Ajit Singh Walia

Ajit Singh Walia hoped to visit his mother in India that year.

Walia was a Ford Motor Company employee in Ohio who protested the 1984 attacks in downtown Cleveland with several hundred fellow Sikhs. The local press interviewed him for newspaper and television outlets, but he was so emotional that he found it difficult to speak as a representative for his community.

Full of emotion and desperate to visit his homeland despite his family’s dissuasion, he made a plan to enter India via Pakistan. Once he was in Pakistan, he met with self-styled Sikh leaders. But he was disappointed with their conduct as they reported never reciting Gurbani.

When he tried to travel to India after the 1984 massacres, he was stopped from entering the country. A few months later, his mother passed away.

“I feel very bad about it, because I went there and I couldn’t meet my mother [before she died].”