Puneet Bedi

“Someone from Home Ministry told my father that this would last 3 days.”

Puneet Bedi was a 26-year-old medical student in Delhi during 1984. On Oct 31, he was in his medical college where news had begun to circulate about Indira Gandhi’s death. As he left the college, he was stopped by 3 young men who insisted that he head back as Sikhs were being targeted. While he first scoffed at the idea of someone daring to attack him, he then noticed the rarity of seeing no sardars out that evening. He later credits those 3 men with saving his life. Back at his hospital, his worried parents were trying to reach him. His father had received word, from someone in the Home Ministry, that the plan was for the violence to continue for three days before being curtailed.

In the following days, he notes the antagonism from other medical students and professors even as Sikhs were victimized across Delhi. “At that time, if you were a Sikh, you were (considered) a terrorist, like Muslims are now.”

Before he returned home, his parents insisted on him cutting his hair. In search for a barber, Bedi notes that many barbershops were being targeted for cutting the hair of Sikhs, for removing the identifiers the killers were using to choose their victims.

“I haven’t voted since 1984.” Following the events of November 1984, Bedi mentions that he has no respect for the state. He reflects on an increased awareness of atrocities committed in the name of the state: he remembers a funeral he had attended in his youth for a soldier killed in the Northeast. Later, when hearing about the atrocities committed by the forces in Nagaland, he states finding the stories of everyday peoples to be more credible than the glorified accounts of the government.

“Because of 84, 93 happened, because of 93, 2002 happened, because of 2002, Muzaffarnagar happened last year…”