken
Amrit after partition, along with hundreds of Sikhs at an Amrit
Parchar ceremony organized by Master Tara Singh at Gurdwara Bangla
Sahib, when the Gurdwara was merely a tinsheet roof. Do the Akalis
now have Amrit Parchar? –he asked me. I had no answer.
He proudly
narrated that his maternal uncle had taught him Gurmukhi in Sindh
and that his four sons were proficient in performing Kirtan, playing
the harmonium and tabla, even though they are not professional
Kirtaniyas. Are you Sikligar Sikhs? Haanji, he said with
great pride.
Those living in
Sultanpuri were allotted houses (if you can call a house of 22
square yards to be a home) by the Indira Gandhi government, after
their eviction from Prem Nagar in 1977. In this one room, one
kitchen and one bathroom house, with toilets at a distance of 200
yards or more as public toilets, live more than 7-10 members of the
family. Just outside the house, at the door is the small coal-based
foundry which is their main source of living. They work outside
their homes in perpetual fear that the pollution-control bodies of
the Municipal Corporation of Delhi will not impose penalty, harass
and arrest them.
A sense of
disgust and helplessness enveloped inside me as I walked through the
lanes glancing at the living conditions and peeping inside their
very small habitat, which were no more than Cattle Class.
 When I reached
Block A of Sultanpuri, I stood still. I silently paid homage to the
Sikhs killed and burnt alive. Nihal Singh told me that 80 of them
were killed. Another activist said the number was around 50. To me,
numbers did not matter. In my mind and heart I was attempting to
relive the scenario, of that one Sikh –Sohan Singh who was burnt
alive with a Saroop of Guru Granth Sahib in his lap. He had pleaded
that the Guru be spared, but the “others” had other plans. They did
not spare him, nor the Guru. I tried to unravel the ghastly scene,
how the proud Sikligar overlord leader –Basant Singh, who had
managed to build a Gurdwara there, was brutally attacked and killed
with vengeance which had remained wallowed up for a long time
amongst the “others”. In some houses, for want of kerosene, they
were tied to their beddings and set afire. Somehow, two or three
male Sikhs escaped from the worse than Russian ghettoes dwelling
built by the Indian government to honour the housing rights of the
marginalized sections of society.
The Gurdwara now
is in a ramshackle tent house under the care of a Nihang and his
wife, but Block A of Sultanpuri does not have a single Sikh
resident. The widows and their families have been shifted to Tilak
Vihar. When I stepped on the lane on which the Sikhs were killed, I
was benumbed beyond words. I pondered as to what took me twenty-five
years to reach this place. Those Sikhs living nearby and the wife of
the Nihang, overlooking the Gurdwara wonder, “Why no one comes
here?” Can someone tell?
Sultanpuri,
today mocks at the Sikh nation. Sultanpuri is only one of the many
deras, where these beloved traditional weapon makers, the Sikligar
Sikhs –the protectors of Sikh honour and dignity, were made sitting
ducks in an organized and orchestrated genocidal plan to wipe out
the poorest of the poor. Their lives have been shattered. Today,
their children shorn their hair, forgetting the age-old message
passed onto them from generation to generation –Kesh nahi katane
hai, chahe jaan chali jaaye. The bonds with tradition amongst
the Sikligar Sikhs is so strong that they withstood the onslaught of
the Mughals and the British, they have buttressed the
proselytisation campaigns of the Christians and the RSS in many
parts of the country, but November 1984 shattered their lives and
traditions.
 While the women
with Dupattas shed silent tears recalling the events, I forced
myself not to cry. Their helplessness was evident in what one lady
president of the Gurdwara said, “hamare bacchon ko kissi tarah
kesh rakhana sikha do, hamko bahut sharam aati hai.” They say so
because though the shadow of fear of November 1984 is no more,
atleast on the surface, it has become an easy excuse for the young
ones, who go out of their settlement in search of work. At some
level, inspite of the bravado of some middle-aged Sikhs, the fear
lurks.
Like it or not,
the local MLA –Jai Kishen and the Member of Parliament –Ms Krishna
Tirath, representing this constituency is from the Congress party,
the same party which led the anti-Sikh pogrom from the front. It is
the same party which forced hapless widows to retract evidence so
that Gupta, Nathu and Islam could go scot free.
It is the party
of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but it is also the party of Sajjan
Kumar who was the Member Parliament representing Sultanpuri in
November 1984. He may have made it this year too.
Like other
Sikhs, in many parts of the country, particularly in Delhi and
Punjab, the Sikligar Sikhs too look upto them for support and
succour in the absence of Sikh organizations too busy with
politicking and dogmatic issues.
The journey of
life of the Sikligar Sikhs continues doggedly despite November 1984.
The deathly silence of twenty-five years needs to be broken. Can we,
even after twenty-five years?
Jagmohan
Singh is the editor of World Sikh News. He may be reached at
jsbigideas@gmail.com
28
October 2009
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