Operation Blue Star - June 1984.

The Darbar Sahib (the Golden Temple) has played a central role in all of Sikh history. It has been attacked, destroyed and desecrated and it has been built afresh each time. It is a potent symbol of Sikhism, and along with the turban, the most recognizable. Equally important, though less known to the wider world, is the Akal Takht. Standing opposite the Darbar Sahib, the Akal Takht is the political seat of Sikhism that has stood, in popular imagination and historically, as a challenge to the power of Delhi.

The day Operation Blue Star began was the martyrdom day of Guru Arjun Dev, the 5th Guru of the Sikhs, who built the Darbar Sahib. To any one with the least knowledge of Sikh history, an immediate parallel would be Ahmed Shah Abdali's attack on the Darbar Sahib on Baisakhi in the 18th century. There were innocent pilgrims inside, more so than on any other day, and it would be futile to argue that the Indian Government was unaware of the importance of the day for the Sikhs, which would mean that it was either stupid or deliberate in choosing that day for launching its attack.

The Sikh Reference Library went up in flames after the complex was in control of the Indian army. The Indian government has admitted that certain Sikh records from the library are in the possession of the army, yet they have not been returned or catalogued.

"The soldiers were in a foul mood. According to the official White Paper, 83 army personnel had been killed and 249 wounded during the Operation. Private estimates give much higher figures of army casualties.238 After the destruction of the Akal Takht, they drank and smoked openly inside the Temple complex and indiscriminately killed those who were found inside. For them, every Sikh inside was a terrorist. According to the official White Paper, 493 terrorists were killed, 86 wounded and 1,592 apprehended during the Operation. These numbers add up to 2171, and fail to explain what happened to at least five thousand pilgrims who were trapped inside when the Operation began. The eye-witnesses claim that "7 to 8 thousand people were killed". Mark Tully estimates that approximately 4000 people may have died. Chand Joshi suggests 5000 civilian deaths.239" (Ram Narayan Kumar, The Ghalughara: Operation Blue Star - A Retrospect) 

Bhindranwale, the ostensible reason for Operation Blue Star, was a creation of Indira Gandhi and became her nemesis. He became a power in Punjab politics because of Indira Gandhi's patronage and became a hero and martyr in the wider Sikh imagination because of Operation Blue Star. Getting rid of Bhindranwale was not a good enough reason for the attack, not when other options were available, not when other opportunities were ignored.

"Until June 1, 1984, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale held his regular public meetings on the roof of the community kitchen inside the Golden Temple complex. The meetings were open to all, and it should have been possible for a group of commandos to nab him there by using minimal force. This was not done. It should also have been easy for specially trained sharp-shooters, who had positioned themselves on the buildings around the temple, to target Bhindranwale and his armed followers, and to "neutralize" them. On June 1 afternoon, mixed groups of various security agencies that had occupied the multi-storied buildings in the circumference did open fire against the temple complex when Bhindranwale was holding his audience on the roof of the kitchen building. Instead of targeting Bhindranwale, the sharp shooters aimed at various buildings, including the main shrine of Harmandir Sahib which received 34 bullet marks. The objective of the barrage of firing, which lasted seven hours, was to assess the strength, the training and the preparedness of Bhindranwale’s resistance." (Ram Narayan Kumar, The Ghalughara: Operation Blue Star - A Retrospect)

What was felt strongly by the Sikhs and has not been recognized by most of the rest of the country is the fact that Operation Blue Star was not so much about taking out Bhindranwale but an attack on the Sikh psyche - on their confidence and their spirit. Indira Gandhi considered it a political game, a good enough cause to consolidate her position by rallying the nation against a common enemy, which was not so much Bhindranwale, but any Sikh who did not conform to and accept the idea of India as dictated by Delhi. And what has also perhaps not been recognized is the fact that even though it happened before I was born, Operation Blue Star will always haunt me, will make me consider Indira Gandhi a complete failure as a national leader and make me question my rights and position in my country because I belong to a minority, and this does not make me a Bhindranwale supporter.  

"As I already observed, the attack on the Golden Temple, the destruction of the Akal Takht, and the atrocities that followed the army operations produced in all sections of the Sikhs a sense of outrage that was hard to alleviate. In any case, appeasement was not even attempted. The large majority of Hindu India, even if politically hostile to Indira Gandhi, openly identified with - and exulted in - her Will to overwhelmingly humble a recalcitrant minority. The sentiment was echoed by Morarji Desai, the former Prime Minister who had led the democratic coalition which replaced Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime in March 1977: "Nation would have been destroyed if the army had not been moved in. All the terrorists have not been finished yet. They should be liquidated as they are maligning the image of the Sikhs and pose a fundamental threat to the very existence of the country."247 (Ram Narayan Kumar, The Ghalughara: Operation Blue Star - A Retrospect)

The attack on the Golden Temple Complex was a state-sponsored action and like all state-sponsored actions in India, there has never been a public accounting. After all, who is clean enough to point a finger at anyone else? The only other national party, the BJP, is desperately trying to put behind its own state-sponsored terrorism in Gujarat in 2002 and project its perpetrator, Narendra Modi, as the next national leader – and Gujarat is a more recent occurrence and within people’s proverbially short memories.

It is easy to tell people to move on. They have no choice but to move on; the necessity of life makes it so. Yet moving on is not the same as achieving closure. And the Indian Government has always failed in providing that. It is not sufficient to make a Sikh Prime Minister apologise to his own people.

Here is the complete piece, extracts of which are quoted above, by Ram Narayan Kumar on Operation Blue Star.