By Divya Goyal | The Indian Express |
“Main chauraasi ki ladki hun (I am a woman who has survived 1984),” that’s all how a Sikh woman who was raped during the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide in Delhi describes herself. Now in her sixties, and still living the trauma she went through nearly 40 years ago, she could never pursue a legal battle to get her rapists punished, all due to social stigma and the fact that no one really ever tried to hear what women went through in the turbulent year of 1984.
The new book “Kaurs of 1984 – the untold, unheard stories of Sikh women”, published by HarperCollins, is one such effort to record and document those stifled voices of Sikh women who were raped, murdered and traumatised in 1984 during the Operation Bluestar and anti-Sikh genocide thereafter.
The book, with the oral histories of at least 40 women who saw it all, tells that 1984 wasn’t just about sufferings of turbaned men who were burnt alive with tyres around necks, but also women who in fact continue to suffer even after 40 years after men in the family were massacred. The women were raped, killed and some even took to weapons and turned militants in protest against the establishment and injustice.
Author of the book, Jammu-based Sanam Sutirath Wazir, 33, who had previously worked with the Amnesty International for the project “Justice for anti-Sikh massacre”, says: “Whenever a war or a conflict begins, it’s amid men but women are dragged into it anyhow. Women are the first casualties but their sufferings are never really documented.
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Similar is the case for Operation Bluestar and anti-Sikh genocide. Women became casualties but history never really documented them. This book delves into the lives of at least 40 such women who had their own ordeals in the period beginning Operation Bluestar, genocide and even beyond. They are suffering even today. It’s not just them, but at least three of their generations suffering due to lack of resources and help. Though we conducted more than hundred interviews of women who braved 1984, the book features at least 40 of them.”
One such story is that of Nirpreet Kaur, a young college student back in 1984, whose father was burnt alive in front of her eyes during the anti-Sikh genocide. She moved to Punjab with her mother but soon picked up guns. She turned into a militant and was also jailed. She now runs an orphanage in Chandigarh. “She picked up guns in anger.
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