Jasneet Aulakh "1984"

Topic:

The mass killings following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984

How I came to this topic:

This paper aims to correct the historiography on the mass killings following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, by exploring such questions as who constructed the sense of communalism that allowed for the ground-level violence and how?  Was the characterization of perpetrators and victims based on religious differences, not power and socio-economic status, accurate?  In what ways did Hindus and Sikhs work together to resist the mobs and why do historians or politicians not include this in their narratives?  By critically analyzing current accounts of the 1984 violence, this paper attempts to correct misrepresentations of the violence and provide a more accurate, unbiased depiction of the massacres using interviews and a number of unpublished documents.

Sources:

Police records, fire department records, parliamentary speeches and logs, wireless logs, newspaper articles, medical records, photographs, bus deployment records, First Information Reports, affidavits, and interviews.

Travel and Funding You Have Done/Received:

Travelled to India and England thanks to the Foulke Fellowship, Provost's Undergraduate Research Fellowship, and the 2020 Genocide Resistance Research Cluster Undergraduate Research Stipend.

"More than twenty-five years have passed since 1984 and it is important to gain a new, more distant and hopefully objective interpretation of the events from those most affected."