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Mahesh

06/06/22 08:40 AM IST

When Indira Gandhi decided to storm the Golden Temple

  • WHAT
  • WHY
  • WHEN
  • WHERE
  • WHO
  • HOW
What is operation Blue Star?
  • On June 5, 1984, the Indian army fired the first bullets on the Harmandir Sahib.
  • At about 7.30 on the morning of June 6, Operation Blue Star, one of the most extraordinary battles in military history, came to a head when Indian army tanks pounded the Sikh shrine, the Akal Takht, with 105mm high-explosive squash head shells.
  • The Takht stands opposite the centre of the Sikhs’ religion, the Golden Temple - as the Harmandir Sahib is popularly called - in Amritsar.
  • The complex housing the two had been occupied and fortified by a fundamentalist Sikh preacher and separatist, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was demanding the establishment of Khalistan, a Sikh homeland.
  • Operation Blue Star had begun on June 1 on orders by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to remove Bhindranwale and his militant armed followers from the Harmandir Sahib Complex in Amritsar, Punjab.
  • Bhindranwale’s abject rejection of peaceful settlement forced Gandhi to consider a more radical way of evacuating the terrorists from the Golden Temple.
  • She turned to the army officials to prepare a draft plan for the evacuation, which soon culminated into Operation Blue Star, which was commanded by Lt. Gen. Kuldeep Singh Brar and supervised by Lt. Gen. K. Sundarji and Army Chief Gen. A. S. Vaidya.
  • The actual operation was divided into two major sub-operations, Operation Woodrose to contain any attack by Bhindranwale’s sympathizers from the Punjab countryside, and Operation Metal to secure the Golden Temple for the Indian government.
  • The tragedy of Operation Blue Star was that its timing coincided with the annual commemoration of the martyrdom of the fifth Sikh Guru, Guru Arjandev which led to the flocking of a large number of Sikh pilgrims to the temple complex.
  • The government justified it by pointing to the call given by Harchand Singh Longowal, the President of the Akali Dal during the Punjab insurgency of the 1980s, for beginning a statewide civil disobedience on June 3, 1984.
  • However, this factor added to a significant number of civilian casualties and injuries caused by the operation though the army claimed to have ordered a general evacuation of the complex before it rushed in.
  • Additionally, the government imposed Emergency in the Punjab during the Operation causing a complete blackout of media reporting.
  • The step-by-step operation began on June 1 with the armed forces encountering machine-gun-wielding militants in gun battles for control of the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) complex.
  • Five infantry battalions, the equivalent of two companies of commandos, six tanks and two companies of paramilitary police were assembled to oust Bhindranwale.
  • Young Sikhs emerged from manholes, opened fire or hurled grenades, and dropped down to secret underground passages before the soldiers could even return fire.
  • Bhindranwale’s defence of the complex had been brilliantly planned by a retired Indian army officer, Shabeg Singh, who bore a grudge against the government because he had been dismissed for alleged corruption.
  • He was commanding the battle from the Akal Takht. Bhindranwale was at his side.
  • Only a few Indian soldiers managed to get near enough to launch gas canisters. All apertures in the Akal Takht had been blocked with bricks and sandbags, leaving only small holes for gun emplacements, so the canisters bounced back affecting the soldiers, not the Sikhs inside the shrine.
  • The casualties mounted alarmingly. The battle became, in Brar’s own words, “a massacre” and the space in front of the Akal Takht a “killing ground.”
  • Left with little choice, and not willing to let Bhindranwale get away, the Army, under direct orders from the Prime Minister, started heavy shelling of the temple complex on June 5.
  • Vijayanta tanks shelled the Akal Takht on June 6. The Takht suffered significant damage but the structure was still standing upright.
  • A group trying to escape was mowed down by machine gun fire. The army gained effective control of the Harmandir Sahib complex on June 7.
  • Bhindranwale and at least 200 other separatists were killed. Indian Army is believed to have lost at least 100 men.
  • The actual figures were never disclosed by the government.
Why did Congress initially support Bhindranwale?
  • Bhindranwale was a leader of the Damdami Taksal, a Sikh religious authority and a political revolutionary in the early to mid-1980s. Bhindranwale pioneered the demand for the independent Sikh nation of Khalistan.
  • Though Bhindranwale himself never claimed he supported such a state, he made several statements that implied his support.
  • The Khalistan movement was a religious-political movement within Sikh groups for the creation of a separate state of Khalistan.
  • From the late 1970s, it assumed a militant face. The Akali Dal indirectly supported the movement and created a charter of demands.
  • Though the resolution did not explicitly call for a separate country, it envisioned transfer of territory to the Punjab as well as considerable devolution of powers of the Centre on the states.
  • But it was one Jagjit Singh Chauhan who first supported the idea of an independent Sikh country.
  • Chauhan was said to be in constant touch with Bhindranwale, and the former held some radical ideas of a separate Sikh state. Chauhan declared himself president of the "Republic of Khalistan", named a Cabinet, and issued Khalistan "passports", "postage stamps" and even "Khalistan dollars".
  • The Congress initially supported Bhindranwale during the late 1970s. The Congress backed Bhindranwale to weaken the Akali Dal in Punjab and split the Sikh vote.
  • The Congress supported the candidates backed by Bhindranwale in the 1978 SGPC elections. Congress leader (and ex-President of India) Giani Zail Singh allegedly financed the initial meetings of the separatist organization Dal Khalsa. The association of Bhindranwale with the Congress increased his influence and stature in politics.
  • Bhindranwale and his supporters increasingly came to be associated with acts of violence. In the early 1980s there were a series of murders in Punjab.
  • In 1981, a journalist and Congressman named Lala Jagat Narayan was found murdered, allegedly at the behest of Bhindranwale's men.
  • Narayan had been advocating against the use of Punjabi in Hindi schools in Punjab and the acceptance of Hindi instead of Punjabi by Hindus living in Punjab.
  • By May 1984, it was evident that something catastrophic was going to happen at the temple.
  • “Temple Intrigue” was the headline story in the 15 May issue of India Today, describing a string of cases of torture, assassination of suspected rivals and renegades, chopped bodies being taken out of the temple and dumped in gutters.
  • A lone woman shot dead Surinder Singh Sodhi, Bhindranwale’s favorite hitman, while he sat sipping tea outside a tea shop near the temple and screamed, waving her pistol, “Maine badla le liya hai (I have taken revenge).
  • ” Next morning, two assassins shot the tea-shop owner. Several mutilated bodies then appeared in gunny bags here and there and the local police had a rough time dealing with them, fishing them out of the gutters.
  • One of these, evidently, was that of Baljit Kaur, the Dalit woman who had shot Sodhi because she believed he had killed her husband. Policemen who put together that body said they had not seen evidence of such brutal torture before.
  • The Congress party, having initially attempted to prop up Bhindranwale as a political puppet, had little idea that the “saint” would soon unleash a militant, revivalist upsurge among Sikhs which, at one point, would threaten to break-up the country.
When did Bhindranwale turned against congress?
  • Bhindranwale had earlier been a suspect in the murder of the Nirankari leader Gurbachan Singh, who had been killed on 24 April 1980.
  • The Punjab government arrested Bhindranwale but later released him for lack of evidence.
  • By this time, the Akali Dal, which had been considering Bhindranwale a Congress agent, began to make common cause with him. This might have irrevocably changed Bhindranwale's equation with the Congress and Indira Gandhi.
  • The Akali Dal and Bhindranwale launched the Dharam Yudh Morcha in August 1982. It called for the implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution (which contained several demands for greater devolution of powers to the state and lessening of government influence).
  • PM Indira Gandhi however viewed the document as a secessionist one, and took an aggressive stand. Agitations of the Morcha were violently suppressed by the police. Over 30,000 Sikhs were arrested. The violent acts of Bhindranwale's supporters continued with murders and bombings in Punjab.
  • Bhindranwale's influence meant it was difficult to even arrest these people.
  • In June 1984, Bhindranwale and his armed supporters had taken refuge inside the Amritsar Harmandir Sahib Complex, which housed the Golden Temple. Negotiators failed to convince Bhindranwale to abandon the hideout.
  • Then PM Indira Gandhi ordered a military operation to evacuate the militants holed up inside the temple.
  • The government had again no idea that Bhindranwale had enough firepower to make a last stand in an ancient building, fighting off repeated assaults by six of the finest infantry battalions of the Indian Army, besides special forces commandos, Vijayanta tanks firing from their main guns, Infantry Fighting Vehicles, 3.7-inch mountain howitzers, helicopter patrols, for 36 hours.
  • Not until the commanders leading Operation Blue Star had placed his body on slabs of ice on that burning day of June 6, and his devotees and captured militants started lining up to touch his feet, could the government of India feel relieved that the job was done.
Where did the Operation Blue Star go against the wishes?
  • Indira Gandhi did not consider Operation Blue Star a mistake. In a way, she was right. The mistake was not in attempting to flush out the separatists but in the manner this was attempted.
  • When the commando action was undertaken, “most unexpectedly”, they came under heavy fire and then the army realized that it was up against terrorists well-equipped with machine-guns and other sophisticated weapons, and well entrenched in secure passages inside the buildings in the complex.
  • The entire strategy and the tactics had to be changed quickly. Eventually, armored personnel carriers and tanks had to be brought in to tackle the situation. The Army also realized that there was no possibility of ensuring the surrender of the militants without causing damage to the buildings.
  • Senior officers had 'not anticipated' a mutiny by Sikh jawans. Mutiny among the Sikh Jawans and civilian causalities could have been avoided with careful planning and explanation.  Things took a wrong turn too quickly and did more damage than good.
  • According to Member of Parliament Amarjit Kaur, Bhindranwale wanted to start a civil war between Hindus and Sikhs. Before the Operation Blue Star started, there was already an increase in the killings of Hindus and 23 people were killed in the final 24 hours before the announcement of the operation.
  • The spate in killings confirmed the doubts of the government which then decided that the operation had to be initiated sooner than later. However, as the subsequent events showed, the Operation ruined the centuries-old camaraderie between Sikhs and Hindus.
  • The government, however, had another major reason to move quickly to end the budding insurgency. Bhindranwale was planning to declare Khalistan an independent country any moment with support from Pakistan, as per the government of India’s intelligence reports.
  • This declaration would have increased the possibility of Punjab Police and security personnel siding with Bhindranwale.
  • More importantly, Pakistan would have come in the picture, declaring its support for Khalistan. Indira Gandhi wanted to preemptively eliminate this possibility by eliminating Bhindranwale.
  • The long-term results of the operation included defeat of the secessionist Khalistan movement and reduction in militancy in Punjab. In the short run, however, India’s Prime Minister was dead.
Who suffered most in this operation ?
  • Operation Blue Star led to an increased threat perception to Indira Gandhi’s life leading to the initial removal of Sikhs from her personal bodyguard by the Intelligence Bureau.
  • However, the Prime Minister thought this would reinforce her anti-Sikh image among the public and give ammunition to her opponents.
  • She forced the Special Protection Group (SPG) to reinstate her Sikh bodyguards, especially Beant Singh who was believed to be her personal favourite. Her assassination was carried out by Beant Singh and Satwant Singh on the morning of October 31, 1984, who shot 36 bullets from a revolver and a Sten gun at close range.
  • The Sikh community’s troubles however only increased with Gandhi’s death.
  • As news filtered in that her assailants belonged to the Sikh community, a horrific anti-Sikh massacre began on the evening of October 31 in the suburbs of Delhi staged by anti-social elements allegedly at the behest of local Congress politicians who wanted to teach the Sikhs a lesson.
  • The rioters targeted Sikhs systematically using electoral lists to identify Sikh families in the suburbs of Mongolpuri, Palam, Shahdara, Trilokpuri, Sultanpuri and Trans-Yamuna region.
  • The violence began on the evening of October 31 itself in and around the neighbourhood of AIIMS, and soon spread to pockets of the city where there were Gurudwaras, and finally the suburbs, lasting till November 3.
  • The mobs used knives, iron rods and clubs to attack male members of Sikh families, and later doused their bodies with inflammable liquids to burn them and destroy evidence.
  • The riots are said to have killed at least 3,000 Sikhs in the Delhi-NCR region and displaced scores of Sikhs by burning the Sikh business establishments in the area. The violence is said to have affected other parts of India as well taking the body count as high as 8000 till it was brought under control.
  • The violence ironically happened in the backdrop of the swearing-in of Indira Gandhi’s eldest son, Rajiv Gandhi as the new Prime Minister at the invitation of President Giani Zail Singh who was the first Sikh occupant of the office.
  • Many Congress leaders were believed to be behind the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre.
How Sikhs view this operation?
  • It’s not what the Operation was aimed at or who he was aimed against. It’s how it was seen by most Sikhs.
  • When viewed clinically, the Army operation (June 5-6) was aimed at evicting 37- year-old Damdami Taksal chief Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed militia who had converted the holy shrine into an armed fortress from where he was running a virtual parallel government, provoking wanton violence across the state and publicly spewing venom against a particular community.
  • Bhindranwale, who had caught the imagination of certain sections of the Sikh community, had come to command fear among the general public, politicians and all wings of the state government.
  • The government chose to remain a silent spectator to multiple reports of arms and ammunition, ranging from rifles to rocket launchers, being regularly transported in kar sewa trucks entering the temple complex.
  • It’s not difficult to understand that the cult leader could not have amassed that much ammunition without the state and central governments looking the other way. And then the government could not wait anymore.
  • For the Sikh community, Operation Blue Star became an attack on their most revered and historic shrine and that too barely two days after Guru Arjan Dev's martyrdom day. Indeed, when it comes to matters of faith it is difficult to view a single action in isolation or to rationalize it.   
  • Operation Blue Star will remain a tragic event in India's post-Independence history from which no winners emerged.
  • In a series of revenge killings, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated (October 1984), followed by horrific reprisal anti-Sikh violence (November 1984), two hijackings of Indian Airlines aircraft (July and August 1984), downing of an Air India Boeing 747 in a mid-air explosion caused by Canada-based militants killing all 329 on board (June 1985), the assassination of General Arun Shridhar Vaidya (August 1986), who was the Army Chief during Operation Blue Star, and the knifing of Lt General Kuldeep Singh Brar in London (September 2012), who as major general, led Operation Blue Star.
  • In 1989, the army's strategy was criticised by comparing it with the blockade approach taken by KPS Gill in Operation Black Thunder, when Sikh militants had again taken over the temple complex. It was said that Operation Blue Star could have been averted by using similar blockade tactics.
  • The army hit back by stating that “no comparison is possible between the two situations”, as “there was no cult figure like Bhindranwale to idolise, and no professional military general like Shahbeg Singh to provide military leadership” and “the confidence of militants having been shattered by Operation Blue Star.”
  • The state when challenged with machine guns will respond with tanks - because it can.

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