NEW DELHI: Himmat Kaur was ready to march in the heat all the way from her slum in Tilak Vihar to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s house. “I want to ask, him why he lied on TV,” she explained.

But the police prevented her from marching. So she and some 400 men, women and children all victims of the 1984 riots came in buses first to Lt. Governor Romesh Bhandari’s Akbar Road residence and then to the Prime Minister’s house to protest against the failure of the Government to give them adequate housing despite repeated promises.

The demonstration held on Tuesday morning was sparked off by a recent speech by Gandhi on TV in which he said that all the victims of the 1984 riots had been adequately compensated.

“We want justice, we want houses,” shouted the demonstrators, hoping that someone will listen to their plea.

The protesters live in a slum adjacent to the tenements which were allotted to some riot widows by the Delhi Administration in 1985. Most of the families are from Mongolpuri, Sultanpuri and Nangloi who fled their homes in terror in 1984. “We cannot go back there now and have nowhere else to go,” said Banda Singh a vegetable vendor who lost his only son in the riots. The slum has some 1300 families. It started as a refugee camp to accommodate the people congregated from different colonies in Tilak Vihar after their houses had been burnt.

“[still have my house in MongoIpuri and J am willing to exchange it for a flat somewhere where a majority of Sikh families are living,” says Harjinder kaur who has been living with her three children and old in laws in the jhuggis since the riots.

Numerous surveys have been conducted of the slum residents both by the Delhi Administration and the Congress (I). “They were promised flats and yet nothing has been done,” says Gursharan Babbar, general secretary of the All India Sikh Conference.

“I lived in a decent, clean house with water and electricity in Nand Nagri. Now the filth and mosquitoes keep my family sick most of the time. There are no toilets and no clean water. Can you imagine what it is like living in a leaking jhuggi through four monsoons? asks Nima Kuar.

But why don’t these people return to their original homes? “The murders are still living there. We saw them. We know them. How can we live amongst them? says Basant.

“We want a house. We want justice. They cannot bring back the dead but they can at least provide us with a secure shelter,” says Raj Kaur.

Article extracted from this publication >>  June 2, 1989

 

Article extracted from this publication >>