By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net
The worst thing for the victims is that their stories will be forgotten. Their suffering will not be recorded. May be more than justice, it is the fear that their stories will not be preserved. The newspaper accounts and future historian will just reduce them to numbers.
Before we can begin to seek justice we need to listen to the stories of sorrow, pain, suffering, loss, anger and betrayal. Documentary ‘The Widow Colony’ attempts to document the loss of some of the widows of anti-Sikh violence of 1984.
Thousands of Sikhs were massacred in matter of days in one of the worst violence that Delhi has seen after the independence. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on 31st October. For revenge, large mobs led by prominent Congress leaders robbed, killed, and raped Sikhs in the national capital.
The Widow Colony is an attempt by young director Harpreet Kaur to document stories of the widows of 1984. She described her movie as ‘voices of the survivors.’ Twenty-four years and 11 commissions of enquiry later, survivors and victims are still nowhere close to justice. People named by these commissions as perpetrators are still able to walk free in the streets of Delhi.
Manmeet Singh who is the producer of this documentary while talking to TwoCircles.net warned that victims of Gujarat genocide will await the same fate as Sikhs of 1984. Even though the current prime minister is Sikh, struggle for justice continues. He suggested that instead of Sikh asking for justice for Delhi 1984 and Muslims for Gujarat 2002, it is better that they join hands and seek justice for all incidents and all victims.
Singh, who is also a financial analyst at IBM, said the struggle should be for a just India free from all forms of violence. He listed economic violence like farmers suicide and social evils like female feticide as examples of violence just like religious violence that are examples of social degeneration of India.
In the last 60 years, India have lost millions of its sons and daughters in senseless violence some aided and abetted by people in power and in cooperation with the state machinery while law enforcement and judiciary remained mute spectators. Million others have spent their lives seeking justice. There have been very few attempts to document the stories of victims, let alone any organized effort to seek justice. ‘The Widow Colony’ is an honest attempt in preserving the voices of the oppressed.
Video of the interview:
Links:
http://www.TheWidowColony.com
http://www.sachproductions.org/