Narinder Singh Kapany

Narinder Singh Kapany, known as the ‘Father of Fiber Optics, was the President of his company Kaptron Inc. in Palo Alto, California, at the time of the 1984 attacks. He narrates the buildup to the 84 attacks and the telegrams he sent to the Indira Gandhi Government. He explains how the massacre in Amritsar prompted the trustees of the Sikh Foundation to prepare full-page advertisements for newspapers in New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco to inform the American public of the story of the Sikhs and raise awareness about the crisis in India.

He discusses how the occurrences of October-November 1984 left Sikhs in the US ‘deeply hurt’ and ‘visibly mad’, while also directly affecting his family back home. He goes on to emphasize the need to memorialize the events that transpired in 1984 by taking inspiration from other violence-affected communities from around the world.

Further information: A full page advertisement by The Sikh Foundation in 1984