Operation Bluestar

The Holy Gurus and their Commandments

Gur

1984 Assault on Amritsar
Sardar Khuswant Singh’s protest in the Indian
Parliament
The Sikh Review, June 2001
“ I have many unpalatable truths to tell. Bear with me till I have finished; thereafter you will be
more then welcome to refute them if you can. Although I a only a nominated Member of this
House, I make bold to assert that I speak on behalf of 14 million of your fellow citizens known as
Sikhs. I go further: what you have heard, and may hear from other Sikh members of the Ruling
Congress party does not echo the sentiment of the community.
We have had six hours of debate during which we have heard discourses on Punjab politics, Akali
factionalism, and a lot of recrimination between parties. There was total lack of a sense of gravity
of the situation facing the country, which is on brink of an abyss, total absence of realization that
the country is breaking up, a total absence of any viable suggestion of what we should do.
My heart is very full, but I will be as unemotional and objective as I can. All I will say about the
army action is that it was a tragic error of judgment, a grievous mistake and miscalculation,
which will cover many pages in the history of India, Punjab and the Sikhs. I will dwell in greater
detail on how to retrieve the situation.
Perhaps the best of examining the thesis of the White paper placed before us is to go backwards,
to see the situation today and go back to the genesis of the sorry business. The situation today is
that the religious susceptibility of every Sikh has been deeply wounded. 99 percent of these Sikhs
had nothing whatsoever to do with Bhindranwale, Akalis, the government or politics of any sort.
This action has humiliated the pride of a very proud people. A proud people do not forget or
forgive very easily.
You have divided Hindus and Sikhs: the wedge was driven by Akalis, widened by Bhindranwale
and made unbridgeable by you. Sikhs who. Till yesterday, regarded themselves as more than
first-class citizens are now treated worse than third-class citizens. Discrimination against them
continues at airports and check points on rails and roads. It has created a sense of isolation and
alienation among them. They are beginning to ask themselves: “Do Indians still regard us one of
them?”
This being the tradition, ask yourselves two questions. One, could any action which alienated the
feelings of 14 million fellow citizens, who form the backbone of our defense services, provide
more than half the food for the country and live on the most sensitive border facing Pakistan be
ever justified? Second, is it really true, as maintained in the government’s White Paper, that it
had no choice except to mount a military invasion on the Golden Temple?
My answer to both these questions is a categorical “no”.
The White paper has much to say about the Akali intransigence, its constantly changing stance,
making new demands and going back on points on which agreements had been reached under
pressure of extremists. It says nothing on government’s own shifting positions and resiling from
solemnly given under takings. I will never go over them again, but it must be recorded that every
breakdown of discussions, the Prime Minister came out with the stock reply that some matters
concerned neighboring states which had to be consulted. Apparently, in two years such
consultations were not concluded.
The White Paper also makes no mention of the Home Minister’s repeated statements in both the
Houses of Parliament, and the PM’s assurances outside Parliament that the government had no
intention to move the army into the Golden Temple. Nor does it tell us in any convincing detail
how many men there were with Bhindranwale and how they came by the kinds of weapons the
government now alleges they had with them.
The major question, which is left unanswered, is whether or not the government had any
alternative other than sending in the army into the Golden Temple. I can suggest two, neither of
which has been mentioned in the White Paper. First, was a commando action, men in
plainclothes, designed only to take Bhindranwale and his men alive or dead. This would have
spared us the loss of innocent lives as well as the massive destruction of scared property.
The second was for the army to cordon off the Golden Temple complex, occupy the Guru ka
Langer, cut off the supply of food, fuel and electricity and force Bhindranwales’ men to come out
of the Akal Takhat and on the Parikarma to fight.
The result would have been quite different. However, neither of these alternatives was given
serious consideration and, instead we had six army divisions moved into the Punjab (more then
we had with six wars with Pakistan), a force led by a Lt. General and teo Major Generals,
equipped with armored personnel carriers, tanks, mountain guns – all to flush out no more than
50-100 men armed with nothing more than sophisticated Light Machine Guns, antiquated 303
rifles, some hand grenades and a rusty bazooka.
I visited the Golden Temple a month after the army action, interviewed many people who were in
the complex at the time and saw the damage done with my own eyes. Let me tell you, and
through you, the rest of country, that this White Paper has grossly underestimated the number of
lives lost, over looked mentioning that the dead include hundreds of totally innocent men,
women and children. The government spokesmen have repeated ad nauseam that no damage
was caused to the Harmandir; as a matter of fact, it stills bears fresh bullet marks by the score; a
hand
written copy of the Granth pierced by a bullet; a blind raagi, Amreek Singh was killed inside while
doing kirtan; the Akal Takhat is a total wreck and, besides, the entire archives consisting of
nearly 1000 manuscript copies of the Granth Sahib and innumerable Hukumnamas bearing
signatures of our Gurus have gone up in flames. What is more painful about this vandalism is
that it took place after resistance has been overcome.
Now we are talking of the healing touch. The place of ‘honour’ in inverted commas should go to
the government controlled media – All India Radio and Doordarshan, and an abjectly subservient
national press. For days on end TV screen showed the Harmandir Sahib at a distance so that no
damage to it could be seen: and the destroyed Akal Takhat was carefully kept out of view.
At first the press told us that `3 women had been killed, then no women had been killed, then
that they had been killed by a grenade thrown by an extremist. That Bhindranwale had
committed suicide, he had been killed by his own men, and ultimately that he had been fallen in
the battle; that hashish, opium and heroin had been found – then that this was found outside the
Temple; that women of loose character were with the extremists, some of them pregnant. How
more pregnant with lies can anyone’s imagination be? It is evident what you have done; you
have not broken the back of terrorism.
---------
The infamous army assault on the holiest of Sikh shrines in June 1984 marks a watershed in the
history of post-Partition India. The trauma has burnished deep into the psyche of the Sikhs and
has forever become part of the Punjabi folklore, wherein Sant Bhindranwale, retd General
shahbeg Singh, Beant Singh, Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh, Jinda and Sukha stand
tall as hero-martyrs of the modern era.
The agony of the Sikhs is all the more hurtful because in June 1984 leaders of other communities
maintained deafening silence; many even expressed jubilation. Majoritarian press routinely
labeled Bhindranwale as a terrorist and praised Indira Gandhi. One wonders how the deeply
religious people of India could suffer such paralysis under hypnotic – if meretricious –
propaganda of Indira Gandhi’s government Parliament was significantly insensitive. The lone
voice of the protest came from the redoubtable historian, Sardar Khushwant Singh, then a
member of Rajya Sabha.
- Editor Sikh Review