The Punjab Story

by Amarjit Kaur

  But while the spotlight was on the Akal Takht, another important aspect of the operation was being enacted in the serais, flanking the temple complex. One of the first steps in the operation had been to seal off the serais from the temple, neutralize all opposition and bring out safely the leaders of the moderate group of the Akali Dal including its president and morcha ‘dictator’ Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, SGPC president Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Akali Dal’s official spokesman Balwant Singh Ramoowalia and scores of other important functionaries. In the beginning it all seemed to be going nicely as Major Palta, commanding the company of Kumaonis in the serai area, radioed a message back to the command post saying that he was able to progress without much opposition.

  And then, suddenly, all hell broke loose as the Kumaonis came under a heavy fusilade of fire and an alarmed Major Palta informed ‘one-five’ of casualties on his side. But in spite of the fire-fight, the troops had been able to reach the ground floor room in Teja Singh Samundari Hall, the headquarters of the SGPC, where Longowal, Tohra, Ramoowalia and other leaders were sitting in quiet wait. Along with them, the troops found a surprise catch, the Akhand Kirtani Jatha leader Amarjit Kaur who was believed to have been behind the killings of Nirankaris to avenge the death of her husband Fauja Singh, killed at the head of a Sikh procession during the Nirankari congregation at Amritsar on 13 April 1978. The armymen asked the Akalis to stay put till APCs could be arranged to transport them safely outside. Yet, in the process, a band of killers sent in by Bhindranwale succeeded in throwing grenades and firing long automatic bursts, killing a number of pilgrims and former Akali Dal secretary Gurcharan Singh who had been on top of Bhindranwale’s hit list. ‘That Gurcharan, he will not live very long. If that shanti da doot (messenger of peace, Bhindranwale’s sarcastic way of addressing Longowal) does not hand him over to us, we will make sure he is put on the train (a very inept translation for his Punjabi ‘gaddi chadha devange’),’ Bhindranwale used to tell his followers after the murder of his key associate Surinder Singh Sodhi, for which he blamed Gurcharan Singh. Also killed alongside was SGPC member Bagga Singh, who had been openly accusing Bhindranwale of behaving like a Guru. In fact, to ridicule Bhindranwale, he had begun tying his turban like him and also carried around a stainless-steel arrow to make the mimicry perfect.

  But the assassinations triggered off a process, much of which still remains unexplained. According to one explanation, some members of the assassination squad locked themselves in some of the rooms in the serai area where hundreds of pilgrims had been hiding out of sheer panic. As jawans approached the rooms, they were fired at, resulting in casualties. At this stage, since the speedy neutralisation of the serais was imperative to the success of the Operation, the jawans decided to just lob grenades. ‘It was a war-like situation where people were getting killed on all sides. There really was no time or scope for niceties any more,’ said a junior officer there. This, coupled with the indiscriminate lobbing of grenades by the militant hit squad earlier, accounted for most of the nearly 500 innocent civilians’ death. In the words of Jagir Singh, a youngster who survived the mayhem and spoke to me at Amritsar’s Shahid Baba Deep Singh gurdwara on the day of his release by the army authorities after screening: ‘There was utter confusion as bombs burst and bullets flew all over. Along with nearly a dozen others, I just locked myself inside one of the rooms of Guru Ram Das Serai. After a while, we heard bombs blasting in nearby rooms and the whole world seemed to shake. Somehow, our room was completely ignored. We were all miserable with thirst, yet no one had the courage to open the door. The room stank, with no other place for people to answer the call of nature. By next morning, when the jawans knocked at our door, four of us had died of thirst and exhaustion. I was half-dead. I only remember the armymen smashing a ventilator open, and then an officer asking troops to take positions while we unlocked the door. The rest was not too bad as the army took us away to the prison camp in the Central School compound in the cantonment. The only problem was that, occasionally, the odd jawan would rough up one of us, shouting “Pakistani ki aulad (offspring of a Pakistan)”.’ Presumably, the jawans’ ire resulted from the discovery of circumcised men among those fighting at the Akal Takht and nearly 40 other Muslims who, nevertheless, claimed to be no more than Bangladeshi labourers and gave the address of a clump of villages in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district.

  Anyway, in the melee that ensued in the serais, causing large-scale deaths of pilgrims, the Kumaonis lost their commander, Major Palta. According to survivors’ accounts, he was shot by Anokh Singh, one of the prominent members of the anti-Bhindranwale Babbar Khalsa. Incidentally, the Babbars’ proximity with Longowal was not a matter of conjecture. On the day the army first moved in around the temple, the Babbar chief, Sukhdev Singh, was ensconced in a long discussion with Longowal, who was embarrassed when I walked in, on 3 June afternoon. In retrospect, however, the Babbars proved to be the shrewdest of all. Till the army came in, they were the ones continuously provoking the paramilitary forces around the temple, with whom they intermittently exchanged fire. Today, barring the few who died on top of the water tank, the rest of the group, nearly 30-40 strong, escaped breaking a wall behind the Guru Nanak Niwas and using a small passage leading to the narrow bylanes behind. The army, apparently, was unaware of this. Again, in retrospect, from the army’s point of view, it was extremely fortunate that the more prominent militant leaders were not on this side of the temple, or the whole Operation would have been rendered futile. The scale of the escape is obvious from the fact that, along with the Babbars and the members of pro-Bhindranwale Akal Federation, led by Bhai Kanwar Singh, nearly 150 pilgrims and SGPC employees also escaped using the passage. An SGPC employee recalled cynically: ‘The passage was open and it was now a question of exposing your back to the fire for a moment and rushing out. Many of us did that and there we saw on the run, dozens of those who had taken the so-called holy oath of defending the temple to death. Here they were, throwing away their guns and holsters and running for dear lives.’ But the escape attempts which some of the militants made a week later were less than cowardly. Two of them, Kuljinder Singh and Harjinder Singh, wounded in action, escaped from the Sri Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital and have not been traced so far. Even more daring, on 7 June, just a day after the main operation, a large number of militants held near Panther Institute in the cantonment managed to snatch the carbine of a lieutenant on duty and tried to make a break. Alarmed, the jawans opened fire, killing nine militants. In the confusion, a number of jawans erecting a barbed wire fence round the camp were also trapped in the crossfire. Four of them died.

  While the army had anticipated casualties in the battle for the Akal Takht, the sudden flare-up in the serai area had been rather unexpected. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now said that more of the pilgrims could have been rescued if the army had given long enough period of warning before the main invasion. But the army’s explanation was that not many pilgrims were inclined to come out anyway because of the firing by the militants. The latter even fired at Longowal, Tohra and others, who had to be taken out in APCs. Tohra, incidentally, collapsed due to exhaustion while coming out of the vehicle. Besides, the army officers argued that it was incorrect to say that the pilgrims could not have heard the warnings because of the general noise and commotion. They pointed out that on the evening of 5 June, even the militants had asked for a 30-minute ceasefire to make up their minds on surrender. But later they resumed firing on their own. The short reprieve had probably been utilized to strengthen a fortification or perhaps for moving an important weapon from one place to another.

  Even with the capitulation of the Akal Takht and neutralization of the resistance from the serais, there was no relief for the army commanders. The ultimate objective, the Golden Temple, was still holding out. ‘Boxing with one hand tied behind their backs,’ the jawans watched helpless as a small band of militants kept firing from the temple and frustrated their repeated attempts to break in without fi
ring. In the meantime, the generals got worried by the information given by the captives that the militants had put charges around the temple and were planning to blow it up. Immediately, the frogmen of 1 Paracommando Battalion were ordered to swim across the Sarovar to defuse the explosives. But snipers were ready for them and inflicted some casualties. Later, it turned out to be a false alarm as explosives’ experts scanned the temple after the defenders surrendered. Army officers recalled that each one of the 22 who had surrendered in the temple was desperate to go to the toilet as they had had no place to ease themselves in the temple for over two days. Initially, the commanders deployed a band of infantry-men to occupy the temple. Later in the evening, the task was handed over to 20 Sikh jawans and a JCO drawn from the Engineers Battalion involved in the Operation. But even now, if someone expected an end to the fighting, the optimism was soon to be dashed

  Odd bands of survivors, living on a diet of parched gram, shakarpara and biscuits, provided to each one in ample measure, besides buffer stocks held in strategic corners of the complex, continued to put up resistance. They hid in ruined buildings, under debris inside small tunnels linking buildings and manholes to harass the troops with repeated sniper attacks. Some of these were also made from the numerous windows in the Ramgarhia Bunga which had to be ultimately scanned and cleared by the 1 Paracommando troops. But greater problems were in store elsewhere. Next to the Akal Takht, a lone sniper continued to hold out in a building, ignoring repeated army entreaties to surrender. Troops had to lob grenades to kill him, but the blasts also blew up a stock of 60 LPG cylinders stored inside the buildings setting off a real blaze. Similarly, a lone sniper with just a .303 rifle continued to fire from a window under the Sikh library along the Parikrama. Grenades hurled to kill him set the library on fire which, fanned by a strong breeze, accounted for hundreds of rare manuscripts and valuable scriptures before the firefighters could come in. In fact, anticipating such a situation, the army had already brought in a brigadier who specialized in putting out fires. But snipers and breeze made his task difficult. Yet another fire broke out in the Teja Singh Samundari Hall as a grenade hit a car parked in its compound. The car apparently had a full tank.

  Fires apart, the sniper fire on 7 and 8 June caused the army even more discomfiture than the straightforward assault on the Akal Takht. Some of the accounts were stranger than fiction. The Madras Regiment jawans decided to be kind to an old woman who had come out of a room crying, begging for water. As the jawans got up to help they were cut down by a volley of fire from another woman hiding behind. Troops also recalled in awe the sight of the body of an old woman next to an LMG, her right hand all but severed at the wrist. But in the series of wild incidents the most gruesome was enacted near the Bungas. Captain Rampal of the Army Medical Corps was casually roaming about, looking for any wounded needing first aid as a bunch of militants sprang out of the small, tunnel-like structure linking the basement of the Bunga to a structure next to the Parikrama. He was kidnapped, along with a member of his paramedical staff. But the armymen were able to raise an alarm before the militants succeeded in dragging them inside the basement. A large posse of troops led by a lieutenant colonel reached the spot and asked the militants to release the captives. But the terrorists first wanted to talk to Giani Sahib Singh, one of the head priests. Desperate, the army summoned Sahib Singh, who tried to persuade the militants to release the armymen. But the captors now insisted that the priest come into the basement to talk to them. Obviously, the army smelt a rat. Giani Sahib Singh also panicked and flatly told the army he expected no remorse from those hiding inside. After repeated warnings, the army decided to storm the basement. At the end of a fierce, short engagement, all the militants, and a couple of army jawans lay dead. In the heap of bodies was Captain Rampal, his arms severed, and body mutilated with wounds from bullets as well as sharp-edged weapons. The following day, the commandos and other troops went about scouring the buildings for basements and tunnels. It was in the course of one of these operations that Lieutenant Colonel Chowdhury, Commandant of the SFF commandos battalion, was shot in the shoulder even while President Zail Singh went about examining the damage and saying his prayers in the temple.

  From a purely military point of view, an operation of this kind had never been carried out anywhere in the world and the lessons of Bluestar would be analyzed not only in the Indian Army’s College of Combat at Mhow but perhaps also at numerous military academies all over the world. It is often said in diplomatic and international military circles now that an operation of this kind could have been carried out much more effectively and with much less bloodshed by a specialized force like the British army’s SAS. But Indian commanders point out that even the best commando outfit in the world, whether SAS or American Green Berets, would have found it difficult to break through such fortifications while facing constraints of saving a whole lot of sensitive buildings and installations. Besides, the very intricately political nature of the operation ensured that there was to be no surprise. On the other hand, the army was to make itself highly visible to overawe the defenders and then lie in wait, repeatedly giving warnings. It were these constraints that made a clean, surgical commando operation rather difficult. It ultimately became the much-maligned foot- soldier’s battle. Yet, the last-minute twists and turns and the intensity of fighting took the brightest of Indian Army commanders by surprise. Gen Sundarji, formerly director of the College of Combat, latter said that such intense firing had not even been seen during Indo-Pak wars. Dyal, who as a dashing major of the Paras in 1965 had led the remarkable capture of the heavily-held Haji Pir Pass in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, winning a Mahavir Chakra, too had a surprise or two. It was also the most testing experience for Brar, an alumnus of the US army’s War College at Carlyle Barracks, Pennsylvania, who too had seen fierce action in 1971, at the head of 1 Maratha in the Bangladesh War, winning a Vir Chakra. All the generals and other officers involved in the operation admit that it was the toughest challenge of their lives, a kind they would not fancy facing again. It is never easy fighting your own countrymen, even more so when they happen to be from a stock which has formed the sword arm of the country’s defence for so long.

  It is in the light of these complications that the question of an inordinately large number of civilian casualties needs to be examined. One certain contributory factor was the underestimation of the militants’ fighting ability. The government and the army brass presumed that with a show of strength by them, the militants would realize the futility of it all and surrender. But as subsequent events showed, this operation was not a Goa or Hyderabad. Also, in such fateful periods, a little bit of luck can make all the difference. And here the army had no luck with the telephones.

  It is one of the better guarded secrets of the operation that immediately following the siege, an officer of the Intelligence Bureau and a middle-rank officer of Punjab Police posted in Amritsar had offered to get in touch with Longowal and persuade him to surrender, along with all the pilgrims and unarmed men before the assault. On the eve of the operation, the army had had all the phones disconnected in Amritsar. The telephone authorities were immediately ordered to plug in Longowal’s line so that the intelligence men could talk to him. In spite of trying for nearly a day and a half, the telephone men failed to restore the line. Their suspicion was that the cables had somehow been cut. At one stage, the government even offered to cease firing to let the intelligence and policemen go inside to talk to Longowal. The idea was given up as being too risky with no guarantee that the militants would not pick them out. These were, obviously, pre-cellphone days.

  So, the battle was joined with nearly a thousand unarmed, innocent men trapped inside the temple complex, forced to witness the concluding stages of one of the most unfortunate chapters in the country’s independent history, over half of them ending up dead or wounded. But then, isn’t blood, sweat and tears the kind of stuff destinies of nations are built of?

 
Operation Bluestar: An Eyewitness Account

  SUBHASH KIRPEKAR

  In Russia, religion is the opium of the people;

  In China, opium is the religion of the people.

  Edgar Snow

  In India, it can safely be said that religion and politics mix like milk and water – and opium is a helpful supplement.

  Nowhere is the mix of religion and politics seen so glaringly as in Punjab. This is especially so in the context of the Bhindranwale phenomenon wherein religion was converted into a handmaiden of politics. And not ordinary politics as understood in terms of a democratic framework. But the politics of subversion and secession.