you-can-t-talk-operation-bluestar-so-casually-in-punjab

Operation Bluestar is a highly emotive issue for the Sikhs. No community anywhere forgets any act that it believes was unjustified. Sikhs may have forgiven those who were responsible for the operation, but they can never forget it and they never will.

 

When former Union Home and Finance Minister P Chidambaram described Operation Bluestar as a mistake, he was caught on the wrong foot, both within his own party and also among the Sikh community. No Sikh can dismiss the Operation Bluestar as a mere “mistake”.

 

It was an epochal tragedy that is etched deep in their psyche as a painful memory. For the Congress this amounts to admission of the “mistake” which, in the hindsight, everyone agrees and admits was actually a big mistake that ended up in a devastating tragedy with lasting consequences and cascading effect and alienating an entire community across the globe.

 

Indira Gandhi, indeed, did pay a heavy price with her life. She was shot dead by her own Sikh bodyguards less than five months after the ‘operation’. It is quite understandable that she must have acted only upon the advice of so many people, including the political and civil defence personnel, but eventually it was her decision. It is quite possible and likely that she underestimated the level of damage and disaster it may cause, not just physical damage to the complex, but also the psychological damage that is still refusing to be healed.

 

For that matter even the Bharatiya Janata Party had called for action against the militants led by Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale as the killings of innocent people, mostly Hindus but some Sikhs also, had become a routine. This is a known fact that militants after killing their targets would return to the Golden Temple and hide there. There was unease across the country at that time over the killings which had become a routine.

 

Besides the BJP, even the senior Akali leadership is believed to have also conveyed to Gandhi to take some action as the situation was beyond its (the Akali leadership’s) control.

 

There is one more opinion that Maj Gen (Retired) Shabeg Singh, a decorated army general and a hero of Bangladesh war wanted to trap the Government of India into action on Golden Temple. Not that Gen Singh had any doubts about the final outcome, he realised the impact of any military action on Darbar Sahib, the holiest of all places among the Sikhs, as it would eventually lead to mass alienation. That way he succeeded in his plans. The impact of the army operation was much more than what Gen Shahbeg Singh may have wished for.

 

It is said that late Gurcharan Singh Tohra told Bhindrawale, ahead of the military action, that nobody would survive if the army action takes place. To that, Bhindrawale reportedly replied that the real movement would start only after they are killed. And Bhindrawale proved to be right. The Khalistan movement intensified after Operation Bluestar. Besides, it has marked a lasting impression on the entire community that it was wronged with the attack on the holiest of its shrines.

 

It is easy to judge Gandhi in hindsight. With all these forces and factors at play, the position of the Prime Minister of that time is quite understandable. Anyone in her place would have taken some decision to flush out the militants. May be it was lack of planning and failure of proper execution of the decision that led to such a huge damage. However, the extent of damage would not make much difference to the Sikhs. The military action on the holy shrine itself was hurtful enough.

 

Also read: Punjab cannot afford radicals replacing moderates

 

Comparisons have often been drawn with ‘Operation Black Thunder’, which was carried out under the leadership of KPS Gill a few years later. There are many reasons that led to ‘Black Thunder’ ending up as a “neat and clean” operation without any damage. One main reason was the benefit of the ‘Operation Bluestar’ experience. Even the holed up militants at that time knew about it as did Gill and others. Nobody would be naïve enough to repeat such a mistake that Operation Bluestar ended up in.

 

One of the most ignored and overlooked facts is Gandhi’s trust in her Sikh bodyguards. Even after the intelligence and security agencies had withdrawn her Sikh bodyguards, she insisted on their return saying famously that they were like her own children. That apparently was aimed at conveying a message to the entire Sikh community that she did not have anything against anyone and had acted only as Prime Minister should act when the unity and integrity of the country and the life and property of its people are threatened the way they were threatened in Punjab that time.

 

But her calculations proved fatally wrong. Had she not allowed herself to be guided by emotion, instead of caution, and let her Sikh guards to be withdrawn, her life might well have been saved. It would not have led to the killing of thousands of innocent Sikhs across the country, in the aftermath of her assassination, who were butchered for none of their crime but just because two Sikhs had killed the Prime Minister.

 

Punjab, the Sikhs in particular, have moved on since 1984. Congress has won two decisive victories in Punjab in 2002 and 2017 after Operation Bluestar. Although Congress formed the government in 1992 also, those elections had witnessed a nominal turnout. Yes, the Punjabis have forgiven Operation Bluestar, but they will never forget it. Whatever might have been the reasons, and whatever justification the powers that be of that time may have found for the operation, that is none of the Sikhs’ concerns. It is a sensitive and emotive issue for them, which should best be avoided time and again, as it is like scratching an old wound.