Delhi Riots Three days in the life of a Nation

Our primary concern in this book has been to en sure that the experiences of the November carnage are recorded so that they are not altogether lost to the future historian. This work is therefore a necessary first step rather than a finished account because there was an urgency in proceeding with the venture since we felt that the more the work was postponed, the more the original experience itself was likely to be transformed by subsequent events and experiences. An important factor in pursuing the work was the need to present the experiences and perceptions of ordinary people as an alternative to the formal version of the November riots which will certainly find its way into the archives, and therefore into the future. We considered it important that a one-sided, and doctored, version of what happened alone did not find its way into posterity and that victims as well as others left their own testimony for the future. What has been at tempted here is that those who were caught in the turmoil of the happenings speak directly, without the mediating presence of the historian. Once they have done so, and their experience is available to others in the original, the social scientist may justifiably go into action. What comes out of their heads, and their pens, is likely to be more sophisticated and erudite but is also likely to be less comprehensible to the ordinary reader. The trauma of the November carnage demands the widest audience and so we have tried to put as little as possible between our speakers and our readers.