The Widow Colony

From director Harpreet Kaur comes the most affecting documentary out of India since 2004’s Born Into Brothels. Its title refers to a neighborhood in Delhi that suffered the brunt of the November 1984 massacre of the Sikhs by neighboring Muslims and Hindus. The pogrom was revenge for the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards, which was revenge for her raid on the Sikh Golden Temple, which was revenge for the Sikhs turning the temple into a paramilitary headquarters, which was revenge for… etc.

Indira’s killers were hanged, but execution of the perpetrators at the end of a noose was apparently too little too late for some overeager holy warriors, who proceeded to torture between 2500-5000 Sikhs, cut off their beards and hair to humiliate them, burn them alive, desecrate the Guru Granth Sahib, their holy book, and gang rape their wives and daughters.

While all of the casualties were Sikhs, the one newspaper (operated by the government) deemed the event a “riot.” What lucky fighters those Hindus are, not to lose a single man!

Witnesses claimed that the Indian police not only failed to protect them, they participated in the orgy of brutality. This is backed up by the universally-accepted facts that the police allowed the pillaging to go on for three days without interfering, Sikh policemen were disarmed beforehand, and no Muslim or Hindu arrests were made afterwards. The surviving widows were turned away from the police station and forced to hide in the city and surrounding woods, subsisting on sewage and their own urine as Muslims marauded unmolested.

If the Sikhs were guilty of anything, it was practicing a different religion than the majority of their countrymen. The Widow Colony could be viewed as an interesting case study in the way man-made institutions break down following a national emergency in a “democratic” country.

After a tragedy strikes, the sequence of events typically goes something like this:

1. The government denies foreknowledge.

2. The populace, frightened at having their stability threatened, calls upon the authorities for vengeance.

3. Blame is swiftly placed, often on the most convenient enemy, and “justice” is meted out either fascistically via government facilitation, or street-style by lynch mobs, with the police turning a blind eye, out of fear of their own people.

4. If the guilty parties actually are the ones who end up getting punished for the crimes, which is rare, there is usually much collateral damage of innocent life, which

5. The government then disavows involvement with or responsibility for, through some reputable-looking avenue such as issuing an “official investigation,” where it promptly exonerates itself.

6. The government having gone on record as being innocent, and the people finally losing appetite for blood, both soon return to the status quo, which, because its system of rule is inherently flawed, could really just be called the down time between “tragedies.” 

Both a country’s constitution and its dominant religious convictions go out the window when its leader gets popped. Over twenty years and eleven investigative committees have passed, the film informs us, and only ten convictions and a meager public apology have materialized for the Indian victims. The surviving widows were offered a couple hundred dollars apiece for each family member killed, but many have yet to receive even this insulting compensation.

This sad chapter in Indian history is but another violent example of the failure of a democracy, in this case the largest in the world, to tolerate a minority religious group within their country. See the Branch Dividian massacre and the second Iraq War for further examples. All could be viewed as aggression towards people whose different beliefs spawned irrational fear in the government, which led to unwarranted invasions under the pretense of seizing illegal weaponry, which was never produced.

Indira Gandhi’s attack on the Sikh Golden Temple that helped spark off the cycle of revenge culminating in the ‘84 massacre was triggered by the temple’s occupation by the militant Sikh leader Bhindranwale, who was rumored to be stockpiling weapons there. While absolutely wrong from a legal standpoint (Bhindranwale was interrogated for 25 days and then released due to lack of evidence), Indira’s decision nonetheless raises an issue that the film fails to explore: the religious hypocrisy that pervades the region and contributes to the instability of not only India, but the world.

In Bhindranwale we have a Sikh leader who was harboring militants and stockpiling anti-tank missiles inside a church. Not only that, but a golden one. Worship of materialism, including real-estate and gold, are expressly forbidden by Sikh doctrine, yet apparently worshiping while heavily armed inside golden real-estate is not. And while the Sikhs are indeed victims here, they also profess to not believing in judging, much less killing, their fellow man, which is all well and good. And yet as soon as they are violated, they come asking for the government to do it for them. Don’t they subscribe to a panentheistic religion which teaches that God lies within all people and nature? Isn’t this the same country where Mahatma Ghandi stated “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?” On what authority, I have to wonder, do these Sikhs, or any religious group that claims to preach nonviolence, for that matter, call for revenge? Their gurus, just like the Christian prophet, never taught us to expect earthly justice from God. Clearly, this does not mean that the widows should be denied justice, but perhaps we should be imploring both the governments of the world and the religions of the world to evolve.

Some Muslims demonstrated true compassion when they provided the decimated Sikhs with medical aid, showing that there are those who look past petty differences and see humanity as it truly as, free from artificial boundaries of race or religion. But, of course, they were in the minority.

My only complaint is that the film skims over the back story that led up to the horrible event and seems afraid to address the contradictions of the victims’ belief systems that fuel fear and divisiveness on our planet. It’s like telling the story of the Waco massacre solely from a pro-David Koresh point of view. Yeah, he was a misunderstood victim… but he was also shooting at the feds with assault rifles once they wronged him. What happened to “turn the other cheek?”

Yet no one can deny the Sikhs have suffered the kind of persecution that in a truly civilized society would cause so much outrage, we as a race would see to it that something this terrible never happens again. And The Widow Colony succeeds at portraying the strength of the women and the dedication they continue to demonstrate for their voice to be heard.

Early on, we also hear about one of many Sikhs who loved Indira Ghandi, despite her attacks on Sikh temples all over Delhi, to the point where she refuses to cook for her family on the day she learns that Indira was been murdered (fasting is also prohibited in Sikhism). Hours later, her whole family was wiped out by irate Muslims who blamed her people for the killing. Just another example of how complex the tapestry of justice, vengeance, forgiveness, spirituality, and hypocrisy in India, and the world, has become.

The film’s argument that the Indian government is the biggest perpetrator in its failure to prevent the massacre or even acknowledge it afterwards is definitely true, and its deliberate pacing effectively hammers home the widows’ pain for the viewer with each emotionally bludgeoning teary testimonial. One is only left wanting more interviews with those on the opposing side, though, for how are we to form anything approaching an objective assessment of the situation from only one point of view? The Widow Colony’s underlying plea for peace is somewhat undercut by such a simplistic surface treatment of a multifaceted issue.

The film’s best quality is perhaps its contribution to raising awareness about this atrocity, and its heart certainly is in the right place; I just wished it tried harder to present the logos of the participants’ motivations along with the powerful pathos of their actions.

-Andy Gately