June4
Operation Blue Star (3–6 June 1984) was an Indian military operation ordered by Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, to remove Sikh separatists who were amassing weapons in the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The operation was launched in response to a deterioration of law and order in the Indian state of Punjab.
The operation was carried out by Indian army troops with tanks and armored vehicles. Militarily successful, the operation aroused immense controversy, and the government’s justification for the timing and style of the attack are still under debate. Operation Blue star was ranked as number two in the Top 10 Political Disgraces by India Today magazine.
Official reports put the number of deaths among the Indian army at 83 and the number of civilian deaths at 492, though independent estimates ran much higher.
The impact of the military assault, its aftermath and the increased tensions led to assaults on members of the Sikh community within India and uproar amongst Sikhs worldwide. In India, many Sikhs resigned from armed and civil administrative office and returned their government awards. Revenge for the desecration of the Sikh shrine was pledged by some in the Sikh community, and Indira Gandhi was assassinated by 2 of her Sikh bodyguards on 31 October 1984.
Series of Events:
The Indian Army used seven Vijayanta Tanks during the operation. Indira Gandhi first asked Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha, the then Vice-Chief of Indian Army and who was to succeed as the Army chief, to prepare a position paper for assault on the Golden Temple. Lt. Gen. Sinha advised against any such move, given the sacrilegious outlook from pious Sikhs. He suggested the government adopt an alternative solution. A controversial decision was made to replace him with Gen. Arun Vaidya as the Chief of the Indian army. Gen. Vaidya was assisted by Lt. Gen. K. Sunderjee as Vice-Chief. Operation Blue Star was eventually planned and controlled by them.
On 3 June, a 36-hour curfew was imposed on the state of Punjab with all methods of communication and public travel suspended. Electricity supplies were also interrupted, creating a total blackout and cutting off the state from the rest of India and the world. Complete censorship was placed on all types of media.
The Indian Army stormed the Golden Temple on the night of 5 June under the command of Maj. Gen. Kuldip Singh Brar. The forces had full control of the Golden Temple by the morning of 7 June. Bhindranwale, Lt. Gen. Shahbeg Singh and several other militant leaders were killed in the operation along with a large number of followers and civilians. The armed forces also suffered many casualties.
Operation Blue Star coincided with a Sikh annual festival. People were celebrating martyrdom day of Sri Guru Arjan Dev Ji. Pilgrims, including the elderly and children, were trapped inside the temple when the operation began and many were reported as wounded and killed as a result.
5th June, 1984
Operation Blue Star was launched to eliminate the Sikh militants who had taken control of the Amritsar Golden Temple Complex. The Sikh militants within the Harminder Sahib were led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and former Maj. Gen.Shabeg Singh MVC, who had been removed from the Indian Army one day before his retirement on charges of embezzlement but was denied a request made by him to be tried by a military court on that issue and court-martialed, if found guilty. Maj. Gen. Kuldip Singh Brar had command of the action, operating under Gen. Sunderji.
20:00 hrs – 22:00 hrs
The first element was the destruction of Shabeg Singh’s outer defenses. Much of this had been completed in the preliminary shelling. Major-General Brar had hoped to force Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale into surrendering, which did not occur. The destroyed defenses included seventeen houses which the police believed Bhindranwale’s followers occupied in the alleys surrounding the Golden Temple. Nearby was the Brahmbuta Akhara, a large building housing the headquarters of a Sikh sect. Then there were three main towers which had been fortified to create positions from which Bhindranwale’s men could defend. Because the towers rose well above surrounding buildings, they were excellent observation positions for tracking the movement of Indian troops in the narrow alleys surrounding the temple. The tops of these towers were destroyed in the preliminary artillery fire.
22:00 hrs–23:30 hrs
Between 10:00 and 10:30 on 5 June commandos from 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, were ordered to run down the steps under the clock tower on to the parikarma, (”pavement”), and move quickly around the edge of the sacred pool to the Akal Takht. As the paratroopers entered the main gateway to the Temple they were gunned down by light machine-gun fire from both sides of the steps. The few commandos who did get down the steps were driven back by a barrage of fire from the building on the south side of the sacred pool. In the control room, a house on the opposite side of the clock-tower, Major-General Brar was waiting with two supporting officers to hear confirmation that the commandos had established positions inside the complex.
The few commandos left regrouped in the square outside and reported back to Maj. Gen. Brar. He ordered them to make another attempt. The commandos were then to be followed by the 10th Battalion of the Guards, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Israr Khan. This second commando attack managed to neutralize the machine-gun posts on both sides of the steps and get down on to the parikarma. They were followed by the Guards who came under heavy fire and were not able to make any progress. They radioed for permission to fire back at the buildings on the other side of the tank. That would have meant that the Golden Temple itself, which is in the middle of the pool, would have been in the line of fire. Brar initially refused, but started to receive reports of heavy casualties from the commander of the Guards.
23:30 hrs – 01:00 hrs
Brar again requested tanks after an APC was destroyed by a rocket fired by a Sikh militant. His request was granted and seven tanks rolled into the Golden Temple complex. They cleared the ramparts and later assaulted the main temple in order to neutralize the militants remaining in the structure. The shelling achieved it’s objective and the primary target of removing militants from the Akal Takht was achieved by 01:00. However, the secondary objective of removing militants from other neighbouring structures went on for a further 24 hours.
As per the affidavit filed by retired Brigadier D.V. Rao in court of Harjit Singh Khalsa, judicial magistrate first class, Amritsar, on 19 March 2007, the Indian Army suffered 83 deaths, which included four officers, four Junior Commissioned Officers and 75 other ranks. As per the affidavit, 13Indian Army officers, 16 JCOs and 220 other ranks were injured in the operation. Indian army recorded 492 civilian deaths inside Golden Temple with 433 persons segregated as “separatists” amongst 1592 persons apprehended. During June 1984, brigadier D.V. Rao served as Commander of 350 Infantry Brigade based in Jalandhar, which formed part of Ninth Infantry Division of Indian Army. The unofficial casualty figures from eye-witness accounts (such as Amnesty International) were much higher.
The Army placed total casualties at:
- Military: 83 killed, 248 wounded
- Sikh Casulties: 492 Killed (100 women and 75 children), 86 wounded (7 women and 4 children).
Independent historians placed the figure at:
- Military: 700
- Sikh Casulties: 5000.
According to some journalists, several Sikh youths were also killed in crossfire from militants. The unofficial casualty figures from eye-witness accounts (such as Amnesty International) were much higher.
Media Blackout
Before the attack by army a media blackout was imposed in Punjab. The Times reporter Michael Hamlyn reported that journalists were picked up from their hotels at 5 a.m. in a military bus, taken to the adjoining border of the state of Haryana and “were abandoned there”. The main towns in Punjab were put under curfew, transportation was banned, news blackout was imposed and Punjab was “cut off from the outside world”. A group of journalists who later tried to drive into Punjab were stopped at the road block at Punjab border and were threatened to be shot if they proceeded. The Indian nationals who worked with the foreign media were also banned. The press criticized these actions by Government as an “obvious attempt to attack the temple without the eyes of foreign press on them”.The Associated Press reporter Brahma Chellaney who managed to stay back and report the operation was later threatened and questioned by police.
Brahma Chellaney, who was then the South Asia correspondent of the Associated Press, was the only foreign reporter who managed to stay on in Amritsar despite the media blackout. His dispatches, filed by telex, provided the first non-governmental news reports on the bloody operation in Amritsar. His first dispatch, front-paged by the New York Times, The Times of London and The Guardian, reported a death toll about twice of what authorities had admitted. According to the dispatch, about 780 militants and civilians and 400 troops had perished in fierce gun battles. The high casualty rates among security forces were attributed to “the presence of such sophisticated weapons as medium machine guns and rockets in the terrorists’ arsenal.”. Mr. Chellaney also reported that “several” suspected Sikh militants had been shot with their hands tied. The dispatch, after its first paragraph reference to “several” such deaths, specified later that “eight to 10” men had been shot in that fashion. In that dispatch, Mr. Chellaney interviewed a doctor who said he was picked up by the army and forced to conduct postmortems despite the fact he had never done any postmortem examination before. The number of causalities reported by Mr. Chellaney were far more than government reports, and the Indian government, which disputed his casualty figures accused him of inflammatory reporting.
Aftermath:
An unspecified number of Sikh soldiers resigned from positions across India in protest, with some reports of large-scale pitched battles being fought to bring mutineers under control.
The operation also led to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. On 31 October 1984, two of her armed Sikh security officers murdered her. Anti-Sikh riots were triggered by Mrs Gandhi’s assassination. The widespread killing of Sikhs, principally in the national capital Delhi but also in other major cities in North India, led to major divisions between the Sikh community and the Indian Government.
General A S Vaidya, the Chief of Army Staff at the time of Operation Blue Star, was also assassinated in 1986 in Pune by two Sikhs, Harjinder Singh Jinda and Sukhdev Singh Sukha. Both were sentenced to death, and hanged on 7 October 1992.
The army was removed from the Golden Temple later in 1984 under pressure from Sikh demands.
Sikh militants continued to use and occupy the temple compound and on 1 May 1986, Indian paramilitary police entered the temple and arrested 200 militants that had occupied the Golden Temple for more than three months.
On May 2, 1986 the paramilitary police undertook 12-hour operation to take control of the Golden Temple at Amritsar from several hundred militants, but almost all the major radical leaders managed to escape.
In May 1988, army troops were called in again to remove militants from the temple. The conflict during 12-18 May resulting in clearing the compound and on 23 May, regular worship resumed. On 29 May, the government banned both political and military use of the shrines in India. Sikh militants then murdered the head priest on 26 July 1988.
In June 1990, the Indian government ordered the area surrounding the temple to be vacated by local residents to try to stop the militant activity around the temple.
Note: This article is simplified summary of Wikipedia article on Operation Blue Star. No changes have been done to the text and best effort has been put to present the real facts. If you have any articles/pictures/event details to share, write in comments or mail them to info@amritsarovar.com
