"Riots" Is A Misnomer

For over 14 years, reams have been written on the November, 1984 anti-Sikh violence. A section of the media has played a very important role in keeping the issue alive, which would, hopefully, play a key role in the victims' families eventually getting justice. However, in a majority of the reports, the violence has been referred to as a "riot". My book is a small attempt in correcting that wrong. To refer to a state-sponsored massacre of Sikhs, as "riots" a would be a serious mistake and a distortion of history.

Let us examine what a riot is. It is a two-sided show of violence with the elements of action and reaction although, not necessarily, equal and opposite.

However, nothing of the sort happened in November, 1984. Sikhs did not react to any killing. They did not attack anybody. They did not attack any property. They did not attack any religious place. They did not rape any woman. There was not a single non-Sikh in any relief camp. In all these years, not a single witness has come forward to even claim that Sikhs were seen or heard celebrating Mrs. Indira Gandhi's killing, a rumour that cost thousands of Sikhs their lives, in a show of violence, which has no precedent in the history of pre or post-partition India.

The import of the book is to underline that the November, 1984 anti-Sikh violence was government-sponsored genocide of Sikhs.