History, Fiction, and Trauma

Abstract Post independent India has witnessed several horrific incidents of communal violence. The largest communal riot happened in the year 1984, in the capital city New Delhi. The Anti- Sikh Riots of 1984, happened after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India. But for a long time, there was silence surrounding the incident in which thousands lost their lives. The silence was primarily caused from the trauma inflicted from the incident. There are reasons to believe that the silence was politically motivated too. But the role fictional writings have played in communicating the traumatic memory of the incident was significant. This paper studies the novel Amu written by Shonali Bose to understand representation of traumatic memory of the community. The paper attempts to problematize the decades long silence surrounding the incident and the novel’s role along with other similar fictional accounts’ in unraveling the truth of the incident. The concept of unspeakability in trauma is examined alongside the forced silencing of the incident. Keywords: History, Unspeakability, trauma, 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots, Fiction, Silencing