The Delhi Massacre
DIPANKAR GUPTA
THE DELHI RIOTS: THREE DAYS IN THE LIFE OF A NATION by Uma Chakravarti and Nandita Haksar Lancer International, New Delhi, 1987, 662 pp., 300.00
Nov-Dec 1987, volume 11, No 6

One would certainly want to forget the memories of the three days when the nation was cantilevered on a slope. But time, this time, has not played its usual lenitive role and healed old wounds. The victims of the massacre following Mrs. Gandhi’s death may have now reconciled themselves to not seeing a loved face, or hearing a familiar voice, or feeling that reassuring presence but there is no numbness there; instead there is mounting anger and humiliation. Three years have passed since those three days: years which could have given fresh hope and shored up the nation’s foundations. The nation is still cantilevered and the architects don’t care. Chakravarti and Haksar have reproduced in this book 30 first-hand interviews with a cross-section of Delhi’s population on the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984. The major focus in this book is on those three days, but in most cases there is some before and some after which contextualizes those days and nights of terror. It is revealing how the experience of the massacres triggers off in the minds of the respondents other experiences, other thoughts and other memories.

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