The Siege of the Golden Temple

The Operation Blue Star will always be one of the darkest and most painful pages in the history of modern India where the Indian state engaged in a war not with the foreign power but with its own citizens, especially Sikh population. During the first week of June 1984, the Indian Army with direct orders of then Prime minister Indira Gandhi and under the eyes of military brasses of the time such as General A.S. Vaidya and Lt. Gen. K.S. Brar carried out a complete military operation to clear the Golden Temple complex at Amritsar, Punjab. This was not merely a counter terrorist operation as the Indian government would have us believe rather it was a well-planned sacrilege against the holiest place of Sikhism, the Harmandir Sahib at the most inauspicious time, one of the major Sikh religious holidays the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev Ji.
A huge number of unarmed pilgrims, consisting of women, children, and the aged, had come to the golden temple to offer their respect but instead, were trapped and later killed in a ruthless assault of bullets, tank shells and mortar bombs. The official versions of what happened described the assault as an unavoidable evil that was aimed at clearing out the so called militants led by the person who in truth never had been the hundred percent militant because he himself had been demanding the rights of the Sikhs, federal rights, and the rights to justice where this person Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had been provoking against decades of political and economic and cultural discrimination against the Sikhs by the central government. Instead of listening to these constitutional requirements, New Delhi resorted to raw power and used the gun over justice and in doing so the Sikh psyche was scarred for ever.
The events that took place on the fateful days of Amritsar horrified the world and has devastated the Sikh community. According to independent estimates it is estimated that over 5000 Sikhs, majority of whom were civilians, were killed but the government under reported the casualties dismally. Alternative accounts by eye witnesses saw war time horrors of troops firing point blank rounds of ammunition at unarmed congregants, tanks rolling over bodies, women and children wailing in horror as the temples were blown to shreds by mortar shells.
Sikhism and its supreme religious and political seat of power, the revered Akal Takht, was brought to its knees. Worse still, in what can only be termed as a cultural genocide, the Sikh Reference Library, which was a priceless collection of ancient manuscripts, books and documents, was burnt down deliberately after the fighting was over. The organized destruction of the Sikh culture was equally devastating as the actual massacre, as it cut the spiritual and historical connection of the community in a single stroke of brutality.
The demonization of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a terrorist by the state actually made him to be regarded as a hero by millions of Sikhs as a champion of Sikh identity and pride facing a more and more oppressive Indian state. His claims were based on constitutional rights and historical injustice: the Anandpur Sahib Resolution demanded additional autonomy, right to language and immunity against religious harms, rather than secession and violence. However, the unwillingness of New Delhi to bargain and its choice to turn the conflict into militarized were the factors that turned a political movement into the battlefield drenched in blood. Bhindranwale was killed in the temple but his death increased Sikh frustration against the Indian state that sustained an insurgency in Punjab more than ten years.
This attack of the military on Golden Temple caused also unprecedented up rising within the Indian Army itself. More than 2,600 Sikh soldiers mutinied in a number of cantonments around the country and demanded not to serve a government that had defiled the holiest shrine of their religion. Such soldiers have been marked as traitors and court martialled or even killed but in the Sikh community they are recalled as heroes who went against blind obedience in favour of conscience. Their defiance highlighted the severe fissure that had been created by the operation blue star not only between the citizen of the Sikh community and the Indian state but also within the forces who were obliged to execute the official policies of the state of utmost cruelty.
The temple assault was not the finish of the events. Sikh body guards assassinated Indira Gandhi in a retaliatory shooting on October 31, 1984 which although shocking to many in India was viewed by many Sikhs to be the natural result of the provocations of the Government itself. This was followed by three days of state sponsored genocide on Sikhs in Delhi and other Indian cities. Backed by weapons in their hand and voter lists, organized mobs mostly under the influence of the ruling Congress Party politicians strolled the streets seeking Sikh men, women and children to kill. More than 3,000 Sikhs were slaughtered alone in Delhi, women were raped by the days, houses burnt down, businesses looted and entire colonies just burnt down. Police either watched or themselves took part. There was complicity of the state.
The Indian judiciary has completely failed to provide the justice in the decades that followed. Crimes were recorded by Misra and Nanavati Commissions among others, but the result was nearly zero convictions. Remaining culprits such as Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar had gone unpunished over decades and survived to enjoy life as the victims wore the stigmas of terror. Instead of owning up its mistake, the Indian state buried the truth and made sure the massacres of 1984 would only turn out to be a wound that would never heal the conscience of the nation.
The betrayal was twice as painful in the case of Sikh soldiers and war veterans who had served with the Indian Army with great loyalties. The wars waged in India were fought by many who had shed blood under the tricolour flag to find their holy places being disrespected and their community being targeted to be annihilated. They had no hearing of their appeals to right, their protests were stifled, their sacrifices were forgotten and lost. The message of the state was merciless, the minorities, who had an impudence to seek to oppose Hindu majoritarian rule, would never see any ballot, but only bullets. This was a message that resonated across the years, it only served to entrench the Sikh alienation and generate the Khalistan demand, not an extreme utopia but a cry of fear over safety, dignity and existence.