Thoughts on the 39th anniversary of Operation Blue star: The game is for power not for Punjab

Thirty-nine years after the traumatic Operation Blue Star, Punjabis in general and Sikhs in particular, continue to ponder what makes all ruling parties at the Centre to betray

them. All agitations in this border State have ended in trading of power without anything being said about its long-standing demands, be it territorial rights, dams and water works, prime

institutions and its people. Sikhs have been in the habit of hawking newspaper headlines for reasons that extend beyond the geographic boundaries of their motherland for whose independence they made nearly 80 per cent of the total sacrifices. Of late some of the world leaders while eulogizing the contributions this minute minority community has made in the Corona pandemic went to the extent of saying that there should be a gurdwara – Sikh temple –everywhere to look after the suffering humanity.

It is that institution of gurdwara that has been making the Sikh community seek answers from the Central Government in India in general and the national political parties in particular.

Questions about the attack on their sancta sanctorum have either been ignored or they remained mired in controversies. The Sikhs, a global community, have every reason to nurse a grouse both against the Congress – for engineering attack on their sancta sanctorum besides depriving the State of its rightful territorial and rivers water rights – and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for not assuaging their hurt psyche without taking any action to mitigate it.

Wreaked by two politics-engineered partitions, this once affluent State continues to struggle to get its long-standing demands, including territorial sovereignty and rightful claim over its rivers waters, met. While the first partition in 1947 played havoc with the life and property of this border province, the second partition took away whatever little progress or gains it had made since independence. All major projects, including its capital, dams and water works and institutions, were taken away and brought under control of the Centre.

It is all the more agonizing for the Sikhs when they look back at the history. Before the 1947 partition, says historian Research Professor Rajmohan Gandhi, the then British rulers tried to appease all major communities of northern India – the majority Hindu community and the minorities Muslims and the Sikhs. Though he did not say in many words that while the Hindus got India and the Muslims Pakistan, the Sikhs had to swallow false promises.

After partition, their agitation for a Sikh Homeland ended in a truncated State they got which was without a capital, most of its dams and water works and many Punjabi speaking areas.

While they were still trying to come out of the trauma of the two partitions, came the Operation Blue star. Whatever are the causes or reasons behind the “Dharam Yudh” morcha that made the Sikhs launch a struggle to get autonomy for States after adopting the Sri Anandpur Sahib resolution of August 1977.

Agreed, violence has no place in any civilized society in general and liberal democracies in particular, Punjab has never been at peace with itself for a continuous period of 30 or more years. To be precise, Sikhs have always been at war, if not with the powers at the Centre then among themselves. And even in their struggle, political, religious or social, they have always pioneered a number of initiatives, both in and outside India. It is here where the role of journalists, as members of the fourth estate, becomes crucial in highlighting injustices done to the State or its people, Journalists are eyes and ears of a society as they play a critical role in preserving democracy. They are mandated to act as watchdogs in liberal democracies as while weaving their stories, they not only understand the importance or significance of Rule of Law but also keep the public good above everything else. While judging a journalist or his or her work, especially in the context of Punjab, it is important to understand the trying circumstances in which they worked. The State had the longest spell of President’s rule besides promulgation of draconian laws to contain militancy. A State that was once acknowledged as the sword arm or sports arm of the country besides serving as the food bowl of the country is now tottering at the brink.

Some experienced journalists, both from within and outside the country, would invariably use objectivity and verification combined with storytelling skills to make a subject both credible and newsworthy. But journalists from Punjab remain suspects in the eyes of the Centre. Punjab has had more spells of curfew than any other State in the country. It is not to suggest that what a journalist writes has general acceptance.

Objectivity itself is subjective. Like everything else, criticism of journalistic works often has political dividends. Increasing attacks by politicians on the credibility of a journalist or a media house have often been part of a conscious strategy to weaken both the accountability and credibility of journalism in general and a journalist in particular.

Of late, we all have been a witness to a collapse of the notion that politically relevant facts can be discerned by news professionals, reiterating the general belief that journalists are no more apolitical leaving their readers uncertain about ingesting the messages communicated to them as credible. These changing perceptions and thoughts apart, there are old timers who are continuing to discharge their role as torchbearers. They religiously follow professional ethics and discharge their duties as ears and eyes of the society they represent. A couple of years ago, I reviewed a book by one of my friends, Jagtar Singh, for The Tribune, an institution with which remained associated for 37 years.

As a veteran journalist and columnist, Jagtar Singh, remained an eyewitness from the very beginning of the fight for Sikh Homeland, to the present. His latest book “The Khalistan Struggle: Rivers on Fire” is the story of militant struggle in the border state of Punjab. It tells students of history as to what sparked this struggle, which were the people in the beginning and how this discourse shaped up as a fight for a separate Sikh state.

Not only this, several other books about the Sikh religio-political discourse in synergy of both the peaceful and militant struggle from the earlier days, have taken up only selective militant actions, as these were the incidents as these shaped the discourse at crucial moments.

For Sikhs, it is not only their emotive bondage with the institution of gurdwara in general and the sanctum sanctorum in particular but has acted as a catalyst to prove to the world that the Sikh gurdwara which the Indian defense forces attacked with mortar, grenades and guns in 1984, are the shelter homes for those in distress.

And these spiritual centers-cum-shelter homes do not discriminate with beneficiaries on the grounds of their ethnicity, color, creed, religion or language. No Sikh would ever take or accept any attack on its place of worship.

Most of those who have done work or written essays on developments in Punjab since 1947 have documented their works well. However, a few important revelations made in the book, including one about the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, need corroboration. The author says that the names of all those who gunned down Indira Gandhi and those who were part of the design to kill her were in public domain. At least three more people besides all those known names were part of the plan to avenge Operation Bluster.

This revelation has not been substantiated as he mentions that one of the three names – Manbir Singh Chaheru – purchased a plot in Mohali for Bimal Kaur Khalsa, wife of Delhi Police Sub Inspector Beant Singh, one of the two assassins of Indira Gandhi. It appears to be a post-action (assassination) association that brought Bimal Khalsa in contact with Manbir Chaheru and Damdami Taksal. All said and done, it was the religious hurt that made Beant and Satwant kill Indira Gandhi. The revelation cannot be dismissed, as corroboratory evidence may have remained unexplored.

Incidentally, I covered most of the militant actions, including assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Beant Singh, besides Operation Bluestar, Kapuri Morcha and the Dharam Yudh morcha.

Coming to the emotive issue of rivers waters, it has been proved that the State Assembly never ratified none of these awards. The assembly took up the issue twice, first during the Akali Government of Surjit Singh Barnala that annulled the 1981 award, and the second by the Congress Government of Capt Amarinder Singh that set aside all water agreements. It may sound strange that none of these Legislative pronouncements could become effective. The issue has been once again thrown open by the Apex Court necessitating the Centre to get back to the rigmarole of holding meetings with the Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana. When the Barnala government annulled the 1981 award (Indira-Darbara award), the State Assembly simultaneously endorsed the Rajiv-Longowal accord that mandated the setting up of a Tribunal to resolve the water sharing problem. And the Tribunal so set up – Eradi Tribunal – after submitting its interim report in 1987, failed to give its final report even after

24 years costing the state exchequer several crores. When we talk of Punjab Rivers’ waters issue, reference to Riparian principle or law becomes imminent. Going by Encyclopaedia Britannica, “In property right doctrine pertaining to properties adjacent to a waterway that

(a) governs the use of surface water and

(b) gives all owners of land contiguous to streams, lakes, and ponds equal rights to the water, whether the right is exercised or not.

The riparian right is un-usufructuary, meaning that the landowner does not own the water itself but instead enjoys a right to use the water and its surface”.

Going by the basic philosophy of the Riparian Law or principle, the actual rights rest with the people who live adjacent to waterways. Intriguingly, in the case of Punjab, the actual beneficiaries were uprooted and the State or the center claimed ownership rights over the waters. And select powerful people, holding high positions both in the state and the center, forget about the water awards without ever getting to the beneficiaries, the people, for their endorsement.

Now coming back to the Operation Blue star, after 39 years, there is no credible or authentic version of the whole unfortunate episode that reveals actual drills of the operation, exact total casualties, the fate of the archives, artifacts, books and documents that were there in the SGPC museum damaged during the attack on Golden Temple as a part of Operation Blue star.

Complicity of other powers, including the British government, in the events leading to the Operation Blue star, is still to be told. The only conclusion that can be safely drawn is that the people of Punjab have suffered immensely. And their agony continues unabated.

(Prabhjot Singh is a veteran journalist with over three decades of experience of 14 years with Reuters News and 30 years with The Tribune Group, covering a wide spectrum of subjects and stories. He has covered Punjab and Sikh affairs for more than three decades besides covering seven Olympics and several major sporting events and hosting TV shows.)