40 years of Operation Blue Star: What happened and how it changed India’s politics

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of Operation Blue Star.

The Indian Army carried out the operation to flush out Sikh militants from the Golden Temple in June 1984.

According to BBC, hundreds of civilians died in the operation as well as 87 soldiers.

Parts of the Golden Temple, the holiest sites in the Sikh faith, were also significantly damaged.

But what led to it? What happened? How did it change India’s politics?

Let’s take a closer look:

What led to it?

According to Business Standard, the concept of Khalistan emerged after Partition.

The newly-drawn Punjab border resulted in cities and temples that were vital parts of the Sikh heritage to fall in Pakistan.

Other issues like sharing of river water also resulted for calls for autonomy and even separate Sikh state.

Pakistan is believed to have provided separatists with arms and ammunition.

In 1966, Punjab was then broken up into Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.

In the 1970s, the Khalistan movement gained steam both in India and abroad.

By the early 1980s, Punjab was dealing with a full-blown insurgency crisis.

The militants were determined to carve out a separate state of Khalistan for themselves.

Within the movement, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a major figure.

According to Indian Express, Bhindranwale was previously a leader of the Sikh seminary Damdami Taksal.

Bhindranwale labelled himself as “the authentic voice of the Sikhs.”

The Congress had initially attempted to get Bhindranwale on side to try to combat the Shiromani Akali Dal’s (SAD) growing influence.

However, his fiery rhetoric and appeal among the youth had turned him into a huge problem for the authorities.

In 1982, Bhindranwale joined the civil disobedience movement organised by the Akali Dal.

He then shifted to inside the Golden Temple complex to avoid being nabbed by the police.

In 1983, AS Atwal, Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), was shot dead after visiting the Golden Temple to pray.

“The assailant… after firing the shots from a carbine, entered the Golden Temple,” the _Indian Express r_eported.

“Ugly as the Atwal murder was, however, it was only a beginning… This became a regular feature; bodies, mutilated, hacked to pieces, stuffed into gunny bags, kept appearing mysteriously in the gutters and sewers around the Temple,” KPS Gill wrote as per Business Standard.

The Indira Gandhi government had had enough – and this is when it all kicked off.

In May 1984, the Indira government gave the go-ahead to the Indian Army to flush out the militants.

As per Indian Express, this was done despite objections from several people including cabinet minister Pranab Mukherjee.

By 29 May, troops from the 9th Infantry Division in Meerut and paramilitary commandos had reached Amritsar.

However, Bhindranwale and his followers, had not remained idle.

They had spent months smuggling a huge cache of arms and ammunition into the Golden Temple.

They also had strategically placed guns to defend their positions.

Bhindranwale’s supporters were also trained by Major General Shahbeg Singh.

Singh had been dismissed by the Indian Army over corruption charges, as per Business Standard.

What happened?

By 1 June, the Indian Army had surrounded the Golden Temple complex.

CRPF personnel who had positioned themselves atop private buildings near the Golden Temple exchange fire with militants.

Eleven civilians were killed.

According to Indian Express, the CRPF had fired to “assess the training and strength of the militants inside.”

On 3 June, a 36-hour-curfew was imposed in Punjab.

All means of communication were shuttered. Public transportation was suspended, the power lines cut and the media blacked out.

On 5 June, the army attempted to storm the temple.

The idea was to take out the defensive positions taken up by Bhindranwale’s followers.

The army managed to take the outer defences, but their rush into the Golden Temple came at a terrible cost.

As per Indian Express, journalist Shekhar Gupta described it thus, “The troops made a mad rush for the staircase at each end of the Parikrama. But Shabeg had not earned his reputation of a wily, doughty commander in the army for nothing. He had anticipated just this and the sprinting troops ran headlong into automatic fire from men who sprang out of the manholes, strategically situated at the foot of each staircase.”

The commanders then decided to call in tank support.

According to Giani Puran Singh, a temple priest, tanks began entering the around 10 pm.

For the next 12 hours, the army’s Vijayanta tanks shelled the Golden Temple’s Akal Takht.

The Akal Takht, the Sikhs believe, is one of the five seats of power.

It was also where Bhindranwale had taken up a defensive position.

By the morning 6 June, the militants’ defences had been obliterated.

Around 11 am, 25 militants rushed out at the army troops and were gunned out.

**“**The generals guessed that the mad dash was an indication that Bhindranwale was either dead or wounded or had, confirming their worst fears, escaped,” Gupta wrote.

But Bhindranwale was dead.

The firebrand leader was reportedly in a heap of “about 40 corpses.”

The rest of the militants surrendered or were killed by 10 June.

The Indian Army pegged the toll as 554 Sikh militants and civilians and 87 soldiers.

The operation was officially over but it didn’t end there.

How did it change India’s politics?

The biggest fallout of the operation came on 31 October, 1984.

Then prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards in revenge for the operation.

This, in turn, led to the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and other parts of north India.

“We must remember Indiraji. We must remember why her assassination happened. We must remember who could be the people behind this. When Indira’s assassination happened, there were riots in the country. We know that the hearts of the Indian people were full of anger and that for a few days people felt India was shaking. When a big tree falls, the earth shakes,” Rajiv said in a speech that came after the worst riots had finished.

The Times of India noted that the operation and its aftermath resulted in the Sikhs feeling a deep sense of mistrust and alienation for the Indian government.

“The Indian National Congress, which was seen as responsible for the military operation, faced significant backlash from Sikhs, which impacted the party’s political fortunes in Punjab and other regions with a significant Sikh population,” the piece noted.

According to Byjus, Air India Flight 182 is said to have been bombed in 1985 as an act of vengeance.

In 1986, the then Chief of Army Staff General AS Vaidya was assassinated by Sikh militants.

The operation caused many Sikh soldiers in the Indian Army to mutiny.

Many other Sikhs also resigned from the government.

The problem of Khalistani terrorism became worse and only ended in the 1990s.

Indian Express quoted Gill as writing in The Punjab Story: “In hindsight, Operation Bluestar was possibly the single most significant act of political overreaction and military incompetence that gave a lease of life to a movement that could easily have been ended in the mid-1980s.”

In 1985, Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, a leader of the Akali Dal, the country’s oldest regional party, was assassinated within a month of his signing a peace accord with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The “dark decade” of violence and instability in Punjab followed.

The operation remains a provocative and divisive subject in Punjab politics till this day.

According to Indian Express, Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal has been displaying a picture of the damaged Akal Takht at every poll rally to try to stoke anger against the Congress.

Meanwhile, the AAP and BJP have also been bringing up the violence the Sikhs had to face after Indira’s assassination.

With inputs from agencies