Archival half-life: witnessing Sikh bodily decay in the postcolonial archive

This response discusses the project of documenting Sikh women’s stories and their utility in seeking closure. Closure is articulated by many in The Kaurs of 1984 as an impossible goalpost in the aftermath of 1984, particularly as these Sikh women grapple with bureaucratic injustice and the Indian state’s failure to acknowledge their ongoing trauma. Meanwhile, the archiving of stories allegedly offers closure by recognizing lived experience through a formal mechanism in a state institution. I grapple with the tensions in state recognition and closure through the erasure propagated by the colonial archive, and what Wazir’s project offers as an alternative.