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SIKH VIRSA ARTICLE ( June 2020)

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It was a blistering April afternoon

in 1984. A white Ambassador

car drove into the driveway

of a modest Lutyens Delhi

bungalow, 1 Safdarjung Road,

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's

residence. A tall bespectacled

man got out. He was known only

as DGS or director general security,

a key official in the Research

and Analysis Wing (RAW) who

controlled a small air force and

two covert paramilitary units, the

Special Frontier Force and the

Special Services Bureau. Three

years earlier, DGS had raised

another unit, called the Special

Group or sg, for clandestine

counter-terrorist missions in

Punjab and Assam. For the past

two months, SG personnel, all

drawn from the Army, had been

training in secret at a base near

Delhi for a critical mission.

Memories of Operation

Bluestar: DGS was ushered into

the living room where a pensive

Mrs Gandhi sat with a salt-andpepper-haired

gentleman wearing

thick black glasses-

Rameshwar Nath Kao, 66, the reclusive

spymaster who had built

the external intelligence agency,

RAW, in 1968 and used it to train

Mukti Bahini guerrillas during

the Bangladesh war in 1971. He

had returned to government as

Mrs Gandhi's senior aide in 1981

and was now her de facto national

security adviser. More important,

he was a key adviser on

the Punjab problem. For over

two years now, India's most

prosperous state had been engulfed

by communal violence. A

radical group of Sikhs led by a

fiery religious preacher Jarnail

Singh Bhindranwale, 37, had

declared war against the state.

His motley group of armed supporters

had, by 1984, murdered

over 100 civilians and security

personnel. The radical militant

leader had then been ensconced

near the Golden Temple since

1981 with his heavily armed followers,

shielded by his proximity

to Sikhism's holiest shrine.

Operation Bluestar: Night of

The untold story before

Operation Bluestar

blood DGS briefed Mrs Gandhi

on a surgical mission that fell

short of a military strike to evict

the rebels. Operation Sundown,

he explained, was a 'snatch and

grab' job: Heliborne commandos

would enter the Guru Nanak

Niwas guesthouse near the

Golden Temple and abduct the

militant leader. The operation

was so named because it was

timed for past midnight when

Bhindranwale and his guards

would least expect it.

SG operatives had earlier infiltrated

the Golden Temple, disguised

as pilgrims and journalists,

to study its layout. Then,

for several weeks, over 200 SG

commandos had rehearsed the

operation on a wood and Hessian

cloth mock-up of the twostoreyed

resthouse at their base

in Sarsawa in Uttar Pradesh.

Commandos would rope down

from two Mi-4 transport helicopters

onto the guest house and

make a beeline for Bhindranwale.

Once they captured him, he

would be spirited away by a

ground assault team which

would drive in. There was a possibility

of a firefight with the militant

leader's bodyguards and

civilians who could rush in to

protect him.

Mrs Gandhi's listened to the

details impassively. She had just

one question. "How many casualties?"

Twenty per cent of the

commando force and both helicopters,

dgs replied. Mrs Gandhi

grimaced. She wanted to know

how many civilians would die.

The RAW official did not have

an answer. No one did. That was

it. Mrs Gandhi said no and Operation

Sundown died before the

first helicopter could take off.

Just two months later, Mrs

Gandhi ordered the Army to

flush militants out of the temple.

Eighty-three armymen and 492

civilians died in Operation

Bluestar, the single bloodiest

confrontation in independent

India's history of civil strife.

Machine guns, light artillery,

rockets and, eventually, battle

tanks were used to overwhelm

Bhindranwale and his mini army

and the Akal Takht, the highest

seat of temporal authority of the

Sikhs, was reduced to a smoking

ruin. In the maelstrom of

Bluestar, Sundown and its extensive

preparations got buried in

RAW's secret archives.

Three decades later, Operation

Sundown resurfaced in an

unexpected location-London.

On January 13, the United Kingdom

was shocked by declassified

letters dating to February

1984 that revealed that Margaret

Thatcher's government had

helped India on "a plan to remove

Sikh extremists from the

Golden Temple". This plan, according

to a top-secret letter

from the principal private secre-

Sikh Virsa, Calgary 44. June, 2020

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