There have been the murders of the care-taker at the Surrey Gurudwara in British Columbia, and of the editor of Des Pardes, a Punjabi-language newspaper also in Canada. The problem is not even limited to India any more, for there are bitter fights and divisions taking place in Gurdwaras around the world, including those here in Britain that mirror those fights in India. But on the other hand, the controversies that are raging in India over the past year relating to the appointment of the Jathedar to the Akal Takht, the intrigue of the Americans into that fight who first granted a visa to Bhai Ranjit Singh to visit the US, and then revoked it, following which he was dismissed as the jathedar by the government of Punjab, make it apparent that this policy of state interference has not ended, but has been elevated to a new plane. On the one hand, there was a so-called apology that the Congress Party made a year or so ago for having organized Operation Blue Star. It will help to just take a cursory look at what has happened to the policy of state interference in religion over the past fifteen years. The last fifteen years have shown how this policy of division and diversion has evolved and far from resolving the crisis in favour of the Indian state as the Indira Gandhi government had hoped, it has deepened the crisis further.ĭivision, Diversion and Interference in Religion It emerged logically out of decades of a policy of division and diversion, and was in turn, to serve that policy in a new and more deadly manner in the years to come. Operation Blue Star was not something sudden, something unexpected, or as the state tried to present it, as something the Indira Gandhi government was “forced” into doing. In India, the approach that the ruling circles decided to take in order to emerge out of their crisis was one of open terror, anarchy and slaughter of the people on top of their policy of divide and rule. They embarked on an ideological and political warfare against the people of the world, from Grenada to Nicaragua, from Iran to Ireland. and Britain, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were brought into power, who sought to solve this crisis with their twin policies of militarisation and social cutbacks. It was in the context of this crisis of the welfare state that in the U.S. It came at a time when the Soviet State was entering its final years and began pushing perestroika and glasnost, which actually contributed to its complete demise. Secondly, Operation Blue Star occurred at a time when the entire welfare-state approach, represented in India by the Congress party, and in Britain by the Labour party had run into serious crisis. Operation Blue Star added to the division, supposedly between moderates and fundamentalist Sikhs. In Punjab, this can be traced back to the original partition of Punjab between Pakistan and India in 1947 on the basis of Hindus and Muslims, and the subsequent carving out of Haryana in 1968 on a strictly communal basis, dividing Hindus and Sikhs. In a very concentrated and brutal way, it symbolized the policy of religious divisions that the Indian State had been practicing throughout India. This is the context in which the discussion on Operation Blue Star will be most meaningful.įirst of all, Operation Blue Star was the logical culmination of a very long-standing policy of state interference into religious matters. Still more important for us is to deliberate upon where do we stand on what is happening today and how we must intervene into the current developments on the basis of the conclusions we can draw from the legacy of Operation Blue Star. The reason we have gathered here in London in June 1999 is not so much to reminisce about what took place in Amritsar fifteen years ago, but to discuss what is happening in India and the world today, as we speak. Operation Blue Star took place in Amritsar, Punjab, between 4th – 6th June, 1984. We consider it very significant that it is the RCPB(ML) and the British people that are standing up in defence of the rights of people both at home and abroad and challenging the pretensions of the Tony Blairs of this world and their campaign of disinformation. On behalf of the Association of Indian Progressive Study Groups (the AIPSG), I would like to thank the RCPB(ML) for organising this meeting and for inviting us to participate in this important discussion on the Legacy of Operation Blue Star. Paper delivered by the Association of Indian Progressive Study Groups, (AIPSG), at a Public Meeting in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on June 26th 1999 to mark the 15th anniversary of Operation Blue Star The 15th Anniversary of Operation Blue-Star
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