Gobind Singh

Childhood witnesses of 1984 are speaking out too.

Gobind Singh recalls watching shop owners being lit on fire, shops being vandalized and looted, and friends cutting their hair to conceal their true identities and save their lives. “It seemed like an agenda,” he says, recalling Rajiv Gandhi’s order for a report that documented how many Sikhs cut their hair during the pogroms. Although he didn’t see much of the brutal violence that occurred at this time, he remembers the police encouraging the rioters to continue killing and injuring Sikhs, and damaging their property.