This is a blow by blow ac­count of the events of June 1-8, 1984. The learned au­thor -Har­jag­man­dar Singh, who vis­ited Dar­bar Sahib, soon af­ter the tragedy, re­counts the hap­pen­ings and touches the raw nerve of the Sikhs and those who wanted and still want to teach the Sikhs a les­son. This ren­di­tion re­quires your pa­tience and in­dul­gence to go through the long piece in or­der to im­bibe the pain and an­guish suf­fered by those in the thick of the bat­tle and those who still con­tinue to suf­fer in si­lence.

The para­mil­i­tary forces started fir­ing at the Golden Tem­ple com­plex on 1st June and con­tin­ued fir­ing for seven hours. On the next day, they fired for ten hours. It seems the pur­pose was to ex­haust the ad­ver­sary be­fore the army started its ac­tion. More than one lakh sol­diers were in­ducted into Pun­jab. Twenty thou­sand army men, in­clud­ing spe­cially trained com­man­dos, were de­ployed around the Golden Tem­ple com­plex.

There was enor­mous ju­bi­la­tion among the Hin­dus. They wel­comed the sol­diers as sav­iours, of­fered them cig­a­rettes and sweets and helped them in drag­ging guns in the nar­row streets around the com­plex.

The army took po­si­tions on 3 June. Cur­few was clamped all over the state and all kinds of trans­port were stopped. The army started fir­ing with ma­chine guns and can­non on the com­plex and the sur­round­ing build­ings. Fir­ing con­tin­ued dur­ing the night of 3-4 June, the day of 4 June, the night of 4-5 and the day of 5 June. The an­swer­ing fire con­tin­ued in­ces­santly from in­side the shrine with great in­ten­sity. The earth shook with the thun­der­ing guns. The city was cov­ered with smoke. The night sky glowed with lethal fire­works. Mas­sive de­struc­tion was caused in the holy com­plex and the res­i­den­tial ar­eas around. Hun­dreds of houses and whole mar­kets were shelled and de­stroyed.

Some army units made their en­try into the Gur­d­wara com­plex in the evening of 5 June. But they were killed or re­pulsed. The next batches met with no bet­ter luck. Then the “black cat” com­man­dos were sent in. They were the most spe­cial force raised in the days of Jawa­har­lal Nehru and re­served to be used in most crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions.

They had their bap­tism of fire in the Sikh shrine and soon bit the dust. New units con­tin­ued to be sent in, they strug­gled to gain ground by inches, cow­ered un­der vol­leys of ma­chine gun fire, and got killed or ran back. The army had not bar­gained for such fierce re­sis­tance; now its in­struc­tions were to fin­ish the bat­tle at the ear­li­est by what­ever means.

C. S. gas, as Lt. Gen­eral K. Sun­derji later ad­mit­ted, was used, al­though it forms a part of chem­i­cal war­fare and its use is for­bid­den un­der Geneva Con­ven­tion. Fi­nally, thir­teen tanks were brought in. They crushed the mar­ble parkarma -cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion and reached near Akal Takht. They used blind­ing lights and shelled the Takht and the ad­join­ing build­ings. One of these tanks was de­stroyed, some oth­ers got stuck up. Thus vic­tory over the cen­tral Sikh shrine was won by In­dian army in the morn­ing of 6th June 1984.

“I have not seen such fire­power in three decades of my ca­reer, not even dur­ing the wars with Pak­istan.”

Lt. Gen­eral Ran­jit Singh Dayal 

The gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­dised that the ter­ror­ists had been flushed out and no harm was done to the holy build­ings. Dit­to­ing it, Kir­pal Singh, the Jathedar of Akal Takht, an­nounced on the tele­vi­sion that very slight dam­age was done to the Akal Takht and the Golden Tem­ple was to­tally un­harmed. Whereas the fact is that the Akal Takht had been al­most de­stroyed. It was de­stroyed for the first time in its his­tory; it had es­caped even the fury of Ahmed Shah Ab­dali and other Mus­lim in­vaders. And, the Golden Tem­ple had been rid­dled with bul­lets. Kuldip Na­yar, a vet­eran jour­nal­ist, counted 300 bul­let marks on its walls.

Those who had vowed to de­fend the prime Sikh shrine de­fended it to the last. They with­stood the whole might of the In­dian army un­flinch­ingly. The num­ber of Sikhs who ac­tu­ally fought was about 150. There were some Sikh girls among them who stuck to their ma­chine guns un­til they were killed. Once again these war­riors jus­ti­fied the claim of their Guru that he would make one man fight against a lakh and a quar­ter. Their hands and shoul­ders were bleed­ing as they had kept fir­ing in­ces­santly for 48 hours. A sol­dier is sure to be court-mar­tialled if he overuses his weapon like this. Big heaps of car­tridges were formed. Ma­jor Gen­eral Kuldip Singh Brar (Bul­bul), who was in charge of the ac­tion, ad­mit­ted that the Sikh mil­i­tants took max­i­mum ad­van­tage of their po­si­tion and fought “most bravely and skil­fully”.

Ma­jor Gen­eral Kuldip Singh Brar, who was in charge of the ac­tion, ad­mit­ted that the Sikh mil­i­tants took max­i­mum ad­van­tage of their po­si­tion and fought “most bravely and skil­fully”.

Re­gard­ing the in­ten­sity of the bat­tle, Lt. Gen­eral Ran­jit Singh Dayal re­marked, “I have not seen such fire­power in three decades of my ca­reer, not even dur­ing the wars with Pak­istan.” Three or four Sikhs kept fir­ing from a base­ment un­til 8th June.

The whole com­plex was strewn with pieces of hu­man flesh, blood and tufts of hair. Dead bod­ies lay scat­tered every­where. The army men drank and smoked in­side the holy precincts. The gov­ern­ment broad­casted deaf­en­ingly its claim that it had re­stored the sanc­tity of the Golden Tem­ple.

Apart from about 150 men who fought, all the Sikhs killed in the com­plex were pil­grims or res­i­dents of the nearby houses who had taken shel­ter in the Gur­d­wara com­plex af­ter the armed forces had got their houses va­cated. The re­port of a doc­tor, who had con­ducted post­mortems, pub­lished in a French news­pa­per, re­vealed that the hands of many were tied be­hind their backs and they had been shot from a point-blank range; these in­cluded women and chil­dren. About a hun­dred young boys of the Damdami Tak­sal, who had come in con­nec­tion with the mar­tyr­dom day of the fifth Guru, were also killed af­ter be­ing caught.

A num­ber of pil­grims hid in a base­ment in Guru Ram Das Sarai. Wa­ter was pumped into the base­ment and those who were in­side were drowned. Bombs were thrown into the rooms of the Sarai and Guru Nanak Ni­was where pil­grims had taken shel­ter from the army fire. A ghastly scene greeted the eyes even three months later (when I vis­ited the place). Wooden doors were charred, walls were black­ened, steel fur­ni­ture and fans were twisted into hideous shapes. There were prints on floors of hu­man bod­ies as they had melted in the in­tense heat of bomb­ing; pieces of skin and tufts of hair were stick­ing to walls and ceil­ings. The smell of burnt flesh still lin­gered in the rooms.

The gov­ern­ment gave the num­ber of the Sikhs killed as 516. Later, in the White Pa­per, it was re­duced to 493. But Kuldip Na­yar says in Tragedy of Pun­jab, “There can be lit­tle doubt that if a zero were added to the of­fi­cial fig­ure of 516 civil­ian/​ter­ror­ist ca­su­al­ties, we would be closer to the ac­tual num­ber of lives lost.”

In the Jal­lian­wala mas­sacre, which is re­mem­bered as the most heinous act of the British in In­dia, only 379 peo­ple were killed. In the words of G. K C. Reddy, “Thus the 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.”  As re­gards the army ca­su­al­ties, the gov­ern­ment ini­tially put the num­ber at 45 dead and nine were miss­ing. Later, in the White Pa­per, it was in­creased to 83. But Prime Min­is­ter Ra­jiv Gandhi, ad­dress­ing N.S.U.I. ses­sion at Nag­pur in Sep­tem­ber, 84, dis­closed that “700 of our jawans” were killed in the Golden Tem­ple ac­tion. The num­ber of the wounded in bat­tles is usu­ally thrice the dead.

Those who were not killed were treated very cru­elly. Many of them were shut up in rooms and were not given wa­ter to drink. Many were made to lie on the sun-parched cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion. Jour­nal­ist Shekhar Gupta writes that the wounded Sikhs were beaten up as they were be­ing car­ried to Kot­wali (po­lice sta­tion), and in the Kot­wali they were again beaten. Sub­hash Kir­pekar, writ­ing on June 6 af­ter­noon says, “On the way back to the ho­tel, I wit­nessed a scene at the Kot­wali which is blood-cur­dling. This is where some Jawans were kick­ing some of the sus­pected ter­ror­ists as they knelt on their bare knees and crawled on the hot road sur­face… The hun­dreds of spec­ta­tors who saw this scene felt an­guished. The sight put them off.”

To dis­pose of the dead bod­ies was not an easy job. In the June heat, they had started pu­tre­fy­ing and mag­gots de­vel­oped in them. When the army could not com­plete the task, sweep­ers of the city were em­ployed; they were given liquor and al­lowed to take away the be­long­ings of the dead. Truck­loads of bod­ies were burnt at sev­eral places out­side the city. Bod­ies were burnt in­side the Gur­d­wara premises also. Sub­hash Kir­pekar saw from his ho­tel that smoke and acrid smell kept ris­ing for two and a half hours in the morn­ing of 7th June from near Guru Nanak Ni­was where a mass cre­ma­tion was car­ried out.

The Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary was set on fire on June 7. Ac­cord­ing to the army it caught fire dur­ing the gun bat­tle. Ac­tu­ally, it was ran­sacked be­fore it was burnt. It con­tained thou­sands of rare books, por­traits and man­u­scripts, many of them bear­ing the sig­na­tures of the Gu­rus. Many years later, it was dis­closed by an of­fi­cial that the ma­te­r­ial had been packed into gunny bags and car­ried in army trucks to an un­known des­ti­na­tion. It was later known that many of the items, which were found to be “sedi­tious”, were de­stroyed. The Akali Dal and the S.G.P.C. did pre­cious lit­tle to get the ma­te­r­ial back. Twenty years af­ter the army ac­tion, the Pun­jab High Court, on the writ pe­ti­tion of one Sat­nam Singh, or­dered the restora­tion of the “war prop­erty” to the li­brary. But the or­der has not been im­ple­mented yet.

The Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary was set on fire on June 7. Ac­cord­ing to the army it caught fire dur­ing the gun bat­tle. Ac­tu­ally, it was ran­sacked be­fore it was burnt. It con­tained thou­sands of rare books, por­traits and man­u­scripts, many of them bear­ing the sig­na­tures of the Gu­rus. 

It is not known how much of the wealth, which had been ac­cu­mu­lated in the Tosha Khana (trea­sury) since the time of Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh, was lost in the army op­er­a­tion. The hon­esty of army men can be judged from the fact that they freely looted tele­vi­sions, V.C.R.s, ra­dios, pres­sure-cook­ers and uten­sils on which they could lay their hands in the houses around the Golden Tem­ple. Brigadier Bedi con­ducted in­quiries into the mat­ter and re­cov­ered a large num­ber of such items from sol­diers.

The S. G. P. C. has not dis­closed what valu­ables are miss­ing from the Tosha Khana. The rea­son is they do not want to of­fend the Cen­tre. In this re­spect, Kuldip Na­yar has men­tioned the price­less canopy, of­fered by Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh, which was burnt in the at­tack. When Gi­ani Zail Singh, the Pres­i­dent of In­dia, vis­ited the Golden Tem­ple on 8th June, “He went round the Tosha Khana and saw the burnt shreds of the canopy which was worth crores of ru­pees. It had been given by the Nizam of Hy­der­abad to Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh who, in turn, gave it as an of­fer­ing at the Golden Tem­ple. Zail Singh noted that most of the hun­dreds of pearls dec­o­rat­ing the canopy were miss­ing. Only a few re­mained tied in a hand­ker­chief.”

Many Sikhs hoped that their co-re­li­gion­ist Pres­i­dent of In­dia would do some­thing. They thought he would, at least, re­sign his of­fice. But they for­got that not long ago when he was made Pres­i­dent by In­dira Gandhi, he had touched the feet of her son San­jay and pub­licly de­clared that he would sweep her floor with a broom if she so de­sired. He vis­ited the shrine im­me­di­ately af­ter the Holo­caust. Kuldip Na­yar, de­scrib­ing his visit, writes, “The Gi­ani ap­peared in this cre­ma­tion ground like an aged bride­groom, re­splen­dent in his sher­wani  and choori­dars,  sport­ing a rose-bud in a but­ton-hole.”

The Hin­dus of Pun­jab gloated over the army op­er­a­tion. They dis­trib­uted sweets in al­most every town of Pun­jab. Lead­ers of all po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­grat­u­lated In­dira Gandhi on this ac­tion.

As the news of the at­tack on the Golden Tem­ple spread, grief and anger surged through the Sikh masses. Large crowds marched to­wards Am­rit­sar. They were in­ter­cepted and dis­persed by the army. Ac­cord­ing to an army of­fi­cer, “Each suc­ces­sive mob that we en­coun­tered was more fu­ri­ous and re­quired greater use of force.”

The army had to use tanks against one such crowd in Sul­tan­wind near Am­rit­sar. New lead­ers emerged in vil­lages and gave calls to the Sikhs to gather at nu­mer­ous nearby cen­tres. The Sikhs came on foot or in trac­tor-trail­ers, with what­ever weapons they could muster, ready to fight and sac­ri­fice them­selves. Fiery speeches were de­liv­ered, war cries were raised and oaths were taken to fight un­til the last breath for the Panth. But they did not know what to do. At last, they de­cided to re­turn to their vil­lages and wait for in­struc­tions from the higher lead­er­ship.

Parkash Singh Badal is­sued a state­ment: “The Cen­tre has started a war on the Sikhs. Pun­jab is un­der the jack­boots of the mil­i­tary.  The Sikhs will fight to the last man.” He called upon the Sikh men and women to wear black head-dresses, not to eat food on that day and to sleep on the ground. The Sikhs, in­clud­ing small chil­dren, re­sponded to the call. But the next day the leader was in jail.

A mys­tique was wit­nessed again. Hawks had not been seen in Pun­jab for years. But dur­ing these tragic days, they sud­denly ap­peared in sev­eral places. They landed on the Gur­d­wara build­ings; some even en­tered the in­ner sanc­tums and sat there. These birds seemed to be af­flicted with some pain or grief. All of them died.

Four to five thou­sand Sikh sol­diers re­volted in Bi­har, As­sam, Ra­jasthan and Jammu. They killed some of­fi­cers, caught hold of what­ever weapons and ve­hi­cles they could and moved to­wards Am­rit­sar. Some of them were killed, oth­ers were ar­rested on the way. They were court-mar­tialled and some of them were given long im­pris­on­ments. Just af­ter this re­volt, In­dira Gandhi said that the de­sert­ers would be treated le­niently. But one Sikh Lt. Gen­eral, go­ing out of his way, de­manded death penalty for them. A lit­tle later, when he re­tired from the army, he was made Lieu­tenant gov­er­nor of a union ter­ri­tory.

Bal­want Singh, a se­nior Akali leader, as it later came to light, ex­press­ing his ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the army op­er­a­tion, wrote to In­dira Gandhi, “the gov­ern­ment ac­tion in raid­ing the Golden Tem­ple to flush out Bhin­dran­wale and his ter­ror­ists has been very timely and most de­sir­able… As de­sired by the au­thor­i­ties here (Chandi­garh), I am giv­ing this un­der­stand­ing to you that I will re­frain from ac­tive pol­i­tics and sup­port the gov­ern­ment ac­tion within the limit of my re­sources.”

For fight­ing in the Golden Tem­ple bat­tle, army men were given such re­wards as had been given never be­fore for fight­ing against an en­emy coun­try. One lakh ru­pees was an­nounced as a spe­cial grant for every sol­dier killed in this bat­tle. On 24th March 1985, about 200 sol­diers were given awards by Pres­i­dent Gi­ani Zail Singh for show­ing val­our in this at­tack; these in­cluded Ashoka Chakra, the high­est mil­i­tary ho­n­our. Ran­jit Singh Dayal was re­warded with land in Hi­machal Pradesh for his ef­fi­ciency in this ac­tion.

The Hin­dus of Pun­jab gloated over the army op­er­a­tion. They dis­trib­uted sweets in al­most every town of Pun­jab. Lead­ers of all po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­grat­u­lated In­dira Gandhi on this ac­tion.

The army ac­tion was car­ried out at 42 other Gur­d­waras also.

The gov­ern­ment claimed that it was done to flush out ter­ror­ists. In all, there were twenty-two “wanted” men whose list was given by the gov­ern­ment to the S.G.P.C., who were al­leged to be hid­den in Dar­bar Sahib Am­rit­sar. Sant Jar­nail Singh’s name was not on the list. Was it just to tackle these 22 odd men that the mas­sive war-ma­chine, with its full fury, was pressed into ac­tion?

The real aim was to crush the sep­a­ratist urge of the Sikhs and to teach them “a les­son of sub­jec­tion.” A woman Con­gress leader in Delhi ex­horted mi­nori­ties to learn a les­son from the ex­am­ple of the Sikhs.

A large num­ber of Sikhs were ar­rested from the Golden Tem­ple com­plex af­ter the army op­er­a­tion and lodged in a camp. The sign­board out­side it read “EN­EMY.” A few hun­dred were sent to a jail in Jodh­pur where they were kept in painful con­di­tions and tried for wag­ing war against the state.

One case par­tic­u­larly de­serves to be men­tioned. Four women and 22 chil­dren, who had gone to the Golden Tem­ple as pil­grims, were ar­rested from there and lodged in Lud­hi­ana jail. The chil­dren, rang­ing be­tween one and six­teen years of age, were listed un­der three cat­e­gories of ter­ror­ists — very dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous and po­ten­tially dan­ger­ous. The gov­ern­ment de­nied that they were in its cus­tody. They were let out when the Supreme Court or­dered their re­lease on a writ pe­ti­tion filed by a so­cial worker named Ka­mala Devi Chat­topad­hyay. The chil­dren said they had been tor­tured in jail. Some of them were ar­rested again and placed in Nabha jail. When the po­lice could not re­cap­ture one of these kids, Kuldip Singh, they mo­lested his 17-year-old sis­ter and took away his 14-year-old brother and tor­tured him in the po­lice sta­tion. In­dian Ex­press of 4th April, 85, pub­lished the story. To pub­lish such news was a very risky job. Brahma Chelan­ney, a cor­re­spon­dent of As­so­ci­ated Press faced a lot of ha­rass­ment for re­port­ing such atroc­i­ties.

There were nu­mer­ous Sikhs in high po­si­tions in army and civil ad­min­is­tra­tion, most of whom must have felt hurt. But only two of them showed the courage to an­swer the call of con­science — Sim­ran­jit Singh Mann, an I.P.S., and Harinder Singh Khalsa of In­dian For­eign Ser­vice. Mann wrote to Pres­i­dent Gi­ani Zail Singh ex­press­ing his re­sent­ment over the army op­er­a­tion and called the Gi­ani a “quis­ling”. He had to spend five years in the Bha­galpur jail and face tor­ture.

When en­try was al­lowed to Har­man­dar Sahib af­ter the army op­er­a­tion, large num­bers of Sikhs thronged to the shrine. Many burst into tears and cried like chil­dren to see the de­struc­tion. Hearts of the Sikhs bled all over the world. The Akal Takht was hur­riedly built by the gov­ern­ment through the ser­vices of Boota Singh, a Con­gress min­is­ter and Ni­hang Santa Singh, un­der army pro­tec­tion, and the cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion was re­laid with in­fe­rior mar­ble. The count­less bul­let-holes in the walls were plugged, leav­ing be­hind a pock­marked look. The devo­tees re­moved the ce­ment plugs and made the holes gape again as if they did not want their wounds to be con­cealed.

When the S.G.P.C. took charge of the com­plex, they pulled down the Akal Takht con­structed by the gov­ern­ment, and re­built it through com­mon ser­vices of Sikh devo­tees, in ac­cor­dance with the Sikh tra­di­tion. The S.G.P.C. also saw to it that all marks and signs of the army at­tack were re­moved.

The use of mil­i­tary force failed to de­mor­alise the Sikhs; it rather pro­duced in them the con­vic­tion that they must have a sep­a­rate sov­er­eign coun­try of their own where their re­li­gion and life could be safe. And, con­se­quently, there fol­lowed a decade of se­ces­sion­ist ac­tiv­ity by the Sikhs and op­pres­sion by the gov­ern­ment.

Dra­con­ian laws were im­posed in Pun­jab. Un­der these spe­cial laws, the po­lice could de­lay the putting up of cases be­fore a court for a year. Bails were made vir­tu­ally im­pos­si­ble. Spe­cial courts were set up, the ap­peal against which lay only with the Supreme Court which in­volved a lot of money and time. Peo­ple could be de­tained with­out trial un­der the Na­tional Se­cu­rity Act for two years, and this term could be ex­tended by an­other two years. The nor­mal prin­ci­ple of jus­tice was re­versed and an ac­cused was held guilty un­less he proved him­self to be in­no­cent. De­tainees were not re­leased even when their re­lease was or­dered by courts. The gov­ern­ment is­sued the re­lease and the re­ar­rest or­ders si­mul­ta­ne­ously.

The use of mil­i­tary force failed to de­mor­alise the Sikhs; it rather pro­duced in them the con­vic­tion that they must have a sep­a­rate sov­er­eign coun­try of their own where their re­li­gion and life could be safe. And, con­se­quently, there fol­lowed a decade of se­ces­sion­ist ac­tiv­ity by the Sikhs and op­pres­sion by the gov­ern­ment.

Jus­tice V.R. Kr­ishna Iyer, a re­tired judge of the Supreme Court, re­marked that com­pared with the Pun­jab en­act­ments, the Rowlatt Act was a “mer­ci­ful doc­u­ment.” The Rowlatt Act is re­garded as the most op­pres­sive mea­sure im­posed by the British in In­dia. In 1988, the con­sti­tu­tion was amended for the 59th time, to pro­vide for the sup­pres­sion of the right to life. The op­po­si­tion par­ties op­posed it, but they ac­qui­esced in when the home min­is­ter re­as­sured them that the bill was meant only to be used in Pun­jab. But even these laws did not pro­vide the po­lice­men with the free­dom of ac­tion which they wanted. They acted out­side the frame­work of any law. Sikh youths were their spe­cial tar­get. How many of them were tor­tured and killed will never be known.

Jus­tice V.R. Kr­ishna Iyer, a re­tired judge of the Supreme Court, re­marked that com­pared with the Pun­jab en­act­ments, the Rowlatt Act was a “mer­ci­ful doc­u­ment.” 

Gur­cha­ran Singh Tohra, as pres­i­dent of S.G.P.C, filed a civil suit claim­ing Rs. 1000 crore as com­pen­sa­tion for dam­age done to the cen­tral Sikh shrine in Op­er­a­tion Blue Star. He be­lieved that the ho­n­our and faith of the Sikh com­mu­nity could be mea­sured in terms of money.

The Sikh anger con­tin­ued to seethe and found ex­pres­sion in mil­i­tant ac­tiv­ity. No day passed with­out vi­o­lent in­ci­dents. The sit­u­a­tion seemed to have passed be­yond so­lu­tion. A sec­ond-rung Akali leader one day talked to me. He asked what ac­cord­ing to me could be the so­lu­tion. I said there seemed to be no easy so­lu­tion be­cause the anger of the Sikhs was in­ex­haustible and there was no dearth of weapons and tar­gets. But his view was dif­fer­ent: “Let the Cen­tre in­stall our min­istry; that is re­ally what the whole tur­moil is about. Then we shall con­trol the Sikh anger and vi­o­lence. We know how to do it. We shall arrange huge pro­ces­sions com­pris­ing hun­dreds of buses and trucks filled with peo­ple, wav­ing flags and rais­ing slo­gans of “Bole so Ni­hal…” from one cor­ner of the state to the other. We shall tell the Sikhs that Khalsa Raj has been achieved and they will be­lieve it. Every­thing will be al­right.” As it turned out, he was right.