The army attack on Sri Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) in Amritsar, Punjab in June 1984.
The security situation in the Punjab became very serious in the two years leading to June 1984, which included a series of terrorist attacks on the security forces and ordinary Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs.
Yet key players in the government used the increasingly volatile situation in the Punjab to blur the perception of the Sikh community in the eyes of their fellow citizens. Government While Paper, release in July, following the army action, accused the Sikh Akali Dal Party of unwilling to negotiate a settlement, that their demands were anti-Indian and secessionist.1 One of those taking part in the negotiations was Congress MP, H.K.L. Bhagat MP and then Minister for Information and Broadcasting, who would later be implicated in the November 1984 pogroms.2
Talks between the Akali Dal and central government eventually broke down by June 1984 The peasantry, who were becoming increasingly disillusioned with the centre’s agricultural policies, staged mass protests. Tens of thousands of farmers were mobilised for civil disobedience campaigns. In late May 1984, the Akali Dal called for a boycott of the Food Corporation of India, whereby farmers would withhold their harvests.3
Adding to the increasing sense of foreboding was Sant Bhindranwale’s occupation of the Golden Temple complex, which was being fortified by his men.4 Realising that she may need to act, Mrs Gandhi had ordered the army to remain on high alert months earlier – a replica Golden Temple was constructed in the foothills of the Himalayas to aid preparations for an assault.5
Recent revelations from secret government papers unearthed in the UK’s National Archives show how the Indian government had asked the British government for military advice on a possible military operation as early as February 1984.6
With the pressure mounting, Mrs Gandhi decided to act. She draw upon tactics she used during her 1977 Emergency with a media blackout, foreign journalist expelled and constitutional rights suspended.7
Leading historian Khushwant Singh believed military commanders misled Mrs Gandhi who assured her that sending in the army to take on a small band of Sikh dissidents would ‘not last more than two hours’.8
On 3 June 1984, the Indian Army was ordered into the Golden Temple complex on the pretext of removing Sikh dissidents led by Bhindranwale. Taking place on one of the busiest and holiest days in the Sikh calendar – the anniversary of the martyrdom of the shrine’s founder, the fifth Sikh Guru, Guru Arjan – and without due warning or any evacuation of pilgrims, the military assault resulted in thousands being wilfully trapped. Forty other Sikh shrines were also simultaneously attacked.
The outcome of Operation Blue Star was a bloodbath. The Akal Takht, the Sikhs’ temporal seat of authority situated in a courtyard opposite the main entrance of the Golden Temple, was severely damaged. So too was the Sikh Reference Library, which contained priceless manuscripts.
Official figures put the death toll at 575 but unofficially, the casualties were believed to run into the thousands.9
As was expected, the Sikh community was stunned and outraged. Protests erupted in Punjab, Delhi and around the globe. At least 4,000 Sikh soldiers mutinied across India, resulting in several pitched battles as they attempted to make their way towards Amritsar.10
Sikh dignitaries resigned their positions and honours in protest. Captain Amarinder Singh, the former maharaja of the pre-independence state of Patiala, resigned his parliamentary seat and membership of the Congress Party as did others. The former parliamentarian, historian and journalist Khushwant Singh, who had authored Train to Pakistan about the horrors of Partition, handed back a cherished civilian award in disgust as did writer, environmentalist, and philanthropist, Bhagat Puran Singh.11
“For five days the Punjab has been cut off from the rest of the world. There is a 24-hour curfew. All telephone and telex lines are cut. No foreigners are permitted entry and on Tuesday, all Indian journalists were expelled. There are no newspapers, no trains, no buses – not even a bullock cart can move. Orders to shoot on site were widely carried out. The whole of Punjab, with its 5,000 villages and 50 major cities, was turned into a concentration camp. The rules were what the Indian army and its political decision makers decided.”
Christian Science Monitor, 8 June 1984.
“The army went into Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) not to eliminate a political figure or a political movement but to suppress the culture of a people, to attack their heart, to strike a blow at their spirit and self-confidence.”
J.M. Pettigrew. The Sikhs of the Punjab.12
Eyewitness accounts
The Shiromoni (Temple) Committee secretary Bhan Singh was in the temple complex at the time of Operation Bluestar. On the 1st morning of the attack he counted ‘at least 70 dead bodies’ of old men, women and children. Soldiers, commanded by a Major, continued to line up young Sikhs along the hostel’s corridor to be shot. When Bhan Singh protested, the Major flew into a rage, tore away his turban and ordered him to either flee the scene or join the ‘array of martyrs’. Bhan Singh ‘turned back and fled, jumping over the bodies of the dead and injured’.13
“School teacher, Ranbir Kaur witnessed the shooting of another group of 150 people whose hands had been tied behind their backs with their own turbans.”
Reduced to Ashes – The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab. 2003.14
A singer at the Golden Temple, Harcharan Singh Ragi, his wife and their young daughter came out of their quarters near the information office on the afternoon of June 6. They witnessed the killings of hundreds of people, including women, and would themselves have been shot if a commander had not taken pity on their young daughter who fell at his feet begging him to spare her parents’ lives.15
Citizens for Democracy, a respected Indian civil liberties group headed by the distinguished former Supreme Court Judge, V.M. Tarkunde, noted that the actual number of alleged militants was quite small relative to the number of innocent worshippers who had gathered at the Golden Temple to commemorate the martyrdom of Guru Arjun Dev.
“It was indeed a mass massacre mostly of innocents.Oppression in Punjab.”
Citizens for Democracy. 1985.16
Associated Press correspondent Brahma Chellaney had managed to dodge the authorities to remain in Amritsar during the Operation Bluestar. Later, he reported that dead bodies were taken in municipal garbage trucks round the clock and burnt in heaps of 20 or more. One attendant at the city’s crematorium told him that there was not ‘enough wood to burn the dead individually’.
He also saw ‘an estimated 50 corpses’ in a large garbage lorry which included women & children. He talked to a doctor who had been forced to sign post-mortem reports of some people killed inside the temple. The doctor corroborated the reports that their hands had been tied before the soldiers shot them.17 He was arrested in October 1984 for his reporting.
The army has always maintained that they gave the inhabitants a fair warning before ordering the attack, but as the head of the administrative branch of the 15th Infantry Division in Punjab, Brigadier Onkar Goraya, confirms, these warnings were not heard by the pilgrims. He was given the task of disposing of the dead following the operation.18
The Times 16 Oct 1984 (left), 16 October 1984 (right).
News of the attack on the Golden Temple quickly spread despite the curfew. Thousands of people in the surrounding villages gathered to march to Amritsar to defend the Golden Temple. At Golwand village in Jhubal, a crowd of several thousands gathered with makeshift weapons, under the leadership of Baba Bidhi Chand, and began to march the 25 kilometres to Amritsar. Helicopter patrols spotted them and sprayed them with bullets without warning. Within minutes hundreds were dead or wounded. Crowds gathered at the villages including Ajnala, Rajash Sunsi, Dhandhesali, Fatehpur, Rajpurtan and Batala in Gurdaspur. A large crowd gathered at Chowk Mehta, HQ of the Damdami Taksal, where the army killed 76 Sikhs and arrested 285. All across the region, wireless sets carried the message from army chiefs to soldiers to shoot on sight anyone on the streets.
About 4,000 Sikh soldiers from different parts of India revolted on hearing the news about the army attack. The revolt was heavily put down and soldiers punished with court martial.
The army continued its task of moving through the villages in the countryside and flushing out alleged terrorists. The young Sikh men in the villages were lined up in rows; some were stripped and publicly flogged and accused of terrorism or withholding information about terrorists. Some were taken away and sent to interrogation centres, never to be seen again.
Media reports
‘Thousands of people have disappeared from the Punjab since the siege of the Sikh’s Golden Temple here seven weeks ago. In some villages men between 15-35 have been bound, blindfolded and taken away. Their fate is unknown. Recently in the tiny village of Kaimbala, 300 troops entered the Sikh Temple during prayers, blindfolded the 30 worshippers and pushed them into the streets. According to the priest, Sant Pritpal Singh, the villagers were given electric shocks and interrogated as to the whereabouts of Sikh militants. Gurnam Singh, a 37 year old farmer was held in an army camp for 13 days. Last week, his face bruised and his arms and legs dotted with burns, he said he had been hung upside down and beaten’.19
‘A doctor reported to journalists that bodies of victims were brought to the mortuary by police in municipal refuse lorries reported that of the 400 bodies, 100 were women and between 15-20 were children under five, including a two month old baby. The doctor said that one ‘extremist’ in the pile of bodies was found to be alive; a soldier shot and killed him.20
The Guardian went on to report: “A police official told reporters that a lorry load of elderly Sikhs, who surrendered on the first day of the military operation, were brought to the main city police station and tortured there by the army. The soldiers removed their turbans, pulled their hair over their eyes and tied the long hair around their necks. Then they threw sand into their faces. The old men shrieked, but I helplessly watched all this from my office window.’21
One resident of Amritsar gave an eyewitness account to the editor of the Sikh Messenger, a British publication.
‘The army pounding of the Golden Temple area continued over the next few days confirming our fears of deliberate and vindictive destruction. On the night of the 5th, the aged and chronically ill father of the couple next door finally expired and on the morning of the 6th the army gave our neighbours special permission to take him to the crematorium. Even before reaching this site, they could smell the stench of putrid and burning flesh. On entering the crematorium grounds they saw a sight that literally made them sick with horror. Grotesque piles of dozens of bodies were being burnt in the open without dignity or religious rites like so many carcasses. The bodies had all been brought there by dust carts and from the number of carts; the attendant estimated some 3,300 had so far been cremated.’22
“Operation Blue Star will go down in history as one of the biggest massacres of unarmed civilians by the organised military force of a nation. The word unarmed is used deliberately as the disparity in arms on the two sides was so great that those resisting army invasion of the temple could hardly be termed armed.G.K.C. Reddy.”
Army Action in Punjab: Prelude and Aftermath. 1984.23
The aftermath
The vast lake of the Golden Temple Complex was transformed into a thick red of profuse blood. No attempts were made to provide assistance to the injured or dying. ‘On Saturday, medical workers in Amritsar said soldiers had threatened to shoot them if they gave food or water to Sikh pilgrims wounded in the attack and lying in the hospital.’24
“People were killed like that. No medicine was provided, in fact no medical aid was administered at all. Many people died in the camps. Neither water nor medicine aid was provided and you could not even donate blood for the injured in hospitals as it was stated that they were POW’s and hence no blood transfusions were permitted. The Army detained volunteers of the Red Cross who wanted to help the injured at the nearby Jallianwala Bagh.”
The Tragedy of Punjab. Kuldip Nayar & Khushwant Singh, 1984.25
‘On 4th June, a day of pilgrims for Sikhs when thousands had gathered at the Golden Temple, army tanks moved into the Temple Complex, smashing into the sanctum and shooting everyone in sight. Those left alive were then prevented from leaving the building, many wounded were left to bleed to death and when they begged for water, Army Jawans told them to drink the mixture of blood and urine on the floor. Four months later no list of casualties or missing persons had yet been issued. Then came the army occupation of Punjab with frequent humiliations, arrests and killings of Sikhs by soldiers. It caused a feeling voiced by many ordinary people who had never before been separatist that Sikhs could not be safe there. Some 3,000 dead, including many who were only unconscious, were piled high in trucks and removed.’26
Subramaniam Swami argued that the government had been master-minding a disinformation campaign to create legitimacy for the action. The goal of this disinformation campaign was to:
“Make out that the Golden Temple was the haven of criminals, a store of armoury and a citadel of the nation’s dismemberment conspiracy.”
Subramaniam Swami – Creating a Martyr, Imprint. 1984.27
Even the infamous super-cop, K.P.S. Gill would later recognise the folly of sending in the army and blamed the Prime Minister for the tragedy:
“In an ill-planned, hasty, knee-jerk response, the Army was called in: artillery battered the revered edifice of the Golden Temple Complex, and tanks rolled across the holy parikrama. The army, however, was not to blame for this botched operation; it was acting on specific directions from the Prime Minister’s Office, and had been given little choice or time to prepare. The damage Bluestar did was incalculable. This was compounded by Operation Woodrose, the Army’s ‘mopping up’ exercise all over Punjab.”
K.P.S. Gill, Knights of Falsehood.28According to her Personal Secretary, R.K. Dhawan, Mrs. Gandhi, who visited the complex on June 23, regretted the operation immediately after seeing the damage done by the army action.
“Indira Gandhi was opposed to the Army action till the last minute. It was convincing by the army chief [General Vaidya] and this trio (Rajiv Gandhi, Arun Nehru and Arun Singh] that eventually changed her mind.”
R.K. Dhawan, Mrs Gandhi’s Personal Secretary29
In September 1984, Mrs. Kamala Devi Chattopadhyaya, a social worker based in Delhi, moved a petition before the Supreme Court to raise some issues about the people the government had detained as the ‘most dangerous terrorists.’ The petition demanded the Court’s intervention for the release of 22 children aged between two and 16 years, who had been rounded up from the Golden Temple and were being held in the Ludhiana jail. Two judges of the Supreme Court, Chinnappa Reddy and V. Khalid, ruled that ‘there was no justification for detaining them as they were pilgrims visiting the Golden Temple during Operation Bluestar.’ At this order, the 22 children lodged at the Ludhiana jail were released. But the police re-arrested most of them and tortured them at various interrogation centres for information on their relatives who had probably been killed during the Army operation.29
The government of India maintained that the army action was a ‘last resort’ necessary to flush out terrorists who had collected weapons.30 But according to Retired Lt-General S.K. Sinha of the Indian Army: ‘The Army action was not the ‘last resort’ as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would have us believe. It had been in her mind for more than 18 months. Shortly after the Akali agitation of 1982, the Army began rehearsals of a commando raid near Chakrata Cantonment in the Doon Valley, where a complete replica of the Golden Temple complex had been built. Another training involving Aviation Research Centre Commandos, was given in the Sarsawa area and Yamuna bed in helicopters converted into gunships.’31
This was long before any militants had got inside the complex. H.S. Bhanwar revealed pertinent information regarding the arms that were planted inside the Darbar Sahib. Regarding the issue of arms in the Golden Temple he writes:
“A confidential source told me that before President of India, Giani Zail Singh visited Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) on June 8, 1984, the army brought a loaded truck of weapons into the Darbar Sahib complex so that Giani Ji was given the impression that the militants had so many foreign weapons.”
H.S. Bhanwar. Diary De Panne – Punjabi. May 1999.32
Following Operation Bluestar, Mani Shankar Iyer, Joint Secretary to the government complained he was given an unpleasant job of portraying all Sikhs as terrorists, within H.K.L. Bhagat MP’s Ministry Broadcasting, and ordered to produce video footage, which was disseminated to the worldwide press and diaspora communities giving a one-sided view of Operation Bluestar and linking Sikhs with Pakistan.32
With this, the Sikhs were defamed and the government had another justification for the army attack. Images of these weapons were broadcast on television showing that the militants inside the complex had an array of weapons. The scene had been set for an even greater calamity five months later.
Read more: Operation Bluestar
Useful resources
A Witness Among the Bodies: Surviving Bluestar, Ensaaf, May 30 2014.
Official account: White Paper (July 1984)
Human rights report – Oppression in Punjab
The full story of the disastrous raid on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984, code-named Operation Bluestar.
Tweet
- Government of India. White Paper on the Punjab Agitation. Government of India Press. New Delhi. 10 July 1984. ↩︎
- Kuldip Nayar, Khushwant Singh. Tragedy of Punjab. Vision Books. 1984. p85. ↩︎
- Kuldip Nayar, Khushwant Singh. Tragedy of Punjab. Vision Books. 1984. p90. ↩︎
- Joyce Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerrilla Violence, 1995, pp 34–5. ↩︎
- Khushwant Singh, The History of the Sikhs vol 2, p 358. ↩︎
- Golden Temple attack: UK advised India but impact ‘limited’, BBC, 7 June 2014. ↩︎
- William K. Stevens. Punjab Raid: Unanswered Questions. The New York Times. 19 June 1984. ↩︎
- Operation Blue Star ‘was a well-calculated and deliberate slap in the face of an entire community’: Khushwant Singh. Scroll. 6 June 2015. ↩︎
- Golden Temple attack: UK advised India but impact ‘limited’, BBC, 7 June 2014. ↩︎
- Kuldip Nayar, Khushwant Singh. Tragedy of Punjab. Vision Books. 1984. p107. ↩︎
- Bhagat Puran Singh’s letter to the President of India, returning his Padam Sri award in protest for Operation Bluestar. ↩︎
- Joyce J.M. Pettigrew. The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerrilla Violence. 1995. p 8. ↩︎
- The Punjab Story (1984), Amarjit Kaur, Arun Shourie, Lt-Gen J.S. Aurora, Khushwant Singh, page 13. ↩︎
- Reduced to Ashes – The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab.
Ram Narayan Kumar, Amrik Singh, Ashok Agrwaal and Jaskaran Kaur
The Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, 2003, p38. ↩︎ - Operation Bluestar: The Untold Story (1984), Amiya Rao, Aubindo Ghose, Sunil Bhattacharya, Tejinder Ahuja and N. D. Pancholi, p13. ↩︎
- Oppression in Punjab. Citizens for Democracy. 1985, p76. ↩︎
- The Sikh Struggle, Ram Narayan Kumar & Georg Sieberer. 1991, p265. ↩︎
- Brigadier Onkar Goraya, quoted in The shattered dome. Hartosh Singh Bal. The Caravan. 1 May 2024. ↩︎
- Mary Anne Weaver. Sunday Times, 22 June 1984. ↩︎
- The Times, 13 June 1984. ↩︎
- The Guardian, 14 June 1984. ↩︎
- The Sikh Messenger, 1984. ↩︎
- G.K.C. Reddy. Army Action in Punjab: Prelude and Aftermath. 1984, p49. ↩︎
- Christian Science Monitor, 8 June 1984. ↩︎
- Kuldip Nayar, Khushwant Singh. Tragedy of Punjab. Vision Books. 1984, p94. ↩︎
- Amrit Wilson, New Statesman, 16 November 1984. ↩︎
- Subramaniam Swami. Creating a Martyr, Imprint. 1984, p7. ↩︎
- K.P.S. Gill. Knights of Falsehood. Anand Publications. 2007. p. 95-97. ↩︎
- Atrocities On Sikh Children, Gobind Thukral. India Today, 30 Sept 1984. ↩︎
- Government of India. White Paper on the Punjab Agitation. Government of India Press. New Delhi. 10 July 1984. ↩︎
- Retired Lt-General S.K. Sinha. Sant Bhindrawale did nothing wrong by defending the Golden Temple. Spokesman, June 1984, p28-29. ↩︎
- Affidavit of Pratap Singh, DIG, BSF (Retired), Nanavati Commission. p135. ↩︎