Stop Laundering History: A Rational Sikh’s Political Rebuttal to Mr P. Chidambaram
You reopened raw wounds. I will not let you shift blame—from Indira Gandhi’s Blue Star to Rajiv Gandhi’s November 1984 pogrom, to your own tenure when justice and rehabilitation were
Shame on you, Mr P. Chidambaram
1) Opening Condemnation
Mr Chidambaram, your remarks are condemnable¹. They reopen raw wounds and attempt to dilute responsibility for decisions that shattered Sikh lives and Sikh heritage. You do not get to reframe our pain as an abstract policy debate. I will say this plainly: the Congress leadership bears moral and political responsibility—for June 1984, for November 1984, and for the long, deliberate failure to deliver justice to the thousands of innocent victims who perished in the anti-Sikh pogrom (short video).
2) Responsibility at the Helm: Operation Blue Star
Indira Gandhi, as Prime Minister, ordered Operation Blue Star. This was not merely “the wrong method”; it was an egregious assault on the Darbar Sahib complex and the Sri Akal Takht Sahib—an act that seared Sikh memory and scarred Sikh hearts. To call it a “mistake” is to trivialise a grievous wrong. I hold Mrs. Gandhi individually, politically and morally responsible for this assault on the Sikh community.
3) The Second Wound: The November 1984 Anti-Sikh Pogrom
Under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Delhi descended into an anti-Sikh pogrom that spread to other cities, following the unfortunate assassination of Mrs Gandhi on 31 October, 1984. The state had the authority, forces, and legal instruments to end the carnage swiftly; it failed. The signal from the very top did not calm the streets; it rather instigated the horror. I hold Rajiv Gandhi responsible for failing to stop the pogrom, failing to protect citizens, and failing to deliver justice with urgency and resolve.
4) Your Tenure and the Long Winter of Justice
You entered the Union government soon thereafter and ultimately held charge of Internal Security. From those seats of power, you had every opportunity—and indeed the obligation—to demand airtight investigations, protect vulnerable witnesses, fast-track trials, and ensure that the guilty were convicted. You did nothing of substance.
Instead, cases stagnated for decades, survivors were forced to relive their trauma in the corridors of the courts, and the perpetrators openly boasted in public life. This was not merely bureaucratic delay—it was systemic failure.
Call it apathy or complicity by omission—it was a dereliction of duty and gross incompetence at best, and at worst, criminal culpability and active obstruction of justice. Do not now posture as a neutral arbiter or moral commentator. You forfeited that right long ago.
5) Black Thunder: Credit Where Due, Accountability Where Owed
Do not misappropriate Operation Black Thunder. Its comparative restraint and transparency were the result of professional policing and disciplined operations on the ground—not the triumph of any one minister in Delhi. If you would like to invoke Black Thunder, then take the ledger in full.
6) The “Security Belt”: Demolitions, Displacement, and Poor Rehabilitation
What followed in 1988, under Congress rule, was the brutal imposition of the so-called “security belt” around Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar. Under this policy, entire neighbourhoods were razed, centuries-old heritage was wiped out, livelihoods were destroyed, families were uprooted, and the so-called “rehabilitation” was nothing short of an insult.
This was not an unavoidable security measure—it was a deliberate political decision, and you were a member of the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet when it was executed. You were not a bystander. You were part of the machinery that authorised, enabled, and justified it.
Accountability is not selective: it cannot be claimed for perceived successes like Black Thunder and then conveniently abandoned when it comes to the human cost of government actions. It does not end where the credit stops and the suffering begins.
7) My Administrative Experience—Turning Punishment into Dignity
I speak from my personal, ground-zero administrative experience, not armchair hindsight. In 1993–94, as Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar, I worked to convert that punitive security cordon into a dignified public realm—the Galiara beautification around the Golden Temple Amritsar—so that governance could begin to heal what “security” had scarred. Do not wave Black Thunder today to whitewash the bulldozers and broken lives that followed.
From the lattst edition of Khushwant Singh’s monumental work, “The History of the Sikhs”.
8) Stop Reopening Wounds from the Comfort of Kasauli
From the sylvan comfort of the Kasauli Club, at a literary festival no less, it is easy to sermonise about who should or should not be blamed. Your words hurt me personally and the wider Sikh community. They trivialise our trauma, they re-victimise survivors, and they read like an exercise in currying favour with the Gandhi family by diluting their generational culpability.
9) My Charge—Without Euphemisms
Indira Gandhi bears responsibility for Operation Blue Star—a grave crime against the Sikh community.
Rajiv Gandhi bears responsibility for the November 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom—for failing to stop it swiftly, for failing to protect citizens, and for failing to deliver justice.
P. Chidambaram, later overseeing Internal Security, bears responsibility for the lethargy and failure of investigations and prosecutions—and for presiding over a regime that razed homes and livelihoods around the Darbar Sahib Amritsar with poor rehabilitation.
This is not journalism. This is a personal statement, not a political one. I do not mince words, and I take full responsibility for every line.
10) Closing
What makes your remarks especially painful is the setting in which you made them—at a literary festival dedicated to Khushwant Singh, the very historian who wrote the definitive “History of the Sikhs” and who was the first to return his Padma Shri in protest after the egregious assault of Operation Blue Star. Of all places, that platform demanded sensitivity, honesty, and moral clarity. Instead, you chose to downplay responsibility and reopen wounds. You should have felt shame—if not for the content of your words, then at least for their timing and place.
Mr. Chidambaram, if you wish to speak of accountability—indeed, culpability—begin with your own, and your party’s: for June 1984, for November 1984, and for the decades of wreckage, denial, and delayed justice that followed.
Until you do so, do not dare reopen our wounds to polish your legacy.