1984 to 2024: Lessons for India from Operation Blue Star, 40 years on

Amid excitement this year, first with the Pran Pratishthaceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, and later with the beginning of the campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it has been almost forgotten that four decades ago, the year 1984 was virtually India’s annus horribilis.

It began with escalated terrorist violence in Punjab leading up to the incomprehensible blunder of army action on the Golden Temple, Amritsar, in what is known as Operation Blue Star in the first week of June. This was followed by the dastardly revenge assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi by her own security guards.

Anti-Sikh pogrom

In retaliation, the Congress party was directly culpable in allowing the spontaneous anger to metamorphose into an anti-Sikh pogrom, which continued for several days in the cities of Delhi, Kanpur, Bokaro, Coimbatore and several other parts of India.

And, if all this was not enough, on the intervening night of December 2-3, nearly 45 tons of the dangerous gas, methyl isocyanate, escaped from an insecticide plant that was owned by the Indian subsidiary of the American firm, Union Carbide Corporation.

The gas wafted over densely populated neighbourhoods around the plant, instantly killing thousands of people and creating panic as tens of thousands of others attempted to flee in what has come to be known as the Bhopal gas tragedy.

Assassination of Romesh Chander

But the first portent of the gruesome manner about the year would unfold came on May 12, a day that went almost unnoticed last week, save in the ‘This Day That Year’ columns of some newspapers.

In the city of Jalandhar on that day, ironically, while returning home after addressing a public meeting on the need to foster communal harmony, Romesh Chander, editor-in-chief of the Hind Samachar group of newspapers, was gunned down by terrorists.

The group, established in 1949 by the slain editor’s father, Lala Jagat Narain, published three newspapers in Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi and was an influential voice of Punjab.

The family too was widely respected and its members across generations rubbed shoulders with the powerful of the land. Chander had also been elected as a state legislator in 1975 as an Independent member.

Price for fame

Punjab, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, extracted its price for fame from noted families. Almost three years before Chander’s assassination, his father, Lala Jagat Narain, was gunned at the age of 83 by two scrawny terrorists on the outskirts of Ludhiana while he was still the chief editor of the family-owned group of newspapers.

Jagat Narain’s assassination triggered a divide between Hindus and Sikhs for reasons that had roots in history, as well as contemporary events, which had seen Indira promoting a Sikh preacher who eventually became her Frankenstein's monster, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

While no action was taken against him despite being linked to the previous murder of Nirankari leader Baba Gurbachan Singh in New Delhi in April 1980, after the outrage precipitated by Jagat Narain’s killing, a warrant was issued for Bhindranwale's arrest.

But by the time the police went to pick him up from a gurdwara in Haryana, he had already returned to his safe haven in Punjab.

Killings in Punjab

Chander’s assassination made it clear to the powers that be in New Delhi that action in Punjab could not be delayed – killings had become common in Punjab and there were threats in other places too, including in the Indian capital.

Much bloodshed and gore could have been avoided if Indira had not myopically promoted Bhindranwale to cut down the Akalis to size.

Eventually, terrorists, led by Bhindranwale, used the Golden Temple as their citadel and they choreographed the macabre dance of death while being firmly entrenched in the shrine.

The holed up terrorists had also begun to fortify the temple. This task was supervised by Shabeg Singh, once a major general in the Indian army, a war hero from 1971 and someone who trained a similar untrained lot – the Mukti Bahini.

Army in action

The question was, what kind of action would the government take?

Eventually, after much deliberation, it was concluded that nothing less than the Army could flush the terrorists out of the temple. On the last day of May 1984, when Major General RS Brar, head of an infantry division in Meerut, was summoned to Delhi, he sensed something momentous was underway.

Brar got his brief from Lieutenant General Krishnaswamy Sundarji and Major General RS Dyal, then the Chief of Staff of the Western Army Command. The plan was drawn up and deliberated, but there was one catch: What should be the codename of the exercise?

Lt. Gen VK Nayar, who was part of the plan, and was known like most officers in the defence forces, by his nickname Tubby, was driving home after a gruelling day in office. He mulled over the plan, which he knew would be exceedingly controversial, when he looked out of the car window and spotted an AC mechanic's shop, not a regular sight back then like now because in the India of 1984, very few people used air-conditioners.

A 'cool name'

He knew that a name for the operation was needed and it had to be catchy yet not revelatory. His eyes fell on the signboard of the shop – clearly sponsored by a brand of ACs that probably sponsored some parts of the shop’s wares and tools.

Next day, Nayar sounded out his colleagues, and Operation Blue Star became the name of the assault on the Golden Temple.

All officers were convinced no one would ever be able to connect a popular brand of cooling devices with the military operation. It remained that way till very late.

The day of siege 

It took the Army less than 24 hours to begin taking discreet positions in Amritsar and, on June 2, a young Sikh officer was tasked to quietly stroll through the Golden Temple and make mental notes of positions of the terrorists and their fortifications. The same night, Indira addressed the nation on radio and appealed to Punjab’s people not to “shed blood, but hatred”.

The next day, Punjab was cut away from the rest of India as roads, rail and telephone lines were snapped. Only pilgrims were allowed to return from the Golden Temple. Everyone knew something was afoot, what exactly, none knew.

Eventually, the sound of artillery fire came and the people of Amritsar realised that the operation to flush out or demobilise terrorists had started. Besides soldiers on foot, tanks too were moved.

Four days of battle

The battle raged for four days till Bhindranwale and most of his supporters were killed. By the end, much of the temple complex, especially the temporal seat of Sikhism, Akal Takht, was badly damaged.

On June 6, when the soldiers went inside the temple and into chambers that terrorists had occupied, they found the corpses of Bhindranwale, Shabeg Singh and Amrik Singh of the All India Sikh Students’ Federation. While the former army man’s body was found on the ground level with a carbine in hand with a walkie-talkie next to him, the bodies of the other two were found in the basement chamber.

Officially, four officers, 79 soldiers and 492 terrorists died in the operation although private figures are higher. Operation Blue Star had reverberations across Punjab and among the Sikh community all over the world.

Animosity against Indira Gandhi

Wild stories circulated and these only fanned anger and animosity towards Indira Gandhi. Given that Jalianwallah Bagh was just a few minute walk from the Golden Temple, the historical parallels between these events and the firing in 1919 could not be prevented.

Operation Blue Star was the first national issue in several decades when there was a virtual divide between people on the basis of their religious identities. Sikhs in Punjab and elsewhere were extremely critical of the government, especially the Prime Minister. In contrast, a significant section of Hindus in other parts of India backed Indira’s move.

It was this divergence between the two that led to the backlash against the community in the aftermath of Indira's assassination on October 31. Spontaneous anti-Sikh violence broke out outside the AIIMS in New Delhi, where Indira was brought in the morning.

How Congress benefitted 

Despite warning signs, the Congress did not take steps to quell murderous mobs. Contrarily, party leaders and cadres played an active part in mobilising people for attacks on Sikh lives and property.

The narrative for the election was set by this with a highly alarmist Congress advertisement campaign which spoke about ‘borders’ reaching the ‘doorsteps of people’.

The Congress did not try to reassure Sikhs outside Punjab who decided in thousands to cut their hair so they ‘did not look’ Sikh. And, as if this did not suffice, Rajiv Gandhi made the highly inflammatory speech on Indira’s birth anniversary, in which he naturalised a little turbulence when a “big tree falls.”

What could have been

The Bhopal gas tragedy, the assassinations of Indira and Chander, Operation Blue Star, and the anti-Sikh pogrom could have been avoided if early warning signs had been heeded and if the decision makers had not sided with the ones who had the power to destroy India’s tranquillity.

The year ended with the elections for the eighth Lok Sabha and the Congress, led by the ghost of Indira Gandhi, won the highest number of seats till date.

Forty years later, the ongoing Lok Sabha elections have seen leaders trying to widen existing fissures even as the call has been given to match the performance of the Congress that year.

There is a need for today’s lawmakers and leaders to revisit the past and steer clear of any action that may push Indian perilously close to another precipice.

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)