Hindus give havens to Sikh families

Press, 5 November 1984, Page 6

Hindus give havens to Sikh families

By VICTORIA GRAHAM, of the Associated Press (through NZPA) New Delhi

While Hindus killed Sikhs across India, uncounted instances of love between the two communities showed the light of the human spirit.

Almost 1000 people , most of them believed to be Sikhs, were reported to have been killed in four days of rioting touched off by the assassination.

In the hours and days after the Gandhi killing mobs of vengeful, clubwielding -Hindu youths dragged turbaned, bearded Sikhs from their shops and homes, attacked them on trains and buses, and often set fire to their beaten bodies. Hundreds of Sikh properties and vehicles were burned. But local news accounts told, too, of instances in which Hindus protected or hid Sikhs from the mobs. It

was a reaffirmation of cen-turies-old bonds of blood and marriage between the two communities.

By tradition Hindu families in Punjab state, centre of the Sikh sect, designated one son to be a Sikh to protect the Hindus from Muslim invaders. Hinduism preaches love, tolerance, and passivity. Sikhism — a five-century-old offshoot of the Hindu faith — espouses militancy and assertiveness.

Some of the bloodiest anti-Sikh retribution happened at Trilokpuri. But 600 Sikh women and children escaped to Hindu homes in Trilokpuri and were sheltered by their neighbours. ■

In Santnager, a small mixed Hindu-Sikh area in New Delhi, Sikhs grieving over Mrs Gandhi’s death and Hindus deploring the anti-Sikh riots banded together in joint “peace and protection committees” that held off young Hindu marauders. Finally the army

arrived and the mob fled. In a block of flats in west New Delhi, 200 middle-class Hindu families protected a handful of Sikh families from youths who threatened to bum the building unless the Sikhs were turned over to them. The tenants took the terrified Sikhs into their own flats, along with their valuables, and hid them. They then formed defence squads and patrolled the building.

From other cities across India news accounts told of Hindu-Sikh “solidarity” marches, and of Hindus’ pledging to rebuild gutted Sikh homes, shops, and shrines. Hindu mobs attacked Sikhs on trains bound for New Delhi on Thursday and Friday, stripping, stabbing and beating them, sometimes dousing them with fuel and setting them alight. But in some train cars Hindus protected Sikhs, hiding them in locked toilets, helping them trim their telltale beards.