Punjab 1984 Quotes

on 12 October 1984, just a few weeks before the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Atal declared, ‘Our hour of trial is approaching. This government is a danger to democracy. In its insatiable lust for power, one single family has jeopardized the unity of an entire nation. In Punjab there is neither peace nor settlement. In Assam there is lull before a storm; a terrible crisis in Assam can erupt now.

Agitational politics are endemic in Punjab, used by the leading non-Congress party there, the Akali Dal, to mobilize support when it is out of power.

In the Punjab of yore, it was fairly common for Punjabi Hindu families to pledge their eldest male child as a keshdhari

Successive governments have advised us to forget the past and focus on the future. Put yourself in our shoes for a second. Is it possible to erase the bloody past?

A regular exposure to hurt, humiliation, and social isolation made them sink into a world of their own. Depressed and alone, they began having trouble eating and sleeping as they grew older.

In this unending chaos, and with the passage of time since then, the voices of the Kaurs who lived through unimaginable horror and trauma have been silenced. And once I became aware of this silence, I wanted to undo it. I wanted to ensure that the voices of these survivors were heard and their stories remembered.

Without a male guardian in their lives, and with their mother gone from the house for long hours every day, the children turned wayward and, eventually, dropped out of school.

How easily women become the first casualty of every conflict, large or small. Rape and gendered segregation are common weapons of war and ethnic cleansing.

I thought all of this will end soon and everything will be normal shortly. But its been thirty years. I'm still waiting for things to get back to normal.

Most of these women were not educated; many had never stepped out of their homes. They responded to the continuum of patriarchy as they had been conditioned to do so - providing thumb impressions to false statements, and in the case of rape survivors, staying silent because they were commanded to to so.

Their children, now grown up and themselves parents, may visit Punjab less frequently. Many have never been to India and declare themselves to be British Sikhs, though experiences of racial discrimination and harassment make them uneasy about their status and future, so some move to what seems a more receptive North America. Events in India since 1984 have reminded them that Punjab is the Sikh homeland.