An imprint of Manjul Publishing unveiled the new book 1984: In Memory and Imagination – Personal Essays and Short Fiction on the 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots, edited by Vikram Kapur, Associate Professor of English at Shiv Nadar University on 4th November at the Press Club Of India , New Delhi.

The book was launched by Harry Sachdeva, prominent film-maker and writer producer of Bollywood Film “31st October” and Manoj Mitta, a journalist . They were joined by Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of Caravan magazine, and Vikram Kapur, editor of the anthology, to discuss the impact of the 1984 riots on the psyche of affected individuals and the nation as a whole.

A brief about the contents of the book

More than thirty years after they occurred, the events of 1984 refuse to slide into the past. As recently as 2012, Lieutenant General Brar, who led Operation Blue Star, was attacked in London for his role in that operation. In 2014, the Punjabi film ‘Kaum De Heere, based on the lives of the men responsible for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, was banned. To this day, the struggle goes on to deliver justice to the victims of the anti-Sikh pogrom that followed the assassination. Rather than entering the garbage heap of history, the events of 1984 have become a testament to William Faulkner’s words: ‘The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.’

This book examines the human narrative of 1984. It tells the stories, both real and imagined, of men and women whose lives were altered by that tragic chain of events and who continue to live with them to this day. Through the telling of these stories, it gets at the heart beating inside the body of facts to bring out the essence of a society and nation marked indelibly by what happened in 1984.

Contributors to this anthology: Hartosh Singh Bal, Kirpal Singh Dhillon, Ajeet Cour, Humra Quraishi, Preeti Gill, Rana Chhina, Rizio Yohanan Raj, NS Madhavan, Jaspreet Singh, Mridula Garg, Pratyaksha, Vikram Kapur, Harish Narang and Aditya Sharma.