Post-conflict justice in divided democracies: the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India

Renée Jeffery and Ian Hall

Third World Quarterly, 2020, vol. 41, issue 6, 994-1011

Abstract: Official figures claim that almost 3000 people were killed, and many more injured or displaced, in four days of rioting aimed at the Sikh population of Delhi in late October and early November 1984 following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. This article analyses the efforts made to address the human rights violations that occurred. It argues that as a divided democracy, India has struggled to do justice to the victims, despite multiple commissions of inquiry, compensation schemes and a prime ministerial apology. It argues that this has occurred not simply because of challenges commonly faced by democracies dealing with similar incidents, but also because of the particular problems faced in a context in which we see continuity of rule by a political elite allegedly implicated in the abuse and in which there is acute concern for the survival of a fragile divided polity.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2020.1728686 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:41:y:2020:i:6:p:994-1011

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2020.1728686

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().