Remembering Operation Bluestar

S. S. Dhanoa, August 2004

The Sikh community led by the Jathedars would be observing 6th June as the ‘Ghalughara divas’ all over the world. My estimate, after collecting all information that I could get as Chief Secretary, Punjab, is that about 1000-1200 persons lost their lives at the hands of the Indian military. It is a bit intriguing that the Jathedars started observance of the day really from last year when officially Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was declared dead and he was declared a martyr. It is said that seven to eight thousands Sikhs had got killed in what is known as the ‘chhota ghalughara’ at the hands of Diwan Lakhpat Rai Kapur and the Sikhs lost about thirty thousand lives in February 1762 in what is known as the ‘wada ghalughara’ perpetrated by Ahmed Shah Abdali. I am not aware of any observances of these days at the collective community level.

There are other features of this episode which are worth noticing. The Akalis driven out of political power by Mrs. Gandhi, at first launched a morcha (agitation) against water being given to Haryana at Kapoori and Bhindranwale launched a separate morcha for the release of his important associates. Both the morchas soon lost steam. This was when the morchas were combined and shifted to the Golden Temple Complex and the morcha got turned in to ‘Dharam Yudh Morcha’. Bhindranwale and his killer gangs started operating from Guru Nanak Niwas. Some individual Sikhs took exception to this development but at the collective level or by the SAD or the SGPC no effort was made to rein in Bhindranwale. At the very last when inhuman tortures and murders got perpetrated with in the precincts considered holy, the five Jathedars issued an appeal that there should be no killings within the Darbar Saheb complex to maintain its sanctity. There was a response from the Khadkus through Bhai Kanwar Singh saying that they were at war and during the war gurdwaras were their forts where killings and deaths for the cause were justified .There was no response on this from the Jathedars.

The late Mr. Tohra challenged the government to provide proof of the complicity of Bhindranwale As early as Decmber,1982 I had written to Mr. Barnala, under whom I had worked to persuade Akalis to get out of the lock-jam otherwise knowing the working of the government, I was sure that the Sikhs would get a bloody nose in which they would lose their ‘bol bale’ which was one of the demands in the Anadpur Saheb resolution. I was the Additional Chief Secretary, Bihar in 1983. I could visualize the harm emanating from the speeches of Bhindranwale. I approached Patna Takhat urging them to distance from Bhindranwale. I found that in a place like Patna where the Sikhs were a miniscule minority, their sympathies were with Bhindranwale and the Akalis, so nothing came out of it.

I am convinced that Mrs. Gandhi was sympathetic towards the Sikhs but she would not allow the Akalis to get political mileage from the ‘morcha launched by the Akalis. She tried mediation through Harkishen Singh Surjit, late Sardar Swaran Singh, Raghunandan Lal Bhatia and many others to get the matter resolved. Everyone involved has said that at one time almost an agreement was in sight but the same eluded them by a whisker. She had continued her efforts right till the third of June. Some accuse Mrs. Gandhi of insincerity, as there is evidence that the Indian Army had conducted exercises to storm the Golden Temple Complex in some of the training formations of the army. This cannot be attributed to duplicity of Mrs. Gandhi.

Having been a district magistrate of a district where divisional headquarters of a mountain division was located, I can say that in consultation with the civil authority or otherwise, the army identify threat perception to the public peace in their area and prepare themselves to handle such contingencies. To read the design of Mrs. Gandhi in such preparation would be wrong, I knew by the first May,1984 at least about two divisions of the army located in Bihar that were marked for moving to Punjab. The subsequent events show that Mrs. Gandhi did not anticipate the anger that the army action would generate. When the PMO as an abundant precaution, removed the Sikh security guards away from her she had intervened to get them back in the inner ring of her security.

Having authorized General Sunder ji for the operation Bluestar it was his duty to see that the operation was conducted with the least loss of life and quickly but in this the generals of the army failed. The second failure was their choosing of the date for the operation. It being a gurpurb. The third being their inability to seal or guard the road at the back of the Akal Takhat from where all the khadkus made good their escape. The crowning mistake made by Sunder ji was that he depended on the use of stun gas guns to flush out Bhindranwale and his associates from the Akal Takhat.

The Ak-47 and the SLRs held by his supporters trained by Gen. Sahbeg Singh had a much longer range than the range of the stun gas guns because of which these proved to be of no use. The army deputed to Punjab was about nine divisions. There were about eight army generals who were Sikh. Yet there was a brutal massacre mostly of the pilgrims. Many of the victims were crying for water in the intense heat. Neither the army arranged for the supply of water nor did they allow relations and volunteers to render such service to the injured. The dead bodies were not allowed to be claimed by the next of kin even in case of Bhindranwale.

I am convinced that this was not on the direction of Mrs. Gandhi. She according to her raj- dharma did not make scapegoats for the operation getting executed through incompetent hands and in a totally ham- handed manner. The Akalis and the Jathedars need to have introspection and stop stoking the fires of hatred against Mrs. Gandhi and the Congress party to drive political mileage from the great tragedy that befell the Sikhs in 1984 especially now that the general elections are over and Sardar Manmohan Singh has been appointed the Prime Minister of India on being elected by the Congress Parliamentary Party as their leader.

Notes

1. Chapter 4: Dharam Yudh Morcha, 1982, India Commits Suicide, G.S. Dhillon, Singh & Singh Publishers, Chandigarh, 1992, pp.185-86.

The Guardian (London, UK) made a good analysis of this policy of the Prime Minister [Indira Gandhi] in the following words:

"All through the tangle in Punjab, the Government has preferred to talk religion instead of economics and politics in its dealings with the Akali party, which represents the interests of Punjabi peasants and farmers, the majority of whom are Sikhs. The farmers say,

"Give us more of our own river waters to irrigate our fields, or refer the matter to the Supreme Court." The Government replies, "We will allow you to broadcast religious music over All India Radio, as for the water we shall appoint a tribunal to give a ruling on the dispute."

The Akalis say, "Chandigarh which happens to be in the heart of Punjab, should not have to be shared as a capital with the neighbouring Haryana." The Government retorts, "But how can we persuade the Government of Haryana to agree!"...

The Akalis say that Punjab and other states throughout India should be given greater economic powers and allowed to manage their own affairs. New Delhi retorts, "This is a talk of secession, it must be inspired by foreign powers" (The Guardian London, June 8, 1984).

2. June 1984: Understanding the Indian Government's Justification for Killing its Own Citizens, Dr. Swaranjeet Singh, voicesforfreedom.org.

"A spate of false propaganda, prejudiced reporting, distortions and one sided versions of the Punjab problem have filled the columns of newspapers. As a result most people in India and abroad have not formed a correct assessment of the problem….The full Punjab story presents a sordid tale of political trickery, colossal discrimination, machiavellian strategies, deceptive accords, murky intrigues, confrontation and bloodshed" (Truth About Punjab, G.S. Dhillon, SGPC, 1996).

"An investigative journalist, Dhiren Bhagat of Indian Post, Bombay revealed, in 1988, in a column in the Observer, London and the Indian Post, Bombay the details of a clandestine RAW operation to smuggle arms into India from Afghanistan. He supplied all possible details of the consignment (date, flight number, number of crates, an addressee who doesn’t exist etc.) and then proceeded to speculate that the weapons were meant to be supplied to the Government-sponsored “militants” in Punjab or used in Punjab by double agents" (Dhillon, Truth About Punjab, p.223).

"In the notorious White paper, the government had given photographs of fortifications ostensibly made by the militants. Later several of these fortifications were identified as those actually erected by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). Photographs of some had already appeared earlier in the Press with that identification. It was also well known that just a few months before the attack, the government was worried that there were no weapons inside the complex. So arms were smuggled across from Pakistan by the government’s own secret ‘Third Agency’ and dumped into the complex. I personally know the facts. In the summer of 1983, I was first chosen as one possible smuggler of weapons into the complex…. I had taken my national Cadet Corps service and my army attachment seriously and it was easy for me to smell many rats in the proposition. So declining the singular honour came almost spontaneously to me" (Chakravyuh: Web of Indian Secularism, Gurtej Singh, IOSS, 2002, pp. 49-50).

"The weapons Giani Zail Singh had talked about were not those recovered from the militants. These were brand new weapons arranged by the Army to give a false impression that the extremists were heavily armed" (The Gallant Defender, A.R. Darshi, pp.121-22).

3. Blind Men of Hindoostan: Remembering Operation Bluestar, Rear Admiral (Retd.) Satyindra Singh, The Sikh Review, August 2000.

"Major General Afsir Karim, a paratrooper and also a course mate of Lt Gen Brar, and a former Editor of Indian Defence Review, in his review of Brar’s volume, says that one wishes Brar's attempts to explode what he calls certain "myths" had been more convincing. Karim emphasises that Operation Bluestar has been considered a failure for the following reason:

i. Akal Takht was damaged beyond recognition even before Bhindranwale and his followers were killed or captured. Major collateral damage was caused to the Temple complex and there were a large number of civilian casualties as a result of frontal assault on a constricted space.

ii. Karim has a telling observation to make regarding the assessment of the number of weapons in the Temple by the police. It is intriguing, he says, that if the police (and the government) really believed that the militants had only two hundred to two-fifty weapons- the majority of which were 12 Bore guns and 303 rifles - where was the need to call in the Army?

4. Justification of Armed Resistance Against Indian Armed Force's Assault on The Golden Temple, Spokesman Weekly, New Delhi, July 16, 1984.

While fighting against army hordes from June 5 to 7 last, Sikhs inside the Golden Temple Complex at Amritsar were exercising their legitimate right of self-defence. This conclusion is based on the facts revealed and assessment made by Lt-Gen S.K. Sinha (Retd.), when he was GOC-in-C of the Western Command.

[Said the General]

"The army action was not the last resort as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would have us believe, decided upon toward May-end (1984). It had been on her mind for more than 18 months...

"All you have to match the adversary's weapons with your own weapons, if not, more fire power. This is acknowledged rule of combat. Mrs. Gandhi contends that arms were being collected by Sant Bhindranwale for the last one year. But this was much after she herself had drawn up plans for Army action against Golden Temple and other gurdwaras.

"In December last year (1983) two trenches were dug by Sant's men in front of Teja Singh Samudhari Hall within the holy complex but he was persuaded to fill them up. This proves that till then no responsible Akali leaders were prepared for an armed showdown with the Government.

"Fortification of the complex, according to SGPC Secretary Bhan Singh, started from February 17, this year. And this also after CRPF and BSF units had resorted to unprovoked firing and had begun converting the buildings on the periphery of the temple into bunkers and fortresses. This action by the Sikhs was just in response to the provocation provided by Government's para-military forces."