Indira hatao campaign since 1970 forced her to impose Emergency | Faraz Ahmad

On lune 4, 1984, Indian Army launched an assault on Harminder Sahib in Amritsar, imposing state wide curfew with no newspaper allowed to publish, or newsmen to venture out of their homes. I was an Indian Express reporter in Chandigarh then. Apart from Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, much-decorated PVSM, AVSM Major General. Shubeg Singh, who had joined forces with the Sikh militants out of pique for being implicated on trumped up charges in false cases and discharged at the fag-end of his extraordinarily brilliant career in the Indian Army, and hundreds of Sikh militants had created a cantonment inside the holy premises. Besides these militants, hundreds of pilgrims, men, women and children were also killed in that assault. The majestic Golden Temple, an attraction for all Sikhs and every tourist, Indian or foreign, and its adjoining annexes were reduced to shambles.

This Operation Blue Star was led by later day Army chief, then Lt. Gen. K Sundarji. Such was the fallout of this misadventure that Indira Gandhi who ordered this operation, of course signed by President Zail Singh as Commander-in-Chief of Indian Armed Forces, paid with her life within months on October 31, riddled with bullets fired by two of her personal Sikh security guards in the compound of the Prime Minister