Harloveleen Kaur

“But where were the police, Mama?” her daughter asks Harloveleen Kaur when she recounts the attack on Harmandir Sahib.

Harloveleen Kaur was only five years old – the same age her daughter is today – during the massacres of 1984. But she remembers many things from the years that followed: the sound of her aunt crying, the bruises on her uncle’s face after his imprisonment, the thumping of her own heart when her grandfather’s turban fell off during police questioning. Amidst all this, what she remembers most is silence.

“Nobody wanted to talk about it,” she says. By sharing Sikh history with her daughter, Harloveleen breaks the cycle of silence and helps preserves truth for the next generation.