Balwinder Kaur

(Punjabi with English Subtitles)

Balwinder Kaur was a high school student traveling from Delhi to Ferozpur at the time of the attack on the Darbar Sahib (‘Golden Temple’ to foreigners), and remembers the military take-over of the state of Punjab. By November 1984, she was back home in Delhi.

She narrates how a mob of attackers reached her locality, and went on to burn the local gurudwara and slaughter the Sikhs in her area. She managed to make arrangements to protect her younger brothers through the night. But she witnessed gruesome violence directed towards her father, who was killed while he refused urgent advise of well-wishers to cut his long hair. He told her that this would be a night she would remember. A night he didn’t give up his faith.

“For us, 1984 happens every day. We will remember always.”

Balwinder Kaur states that while Sikhs have lived with a sense of fear ever since, “today, Sikhs are not weak, we will not be taken by surprise again!”