Alleged British role in 1984 Amritsar assault shocks many in India

Indian politicians demand Cameron statement on claims UK forces were consulted before storming of Golden Temple

The Golden Temple in the Indian city of Amritsar is a rare place of genuine calm in a chaotic, crowded, country. Yet just under 30 years ago this complex of glittering shrines in Punjab was a scene of horrific violence when it was stormed by Indian security forces.

The temple had been occupied by militants under the command of a seminary student turned extremist, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who called for an independent homeland for the Sikh minority of predominantly Hindu India.

Many hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed in the assault in June 1984. They included Bhindranwale himself as well as Sikh and Hindu pilgrims caught in the crossfire. The temple was badly damaged.

The botched operation, in which 136 Indian soldiers also died, led to the assassination of the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, by her Sikh bodyguards, which in turn provoked massacres of Sikhs. About 3,000 were stabbed, burned or beaten to death by mobs in Delhi, the capital, alone.

Nor did the violence stop there. Gandhi’s Operation Blue Star horrified moderate Sikhs and in its aftermath, the Punjab, the north-western state that is their historic homeland, was plunged into a violent insurgency that lasted almost a decade.

“The operation changed everything. So much of what unfolded in India afterwards can be traced back to Blue Star,” said Hartosh Bal Singh, a political journalist in Delhi.

The news that the UK could somehow have been involved in the operation has shocked many in India.

“We are shattered and numbed. We never believed the British government were helping in suppressing the Sikh movement. We thought it was the USSR who might have helped. We are very disappointed,” said Kanwar Pal Singh, of the once-proscribed Dal Khalsa radical Sikh organisation.

Singh said he was sending a letter from the Dal Khalsa to the British high commission in Delhi to call for a full statement from David Cameron.

The possibility that British special forces were consulted four months before the assault raised important new questions, said Singh, the journalist.

The difficulties encountered by the Indian security forces as they advanced into the temple complex have long been attributed to limited intelligence on the numbers, defences and firepower of the militants. The high civilian death toll has been blamed on the speed with which the operation was planned once negotiations with the extremists failed.

“Most Sikhs, even in India, will concede that [the operation] was necessary but badly botched. We thought it was all done in an hurry. But if they were thinking about it in February what were they doing over the following four months?” Singh said.

Opposition politicians in India also highlighted the new claim. The Congress party, in power at the time of the Blue Star operation and the riots which followed, has been leading a coalition government in India since 2004.

Gandhi and her son Rajiv, who succeeded his mother as prime minister and was frequently criticised for failing to protect Sikhs in the days after …read more