The morning after: Trauma, memory and the Sikh predicament since 1984

Abstract

As the Indian army invaded Sikhs’ most sacred shrine, the Golden Temple, Amritsar in June 1984, the community was shattered by the resulting trauma, reacting with anger, remorse and mourning. Having woven around itself certain myths, memories and commemorations of being survivors from past genocides, the 1984 tragedy, as a contemporary reality in postcolonial India offered bitter choices. With severely restricted agencies of representation and reproduction of Sikhs’ traumatic grief and psychological pain suffered through broken ideals of a faith, undermining of historical traditions, and shattered memories – all symbolised through the destruction, construction and reconstruction of the Akal Takhat. With no prospect of an ‘honourable’ means of either forgetting or forgiving this ‘critical event’ the paper points towards the predicament of a community as it grapples to make sense of its recent past. Circumcised by the Indian state's coercion and hegemonic discourse, this paper identifies the reaction of individual Sikhs, its elite and political leaders highlighting some consequences of the tragedy, contest over interpretation, spaces for its mourning characterised by voluntary and enforced silences.