Operation Bluestar: Even after 30 years, the painful scars remain

By Saroj Nagi

New Delhi: Time heals all wounds. But not this one. Not yet. So said young China-born American author Marie Lu in one of her recent dystopian novels.

She may well have been talking about Operation Bluestar, the army operation to flush out militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984 that has left behind a scar so deep and raw that even 30 years later the slightest scratch threatens to reopen old wounds of a people traumatized by commandos overrunning their place of worship with machine guns, rockets and battle tanks.

But then Bluestar was not a single localized incident whose fall-out could be contained; it had national and international dimensions and was preceded and succeeded by a series of cataclysmic events which changed the country’s India’s politics and history.

The spread of militancy and the demand for Khalistan provided the backdrop to the operation against Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed group which was operating from the precincts of the Golden Temple. They were among those killed in the assault launched on 5 June.

The operation angered the Sikhs, triggered a mutiny in some army units and led, four months later, to the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards on 31 October. Her death sparked off anti-Sikh riots in which marauding mobs reportedly murdered over 8,000 persons of the community, including 3,000 in Delhi alone. This fuelled another round of militancy and insurgency in Punjab until the passage of time, holding of elections and the people’s desire to give peace a chance brought restored some degree of normalcy. There are five main strands to the tragic story: the cause for a separate Khalistan, the role of the army; the Hindu-Sikh relations; the government-Sikh political divide and the call for justice, specially to the victims and relatives of those who suffered or died in the anti-Sikh riots. While the first three have largely been managed and controlled, the balance and trust between a people-political class-government cannot be restored unless the victims feel that justice is done to them.

Delayed justice

The failure to deliver justice to the victims of the anti-Sikh riots is perhaps the one single biggest reason that prevents the Bluestar scars from healing completely.

Politicians ranging from former prime minister Manmohan Singh to Congress president Sonia Gandhi have expressed regret over Operation Bluestar. “Joh kuch June 6 ko hua, uska mujhe dukh hai,” Sonia said in January 1998 and added while alluding to the anti-Sikh riots: “There is no use recalling what we have collectively lost. No words can balm that pain.” The electorate in Punjab, ready to meet half-way, responded by electing the Congress in the Punjab assembly in 2002 and at the Centre in 2009 by giving it nine Lok Sabha seats in comparison to the two it had won in 2004.

Despite a long wait, there has been no closure to the riot cases that the families of victims have been hoping for. No one of any significance has been brought to book so far.

Instead, there has been a flip flop on the issue. The CBI gave a “clean chit” to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler for his role in the riots. But following an uproar, the party dropped him as a candidate for the 2009 elections and in 2013, the Delhi court ordered the CBI to probe the allegations against him once more. The Congress also denied a ticket to Sajjan Kumar, another leader allegedly involved in the riots. Angry at the delay, in the 2013 Delhi elections Sikhs voted for Arvind Kejrwal’s Aam Aadmi Party which kept its promise post-election to set up a special investigation team but collapsed soon after.

In the 2014 general elections the Sikhs shifted their loyalty to the BJP, with even AAP’s Jarnail Singh—who had hurled his shoe at P Chidambaram over the CBI’s clean chit to Tytler—losing to the saffron party in the Sikh dominated West Delhi parliamentary constituency. But to signal that they have not entirely abandoned AAP, the voters elected four AAP candidates in Punjab as well as Congressman Capt Amarinder Singh who had quit the Congress and Parliament over the army action in Amritsar. Indeed, Bluestar figured in his face off with the Akali Dal backed BJP candidate Arun Jaitley in Amritsar in the Lok Sabha polls.

AAP’s victory discomfited the ruling Akali Dal which has now promised to expedite the riot cases. “SAD will soon discuss the ongoing legal proceedings with the Union home minister to ensure proper investigations and early hearings of the cases to put the perpetrators of heinous crime behind bars,” Sukhbir Badal said while visiting the Golden Temple to pray with his wife and newly appointed Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal.

The Congress, on its part, floundered on the riots issue. In his interview on Times Now, party vice president Rahul Gandhi hedged on why he did not apologise for the 1984 riots. “Innocent people died in 1984 and innocent people dying is a horrible thing and should not happen,” he said, accusing the Gujarat government under Modi of abetting the 2002 riots.

Following a controversy over his refusal to apologise, Rahul sought to made amends. “The prime minister in the UPA government has apologised and the president of the Congress expressed regrets. I share their sentiments completely,” he said. But it was too late by then. Much as in Delhi, the Sikhs were intent on voting out the Congress at the Centre.

Youths and the Khalistani cause

One generation has already paid the price of militancy and insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s. In the last 30 years, the demand for Khalistan has almost receded in the state though the anniversary of Operation Bluestar continues to be observed and fires a section of the approximately 20-30 million Sikh diaspora and a dozen-odd terror outfits like the Babbar Khalsa International, Khalistan Zindabad Force and Khalistan Commando Force mentored by Pakistani’s ISI. There are reports that nearly two dozen such militants were nabbed in the last three years. Indeed, then minister of state for home RPN Singh told Parliament in 2012 that the BKI, KZF and KCF were becoming active in the country.

Bhindranwale remains a guiding figure for these forces and the youths fed on his folklore. A foundation stone for the Bluestar memorial was laid in 2012 in the temple complex. While 6 June may be a somber reminder to most people of what should never happen again, hardliners like the AISSF and the Damdami Taksal try to use it to get the international community to break the silence on justice for the victims. Dal Khalsa had called for an Amritsar shutdown that day to signal that the Sikhs will not forget what happened that day. And therein lies the danger. Any slip up by the state or Centre could re-ignite the fires in the subconscious. Already there are fears that unemployment and drug addiction could blend with rising unemployment and easy availability of arms to take a toll of yet another generation. Most parties acknowledge the menace of drug abuse in the state which is also a major transit route for multi-crore drug trade from Afghanistan-Pakistan to India. The difference is only in the number of youths affected by it. “What is happening to human resources in Punjab? Seven out of 10 youths have the problem of drugs,” Rahul alleged during his election campaign in the state, his figures making the ruling Akali Dal see red. The problem even figured in the Amarinder-Jaitley face-off with each blaming the other’s party of turning a blind eye to it even while a 2010 study by Punjab’s Department of Health and Family Welfare raised the alarm that more than half the youths were addicted to drugs or alcohol.

The role of the army

For a community that had sent many of its young men to the army, the armed assault on the Golden Temple hurt the sentiments of the people. It had upset then president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces Giani Zail Singh. There were armed mutinies in different regiments. But the army managed to tide over the crisis with its officers leading from the front. Slowly, the people picked up the pieces of their broken lives though there is no ready data on whether recruitments in the armed forces have dropped over the years.

But the generals who led the operation remained under threat. Two years after Bluestar, AS Vaidya, chief of army staff at the time of Bluestar, was assassinated in 1986 in Pune. There were attempts on the life of Lt General KS Brar, including one in 2012 in London. RS Dayal lived under heavy security and died of cancer in 2012.

But as has happened over thousands of years, India’s multiracial, multireligious, multiethnic plural society weathered the 1984 storm. News reports recorded how Hindu families provided shelter and stood as sentinels against the rampaging mobs to protect the lives and properties of their neighbours.

The full story

However, the full story of Operation Bluestar and its aftermath is yet to come out. The dots are there. There are news reports and books like Operation Bluestar: The Untold Story by Lt Gen KS Brar and Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle by journalists Mark Tully and Satish Jacob. There are also reports that Indira Gandhi had consulted then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and a British intelligence officer about the operation.

There is a need to connect these dots. How and why did it happen? Was there no other alternative? Did Britain play an advisory role? Didn’t the intelligence give a clear picture about the temple turning into a garrison? Why did the state not check the anti-Sikh riots? What can be done to ensure that all this never happens again?

Not surprisingly, there are now demands to declassify all documents relating to Operation Bluestar to get to the truth. Even if it fans the debate, it is important to know what really happened if only to ensure that it does not happen again and the country can leave the past behind and look to the future. “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it,” said philosopher George Santayana more than a hundred years back. It is time to see that that doesn’t happen.