In the second volume of his memoir, The Turbulent Years: 1980-96, President Pranab Mukherjee shares an insider’s account of several significant events during the 1980’s and early 1990’s. In this extract, Mukherjee, a cabinet minister in the Indira Gandhi government, justifies Operation Bluestar, the 1984 military action to flush out terrorists from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Excerpt:
The Punjab crisis dominated Indian politics between 1980 and 1984. In 1981, the Akali Dal submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ‘of forty-five religious, political, economic and social demands and grievances, including the issue of sharing Punjab’s river waters between Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan and the quest for the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab, and launched a virulent campaign around them’.
Very soon, the issue of the implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was raised-specifically, that certain areas from the adjoining states (Una tehsil and Dalhousie from Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh; Pinjore and Kalka from Panchkula district, Sahabad block from Karnal district and the city of Ambala From Ambala district in Haryana and the union territory of Chandigarh) be merged with Punjab. The Akalis held that these areas were deliberately not included in Punjab at the time of the creation of the state, although historically and culturally they were part of it.
Though the 1973 Anandpur Sahib Resolution had called for a high degree of autonomy for Punjab, the Akali Dal was not satisfied with that proposal. In April 1981, one of its leaders, Jathedar Jagdev Singh Talwandi, called for an autonomous state to be set up in North India forthwith, wherein Sikh interests would be recognized as of primary and special importance. This proposed state of Khalistan would have its own Constitution and not be governed by the Indian Constitution. In November 1982, the foremost Akali leader, Sant Harcharan Singh Longowal, in a new elucidation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, said that a Sikh religious state with all Punjabi-speaking people within it should be created to preserve Sikh tradition and religion. In Punjab, Amrik Singh, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and several others started advocating the use of violence for a break-up of the Indian union and the creation of an independent Khalistan. Raising the slogan ‘Raj Karega Khalsa’, they claimed that an independent Khalistan was a historical necessity for the Sikh youth. Clearly, the Akali Dal was constantly changing goalposts and was not clear about whether it wanted autonomy within the Indian union or an independent state.
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