Kinlore
31 October – early November 1984

The Anti-Sikh Massacres of November 1984

After Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards, mobs kill thousands of Sikhs in Delhi and other cities over several days, often with the complicity of police and local politicians.

  • Report of the Justice Nanavati Commission of Inquiry (1984 Anti-Sikh Riots), Vols I and II — Justice G. T. Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India (2005)
  • Who Are the Guilty? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November — People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's Union for Civil Liberties (1984)
  • Protecting the Killers: A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India — Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf (2007)
  • The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)
  • The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)

Debated by historians traumapoliticsidentity

Three days in Delhi

On the morning of 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi was shot dead in her garden by two of her Sikh bodyguards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, in revenge for Operation Blue Star. By that evening, Sikhs were being attacked in Delhi. On 1 and 2 November, when most of the killing took place, mobs armed with iron rods, kerosene and lists of Sikh homes moved through working-class neighbourhoods such as Trilokpuri, Sultanpuri and Mangolpuri.

  • Report of the Justice Nanavati Commission of Inquiry (1984 Anti-Sikh Riots), Vols I and II — Justice G. T. Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India (2005)
  • Who Are the Guilty? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November — People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's Union for Civil Liberties (1984)
Men and boys were dragged out, beaten and burned alive, sometimes with tyres put around their necks; women were raped; gurdwaras, homes and shops were burned. Trains arriving in Delhi were stopped and Sikh passengers killed.
  • Who Are the Guilty? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November — People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's Union for Civil Liberties (1984)
  • Protecting the Killers: A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India — Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf (2007)

Who was responsible

Within days, two civil liberties groups, the PUDR and PUCL, published Who Are the Guilty?, naming local Congress politicians and police officers they said had organised or allowed the violence, based on survivors’ testimony.

  • Who Are the Guilty? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November — People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's Union for Civil Liberties (1984)
The army was not deployed effectively until the worst was over. Asked about the killings, the new prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, said that “when a big tree falls, the earth shakes”, a remark Sikhs have never forgotten.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)
  • The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)

The official figure for Delhi, cited by the Nanavati Commission, is 2,733 Sikhs killed; Sikh bodies dispute it as too low. Government figures for India as a whole are around 3,350; independent estimates run far higher.

Thousands of survivors were left homeless in relief camps, and many families moved permanently to Punjab or abroad.
  • Who Are the Guilty? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November — People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's Union for Civil Liberties (1984)
  • The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)

The long wait for justice

Ten commissions and committees investigated over the following decades. In 2005, after the Nanavati report, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a Sikh, apologised in Parliament: “I have no hesitation in apologising not only to the Sikh community but the whole Indian nation.”

Convictions remained rare. In 2018 the Delhi High Court sentenced the former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar to life imprisonment for his role in killings in Delhi Cantonment, more than three decades later; in February 2025 he received a second life sentence in another case, and he died in prison in August 2026.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)

For Sikhs, November 1984 changed something fundamental. Many who had felt fully Indian found that their neighbours could turn on them, and that the state would not protect them. Many Sikhs prefer the words “genocide” or “pogrom”, and the Indian government’s continued use of “riots” is itself a sore point. In the diaspora, especially in Canada, November remembrance events, blood drives and memorials keep the memory alive.

  • The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)
  • Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed — Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Bloomsbury (2013)

How it's seen
Sikh view

An organised pogrom, not spontaneous riots: voter lists were used to find Sikh homes, Congress politicians led mobs, police stood by or disarmed Sikhs, and the state then shielded the guilty for decades. Many Sikh organisations call it genocide and believe the death toll was far higher than official figures.

  • Who Are the Guilty? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November — People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's Union for Civil Liberties (1984)
  • Protecting the Killers: A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India — Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf (2007)
  • The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)

Indian official inquiries

Successive commissions accepted that the violence was terrible and that police failed badly. The Nanavati Commission (2005) cited an official figure of 2,733 Sikhs killed in Delhi and found "credible evidence" against some Congress leaders; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh apologised in Parliament that year. Government figures put the national toll at about 3,350.

  • Report of the Justice Nanavati Commission of Inquiry (1984 Anti-Sikh Riots), Vols I and II — Justice G. T. Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India (2005)

Human rights groups

Human rights groups describe systematic impunity: of thousands of killings, very few led to convictions. Independent estimates of the death toll range well above official figures, up to about 8,000 or more across India.

  • Protecting the Killers: A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India — Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf (2007)
  • Who Are the Guilty? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November — People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's Union for Civil Liberties (1984)

Why it matters today

Sikhism

"1984" is a single word that carries enormous pain for Sikhs. Survivors, many of them widows from poor Delhi neighbourhoods, waited decades for justice; only a few perpetrators have been convicted. Many Sikhs call it a genocide or pogrom rather than "riots", and the struggle over that word, and over accountability, is central to how many Sikhs view the Indian state.