Dalip Singh Bhatia

Many survivors of the 1984 violence felt discrimination from within the Sikh community, after being victimized by state violence.

In this important account, Mr. Dalip Singh Bhatia recounts appalling caste discrimination as he fled to Punjab after facing violence in Uttar Pradesh in November 1984. “We had never know there was any different between one Sikh and another,” he says of the heightened divisions in the community post 1984.

He recalls the destruction by the violence in 84. Shops his family had received as part of rehabilitation when being uprooted during the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, were now burnt to the ground in 1984. The crowd that committed this arson and looting organized itself at the local police station, with the leadership of the local authorities and policemen.

“Child, who can we share this pain with, which neighbor…?” he stops to ask midway.