The wounds of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India are alive and Prime Minister Narendra Modi took an important step toward starting a conversation with a group of Sikh Americans.

On Saturday, 28 Sikhs, many of whom have lived in the United States since before 1984 but have relatives or friends in India who were affected by the massacre, came to ask him to bring the guilty to book.

Sikh leaders from Virginia, New York and New Jersey said that Sikhs who had sought political asylum in the United States after the 1984 riots should be allowed to visit their families in Punjab. They claimed that the Indian government maintains a blacklist of such people and they are denied Indian visas.

Canadian Sikhs talked about the same problem. “It has been so long," one member explained, asking to remain unidentified. "It is time for the government to forgive and forget. They sought political asylum because it was the easiest way to get out of India.”

Indian officials weren’t immediately available to comment but the fact that a meeting with Modi was arranged is significant. There is a distinct effort by the Indian embassy and consulates in the United States to reconnect with the Sikh community, which has drifted away from mainstream Indian Americans, even forming its own separate Sikh American Caucus in the US House of Representatives.

Indian Ambassador S. Jaishankar and his officers have been meeting various Sikh organisations over the past several months to assuage hurt feelings.

The Sikh delegation was distinct from the hardline groups such as Sikhs for Justice and American Justice Center, both fronted by a lawyer, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who got a federal court to issue summons on Modi in connection with the 2002 Gujarat riots.

When the Obama Administration said that Modi had full immunity on his visit as prime minister, Pannun offered give a reward of $10,000 to anyone who could serve the summons to Modi at any of his public engagements.

Indian officials said the matter would be dealt with appropriately.

Members of the Sikh delegation that met Modi said that even after 30 years, the perpetrators of the 1984 riots roamed free. They expressed hope that the new government would ensure that justice was done.