Indian History: Violence Against Sikhs

Topic:
Name:
Institution:
Date:
Response paper
First part
Anthropologist Veena Das reexamines two crucial events in Indian history: the violence against Sikhs after the killing of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 and the Partition riots of 1947. He tries to evaluate the impacts of violence that occurred during the two historical events.
First, the author examines the manner in which extraordinary violence (that of Partition) evolved into everyday lives of people who have survived the tragedy. Secondly, the author analyzes how the violence of everyday life offers the essential condition for critical eruption of collective violence (that of anti-Sikh in 1984). Das is capable of developing vital understanding of the interface between historical and anthropological, local and supra-local, and individual and collective realities. The author examines the violence and how it affected daily life and how it became part of active involvements of the ordinary human activities. According to Das, violence does not simply interrupt ordinary life, but is something which is involved in the ordinary life (2). The lives of specific communities and people are embedded in these violent events. These events are attached to their values into the everyday life and unfold themselves into the active events of the ordinary life. Events evolved out of everyday life though the world as everyday reality is ruined. The unfinished events of the past realities unfold themselves in the present time as new, unexpected ways. Das asks why people involved in such senseless atrocities.
The author (Gauri Gill) presents tragic experience of the partition of India between the new countries of Pakistan and India. During the partition, Muslims attacked Hindus and Sikhs, which led to pogroms. The massacre against the Sikh community in India during 1984 caused many thousands of deaths. Sikhs and Hindus greatly suffered, lost their lives while some fled their homes. Many children were killed; women raped while thousands of Hindus and Sikhs were killed cold blooded by the Muslims during the partition of India (Gauri 5). Gauri Gill created photographic work that reflected upon the massacre and their continued effects on India. The images are captured from the resettlement places of Garhi, Tilak, Vihar and Trilokpuri and various places in the country.
Many people in outskirt region of the Capital, New Delhi including the entire neighborhoods were killed. Prominent politicians of the congress (I) party were known to have led mobs while police administration gave them assistance to kill Hindus and Sikhs. According to the BBC Documentary Clip, the genocide is still remembered, but the perpetrators have not been held into accountable, and they continue enjoying complete impun...