Skip to main content

Placing bullet-hit Bir of Guru Granth Sahib in Golden Temple during Operation Bluestar is unforgettable traumatic experience

 




My Traumatic moment of  taking care of injured Bir of Guru Granth Sahib in Golden Temple during Operation Bluestar

 

Jagtar Singh

 

Ground Zero

 

“The historic Bir of Guru Granth Sahib (holy scriptures bestowed upon the high status of the Guru) on the first floor was partially covered in a white bloodstained sheet. Putting the Bir in order was a traumatic experience, which continued to haunt me for many years despite my Leftist background”.

 

(At the time when the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee chief Bibi Jagir Kaur has announced the decision to display injured Bir of Guru Granth Sahib hit by bullets during Operation Bluestar, here is my first-hand account of the trauma I experienced. I was the only journalist to go to first floor of Darbar Sahib from the party air-lifted by army from Chandigarh on June 15, 1984.)

 

 

 

Under Army Occupation

 

The morning of June 15, 1984, felt hotter than usual. The even hotter Indian Air Force twin engine Dakota of the World War II vintage with aluminum bucket seats added to the gloomy, apprehensive and tense atmosphere. Soon, it took off for the war zone with about a dozen journalists, the first group from Chandigarh. The war zone was none other than the Darbar Sahib complex, the holiest of the holy shrines of the Sikhs, in Amritsar. The sizzling temperature inside the non-pressurised aircraft came down after it gained some height.

 

As the aircraft landed in the Air Force area of Amritsar’s Raja Sansi Airport, it was ‘greeted’ by armoured combat vehicles of the Army, guns pointing towards it as an enemy plane had intruded. The Air Force was expecting the district administration to arrange transportation for taking journalists to the scene of action. However, it turned out to be a long wait for the Punjab Roadways bus to arrive. The temperature hovered above 40 degrees Celsius and the Air Force officials tried to make the scribes comfortable in the small briefing room  within the limited resources available with them. One of the two women journalists almost fainted. The rickety bus arrived only two hours later. Initially, it appeared a lack of coordination. However, the delay was part of some design as the journalists were not to be taken around the entire shrine complex, as we came to know later.

 

The bus headed for the command headquarters. We entered the operations room where a large map of the ‘battlefield’ that was Darbar Sahib complex was displayed on the wall. After briefing by the commander of the operation Major General Kuldip Singh Brar, the press party proceeded towards the war zone.

 

From the main entrance towards the Ghanta Ghar (Clock Tower demolished years ago) side, the shrine complex which had been subjected to very heavy firing reminded of the ravages of World War II. The big clock above this entrance had stopped ticking, somewhere around the time the action had begun on early in the morning on June 4. And there it hung, frozen in time. Inside, the stink of the fetid human flesh was palpable. The silence was deafening.

 

On the historic, intricately carved silver doors of the Darshani Deodi leading to the sanctum sanctorum, a notice had been pasted: UNDER ARMY OCCUPATION, rightly proclaimed in capital letters.

The Army authorities went an extra mile to explain how the damage to the central shrine had been averted. But what about the irreparable damage inflicted upon the collective Sikh psyche? It was not for the first time that the complex had been attacked. It had been ruined earlier also. The Sikhs haven’t yet forgotten the invasion by Afghan king Ahmad Shah Abdali, who wrecked Punjab during his eighth incursion on India in 1762. He had blown up this centre of inspiration for Sikhs with explosives and had filled the sarovar, the holy tank around the shrine, with earth and animal bones. But, those were foreign invaders from the Central Asian region.  Here, the forces of occupation were our very own people. Haversacks of the soldiers lay piled up in the two staircases leading to the first floor of Darbar Sahib.

 

The historic Bir of Guru Granth Sahib (holy scriptures bestowed upon the high status of the Guru) on the first floor was partially covered in a white bloodstained sheet. Putting the Bir in order was a traumatic experience, which continued to haunt me for many years despite my Leftist background.

 

(From my book Khalistan Struggle: A Non-movement, Aakar, 2011)

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sinister and deep design to divide Sikhs and Hindus in Canada needs to be exposed

  Sinister and deep design to divide Sikhs and Hindus in Canada needs to be exposed Ground Zero Jagtar Singh Chandigarh: Let us decode deeper design in what apparently seems to be deliberate distortion of facts in case of the so-called Sikh-Hindu clash in Canada to project it as confrontation between the two communities. The Indian media and the establishment gave it out as a communal conflict and attack on a Mandir, the Hindu place of worship. Let us first put the matter straight from the evidence available in the form of videos relating to every dimension of this narrative and the statements. It was neither a Sikh-Hindu clash nor an attack on the Hindu temple per se. It was a protest by the SFJ activists against the Indian consulate organizing a camp there. Such protests have been held against the consulate outside the gurdwaras too as per the record. The saner statement issued by the Hindu Federation of November 4 is very important in the interpretation of this narra...
Post a Comment
Read more

History seems to be ominously repeating itself to drive Punjab into religio-political minefield again

  History ominously repeating itself to drive Punjab into religio-political minefield again Ground Zero Jagtar Singh This headline is not rooted in some sort of pessimism. The signals are loud and clear. The onus to counter such signals is on the Punjab government. History in Punjab seems to be repeating itself to push Punjab into yet another cycle of what can be termed as the avoidable toxic situation. That cycle has now impacted even geo-political relations of India with some countries, especially Canada where the Sikhs are settled in sizeable numbers. In the context of the Sikhs as a globalized people, it is pertinent to mention that even in United Kingdom House of Commons, the representation of the Sikhs is now in double digit after the recent elections. Punjab is still impacted by the tremors of religio-political   dynamics that got triggered in 1978 with the Sikh-Nirankari clash on the Baisakhi on April 13 at Amritsar, the religious capital of the Sikhs. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Two binaries emerging in Punjab’s multi-polar polls where last 72 hours are always crucial

  Two binaries emerging in Punjab’s multi-polar polls where last 72 hours are always crucial   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh Chandigarh, May 28: The inter-play of socio-political forces in Punjab in the run up to the June 1 Lok Sabha elections is unprecedented. This is besides that established fact that the religio-political dynamics of this state has always been different from the rest of India, even when the boundaries of this country touched the Khyber Pass connecting with Afghanistan. It is for the first time that so many main political players are in the fray independently thereby making the contest multi-polar. Then there are two other eruptions in the electoral matrix making the multi-polar contest all the more interesting, and also important for future dynamics of not only Punjab but also India as the roots of this phenomena are not in too distant a past but in not so recent period of militancy. It is after decades that Punjab is going to the polls without a...
Post a Comment
Read more