There are riots and there are mass murders. The two are different. In riots, both or all clashing communities suffer; in mass murders the damage is disproportionately one-sided. Delhi 1984 was not a riot, it was a mass murder of almost 3000 Sikhs. The orchestration of the violence, the brazen contempt of law, the complicity of the polity and the failure in basic policing – a connivance of sorts with the political goons – has often been spoken about. It’s a matter of shame that neither the police, the polity nor civil society has been able to bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice. All it has become in the last 30 years is a political weapon to counter allegations of political connivance in subsequent riots by one party or the other.

Sanjay Suri’s book is a chilling yet humane account of the days that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. As a young crime reporter in Delhi, Suri witnessed the horrors first hand. He recounts them, backs them with thorough examinations of records and exposes the bypassing and suppression of the Indian legal system. He also includes interviews with critically important police officers “who were at the forefront of dealing with the violence in 1984”. As he himself notes, “These officers are now retired, and could speak far more freely than they ever could before. What they do say now is telling.”

The book also throw up heroes. For all its failings as a force, there were officers and men of the Delhi Police who put their life on the line and who didn’t budge when their seniors and politicians told them to look the other way. A small extract below illustrates the heroism of a few:

“‘We were told we were saved by an SHO by the name of Ranbir Singh,’ a young Sikh inside Zohra Emporium told me when I went back to Karol Bagh in 2014, thirty years after I had witnessed that scene at the police station. The young Sikh must have been a kid in 1984, maybe he wasn’t born then. Yet, he knew the name of Ranbir Singh. As do other Sikhs in Karol Bagh. It’s not often you see a mere SHO turn into a legend….

…In those first days of November 1984, shops weren’t just shops, where you could change money for goods. They stood as targets for looters, not as magnets for buyers. Gold sat within to be looted, dresses to be burnt, if not stolen. Ranbir Singh and just a few of his men stood in the way. Policing that at other times might be routine was in those days heroic.”

This book comprises reportage, gripping recollections, sensitive interviews – all of which will leave you disturbed and moved in equal measure. It will lead you to question whether the law of the land is the same for you and me and for those who died in 1984 and for those who have suffered for 30 years.

1984: The Anti-Sikh Violence and After by Sanjay Suri

Harper Collins, 272 pages (hardcover), INR 499.00