BLUE STAR: FROM SIEGE TO TODAY'S UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

As new political remarks revive Blue Star debate, calls intensify to declassify 1984 files, name the dead, and reconcile clashing narratives of planning and accountability.

- TDG NETWORK NEW DELHI

Senior officers A.S. Vaidya (centre), K. Sundarji (left), and K.S. Brar in Amritsar during Operation Blue Star.

Curfew sealed the old city; power was cut, streets blacked out.

In the lanes around the Golden Temple, families crouched behind shuttered windows as silhouettes of soldiers and APCs take position, headlamps slit-taped. A barked order, the clank of treads, the smell of cordite and wet dust-stormed air. Inside the Harmandir Sahib complex, gunfire cracked for hours. Pilgrims-women, men, children-hug marble balustrades; volunteers hauled sarovar water to smother small fires. Near 4 a.m., tank booms ebbed. The loudspeakers stuttered. For the first time in living memory, no dawn hymns. In the tense hush, soldiers edge across the marble with weapons ready. Snipers in high towers are down. Ahead, the Akal Takht stands charred, its dome broken and smoldering. Operation Blue Star was nearing its brutal end. A sanctuary has become a battlefield-not overnight, but by a chain of choices that haunts India till today.

Operation Blue Star is back in the headlines after senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram called the 1984 assault a "mistake" and "the wrong way" to reclaim the shrine-a rare critique from a top national Congress voice. The comment has triggered sharp political crossfire: the BJP says he's right, while AAP is using it to attack Congress over 1984. Former Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has also blamed senior Army officers for poor planning. Earlier this year, the 41st anniversary in June was markedly muted in Amritsar, with unusual silences from the Akal Takht leadership-signs that the memory war continues even as public observance cools.