Avinash Kaur

Crime has no religion, Avinash Kaur remembers thinking as she heard the reportage of the 1984 violence.

As a tenth grade student, Avinash Kaur remembers thinking in June 1984, “That was General Dyer, and we threw him out of India. But now what do we do?” She couldn’t help see the parallels between the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar in 1919 and that of Darbar Sahib, Amritsar in 1984.

In November 1984, she remembers her grandfather saying, “Why are they saying her Sikh bodyguards killed her? Why not just that it was bodyguards?”

Kaur recounts the losses in her own family, and the trauma of being a Sikh in those days. These experiences she believed changed her worldview forever, rendering her cynical and untrusting.