BJP, Akalis ask Govt to come clean
New Delhi/Chandi-garh: Radical Sikh organizations as well as Punjab’s ruling Akali Dal came out on Tuesday against revelations that the UK had helped the Indian government in plans to launch Operation Bluestar on the Golden Temple complex, home to the holiest of Sikh shrines ‘Harmandar Sahib’, in June 1984.
Radical Sikh organization Dal Khalsa shot off a letter to British Prime Minister David Cameroon through the British High Commission in India expressing its “pain, concern and anguish over the startling revelations as to how the then British government under Margaret Thatcher helped Indian government to attack the Golden Temple in June 1984”.
Another radical body, the All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF) will hold a rally outside British High Commissioner’s office in New Delhi on January 17, its president Karnail Singh Peermohammed told IANS.
BJP asked the government to come out with facts on Operation Bluestar and sought to know if the action against Sikh militants holed up in Golden Temple was planned on British advice or was any other country also consulted.
“It is about time that the Government of India decided to tell us the truth as to what the real facts were. This would enable the people of India to conclude whether Operation Bluestar was a strategic miscalculation,” Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said.
Dal Khalsa spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh, quoting the letter, said: “The news report about the secret document from British National Archives revealing the UK government collaborating with Indian government to plan the attack has shattered the Sikhs from within. The Sikh diaspora is deeply hurt and the news has left them numbed.”
He said the document revealed that India sought support and the British government obliged.
“However it is silent as to what extent and in what shape the support and succour was provided,” the letter said, seeking these details.
Britain is home to tens of thousands of Sikhs who have settled there in the past nearly 100 years.
The controversy erupted after documents of that period went public in Britain and Labour MP Tom Watson procured documents showing that Britain’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) was involved in planning the attack on the Golden Temple.
Following this, British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an urgent investigation into the issue.
The Akali Dal in Punjab blamed the Congress party for its “nefarious designs against the Sikh community”.
In a statement here, Akali Dal spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema said that the top secret British documents had exposed the real conspiracy behind Operation Bluestar.
“The media reports published today have unearthed a major conspiracy of the Congress party which even went to the extent of compromising the national sovereignty for its political gains,” he said.
Terming it shocking to see that to solve an issue of internal security of Punjab state, Indira Gandhi took the services of British forces, he said the Congress-led union government must come clean on the “unknown compulsions under which it had to take the help of forces from such a country against whom the nation had fought a battle of freedom for more than 200 years”.
Meanwhile, Lt Gen (retd) Kuldeep Singh Brar, who commanded the army division that carried out Operation Blue Star, claimed the operation was planned and executed by Indian military forces and questioned the veracity of such documents that indicated foreign advice ahead of the action.
“I just cannot believe any of this because the operation was planned and executed by military commanders in India. We never saw anyone from the UK coming here and telling us how to plan operation,” Brar said.
He said the veracity of these documents must be checked. “There was no involvement (of the UK) in it whatsoever. As far as these documents are concerned, I suggest that the authenticity of these must be checked.”
Heavily armed separatists, led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, were flushed out by the Indian Army in its Operation Bluestar on the Golden Temple complex in June 1984. The then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, had ordered the Army operation in which hundreds were killed.
Punjab had witnessed a bloody phase of militancy between 1981 to 1992 as separatists demanded a Sikh homeland – Khalistan (land of the pure). The phase of violence left over 25,000 people dead, including hundreds of security force personnel. (Agencies)