It was the 31st of October, 1984. I was posted in Delhi as Manager, Stabilization, at BHEL, working out of our office in Ashoka Estate near Connaught Place. It started as an ordinary day. By mid-morning, a murmur began spreading through the office, hushed voices, people stepping away from their desks to whisper. There had been an attempt on the life of Indira Gandhi.
Nobody knew anything for certain. The uncertainty was unbearable, so during a break I walked down to the Hindustan Times building, where an electronic news board ran a scrolling ticker outside, visible to anyone passing on the road. I stood there with a small crowd of strangers, all of us craning our necks, waiting for the letters to repeat themselves. The news was the same as what we had heard in the office: an attempt had been made. No names, no details, just that bare, frightening fact.
I went back to work, but nobody was really working. Every few minutes someone would walk past with a fresh rumor. In the evening, I boarded the chartered bus that took us back to West Patel Nagar, where I was staying at the time. The bus was unusually quiet, and then it wasn't, conversations would flare up in hushed tones, die down, and flare up again somewhere else. Everyone was speculating. Who had done it? Was she alive? Nobody knew who had attempted the assassination, and that not-knowing sat heavily over all of us.
By late evening, the news was confirmed. Her own bodyguard, a Sikh, had shot her. She was dead.
The next day, a holiday was declared, as one would expect after the assassination of a sitting Prime Minister. My parents lived in the Western Extension Area in Karol Bagh, and I decided to visit them with my wife Madhuri. I took her on my scooter, and our son Anish followed us on his own bike. It felt, that morning, like an ordinary family visit. We had lunch with my parents, and afterward, the three of us went up to the rooftop, the way families often do in Delhi, just to sit, talk, get some air.
That's when we saw it. Smoke was rising from the direction of Paharganj, thick and black, the kind of smoke that doesn't come from a kitchen fire. Then we heard sounds from the road below, shouting, running, a kind of noise that didn't belong to a holiday afternoon. Something was very wrong.
I told my parents I had to leave immediately. I could sense trouble coming, though even then, I had no idea what was actually unfolding. I had no idea that Sikhs were being targeted by mobs across the city. That understanding came only on the ride back.
Riding back toward our house, I saw things I still find difficult to describe. Mobs of men running through the streets, carrying televisions, telephones, household goods, looted from shops that belonged to Sikh owners. It was broad daylight. Nobody was hiding what they were doing. Thinking back on it now, I realize how much risk we were taking, riding through those streets on a scooter and a bike, with my wife and son out in the open, passing groups of men in that state of frenzy. At the time, I just wanted to get home. Looking back, I understand how easily that ride could have ended very differently.
When I reached home, my landlady, whom I called Mataji, was waiting with a piece of advice that I followed without question. She told me not to park my scooter outside, where I normally kept it, but to bring it inside the courtyard, out of sight. It was such a small, practical instruction, but it told me everything about how serious the situation had become. She understood, before I fully did, that anything visible, any object, any vehicle, any sign of who lived where, could become a target or a clue for the mobs moving through the area.
Mataji had three sons. The eldest was married. The second one was unmarried, a well-built young man with a handlebar moustache, the kind of moustache you noticed immediately. We all called him Mooch.
Later that day, Mooch came to find me. He handed me a piece of paper with a telephone number written on it and told me, plainly, that if there was any trouble, I should call that number. I asked him what kind of trouble he meant, and what the number was for. He told me it was a control room number. I asked, control room of what? He explained that he was a member of the RSS, and that they had set up an emergency control room in someone's house in the area, specifically to help protect Sikh families from the mobs that were being organized against them.
Then he gave me a lathi.
I remember holding it, this simple wooden stick, and understanding that things had moved from "be careful" to "be ready."
That was Thursday, the 1st of November. Through the day, news kept filtering in, that Congress leaders, names like Sajjan Kumar and Tytler were being mentioned, were allegedly mobilizing gangs from the Bhangi colony to attack Sikh homes and shops. There was no police protection visible anywhere in our area. By evening, Mooch had organized something remarkable out of pure necessity: teams of young men from the neighboring houses, myself included, formed a rotating watch to guard our locality around the clock.
It wasn't long before we were tested. A truck full of men arrived in our lane. They stopped near a parked car, a car belonging to someone in the neighborhood, tipped it onto its side, punctured the petrol tank, and threw a lit matchstick at it. The car went up instantly, flames roaring into the evening air.
We didn't think. We ran toward them, armed with whatever we had, sticks, hockey sticks, the lathi Mooch had given me. The moment they saw a group of us coming at them, ready to fight, they turned and ran for their truck. They hadn't expected anyone to resist. Cowards, every one of them, brave enough to torch a car and loot a shop, but not brave enough to face people standing together.
The next day, the RSS organized a meeting in the central park of our area. They stood up in front of everyone and assured the Sikh families in the neighborhood that they would be protected, that the community would not let anything happen to them. We kept up our vigil for two more days, watching the lanes, watching the main road, watching for trucks. And then, finally, the police became active. Help arrived, late, but it arrived.
That week has stayed with me for over forty years now. It was the week I saw how quickly a city could turn, how neighbors could become looters overnight, and how other neighbors, ordinary men with moustaches and lathis and a telephone number scrawled on paper, could become the only line of defense between a family and a mob.
My father used to tell us stories from when he first arrived in Delhi after Partition, how riots were almost a regular affair in those years, and how the RSS had stepped in then too, to protect Hindu families caught in the violence. I understand that over the years, the organization has been painted very differently by Congress and by sections of the left, and I know that debate continues, with people on different sides holding strong views, some shaped by different parts of its long history.
But I can only speak to what I saw with my own eyes. In 1984, when the police were absent and the mobs were active, it was Mooch and the volunteers from our lane who stood between us and real danger. And in the years since, during various project postings across the country, I have seen the same kind of organization show up again, during floods, during earthquakes, organizing relief, distributing supplies, doing the unglamorous work that needs doing when everything else has broken down.
That is my memory, and that is my experience. Others will have theirs, and theirs may be very different. But this is mine, and I wanted to write it down before it fades any further.
