This is the painful story of the au­thor vis­it­ing the ghetto of Sul­tan­puri on the out­skirts of Delhi, where the lumpens, po­lice, friends and ac­quain­tances co­or­di­nated well-or­ches­trated at­tacks to kill the poor­est Sikhs in cold-blood. The au­thor says, “Even to­day when I visit Sul­tan­puri, I hang my head in shame -shame at the bar­baric killers and my own com­mu­nity which has let down the poor­est of the poor.

A fu­neral pro­ces­sion of a Sikh man greeted us when we en­tered the main street of Sul­tan­puri in Delhi on the oc­ca­sion of the twenty-fifth an­niver­sary of the No­vem­ber 1984 pogrom.  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 every­one 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.

“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.”

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 or the back­wa­ters of Bi­har or Ut­tar Pradesh.

The end­less stream of young boys idling on the road­side, out-of-school girls, women-folk 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.

“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.”

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”.

“Kesh nahi katane hai, chahe jaan chali jaaye.”

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, fondly told 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 tin-sheet 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.

“The jour­ney of life of the Sik­li­gar Sikhs con­tin­ues doggedly de­spite No­vem­ber 1984. The deathly si­lence of the com­mu­nity needs to be bro­ken? Is some­one lis­ten­ing?”

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.

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The jour­ney of life of the Sik­li­gar Sikhs con­tin­ues doggedly de­spite No­vem­ber 1984. The deathly si­lence of the com­mu­nity needs to be bro­ken? Is some­one lis­ten­ing?