The truth behind the Amritsar massacre

The truth behind the Amritsar massacre

Doctors who conducted post mortems reported that the hands of Sikhs had been tied behind their backs with their turbans as pictured, and they had been executed at point-blank range. In the past, there have been attempts to silence our voices in remembrance of 1984; if at any moment our posts on 1984 do not show up, they have not been removed by us. Code-named Operation Bluestar began on June 1st 1984. Up to 150,000 Indian army troops were sent to the northern Indian state of Punjab, the Sikh homeland, equipped with helicopter gunships and tanks. Over 125 other Sikh shrines were simultaneously attacked. On the false pretext of apprehending ‘a handful of militants’ lodged inside the Golden Temple, the Indian army unleashed a terror unprecedented in post-independence India. It took the use of Vijayanta tanks to win the fight for the army. These let loose a barrage of highly explosive shells, which destroyed the Akal Takht, the temporal seat of the Sikhs. The Shiromani (Temple) Committee secretary Bhan Singh was in the temple complex at the time of Operation Bluestar. He witnessed soldiers, commanded by a major, lining up young Sikhs along the hostel’s corridor to be shot. When Bhan Singh protested, the major flew into a rage, tore away his turban and ordered him to either flee the scene or join the ‘array of martyrs’. Bhan Singh turned back and fled, jumping over the bodies of the dead and injured. Hundreds of young Sikhs, innocent pilgrims from the villages, were killed in this manner. Ranbir Kaur, a female school teacher, witnessed the shooting of another group of 150 people whose hands had been tied behind their backs with their own turbans. A singer at the Golden Temple, Harcharan Singh Ragi, his wife and their young daughter came out of their quarters near the information office on the afternoon of June 6th. They witnessed the killings of hundreds of people, including women, and would themselves have been shot if a commander had not taken pity on their young daughter who fell at his feet begging him to spare her parents’ lives. Associated Press correspondent Brahma Chellaney had managed to dodge the authorities to remain in Amritsar during the Operation Bluestar. One attendant at the city’s crematorium told him that there was not ‘enough wood to burn the dead individually’

The truth behind the Amritsar massacre

News of the attack on the Golden Temple quickly spread despite the curfew. Thousands of people in the surrounding villages gathered to march to Amritsar to defend the Golden Temple. At Golwand village in Jhubal, a crowd of several thousands gathered, under the leadership of Baba Bidhi Chand, and began to march the 25 kilometres to Amritsar. Helicopter patrols spotted them and sprayed them with bullets without warning. Within minutes hundreds were dead or wounded. “It was a virtual massacre. A large number of women, children and pilgrims were gunned down.”

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