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Remembering the Indian Army's assault on the Golden Temple- the holiest shrine of its minuscule minority, by using unprecedented military power, executing civilians by tying their hands behind using their own turbans, massacring thousands of devotees (1/n)
Destroying the Sikh Reference Library and the Akal Takht- a symbol of Sikh sovereignty, denying Red Cross to attend to the wounded and injured, mass cremating bodies without efforts to identify the dead. (2/n)
It was a defining epoch in the history of post-colonial India which normalized majoritarian brutality and destruction of minority heritage and places of worship. Yes, I'm referring to Babri Masjid.
#neverforget84 #sikhlivesmatter #bluestar
#neverforget84 #sikhlivesmatter #bluestar
Similar, simultaneous operations were carried out in at least 42 other gurudwaras too, where again, as in Dukhniwaran Sahab in Patiala, a large number of devotees were killed.
There remain varying estimates of the total number of other gurudwaras attacked in north India in June 1984: 41 (Reduced to Ashes), 75 (Politics of Genocide), 38 (The Guardian). The Indian govtâs official White Paper, divulges 42 other identified gurudwaras. (5/n)
Replugging: (6/n) https://thediplomat.com/2016/06/blue-star-over-patiala/
Following Operation Bluestar, the institutional criminalization of *all* Sikhs led to an increasing number of unlawful detentions, rampant torture and extrajudicial executions. (7/n)
#operationbluestar #NeverForget84
#operationbluestar #NeverForget84
According to the official White Paper, 493 âterroristsâ were killed, 86 wounded & 1592 apprehended during the operation. These numbers add up to 2171 & fail to explain what happened to at least 5000 pilgrims who were trapped inside when the operation began. #NeverForget84 (8/n)
BBC journalist Mark Tully estimates that approximately 4000 people could have been in killed in The Operation Blue Star: The Untold Story. Chand Joshi suggests 5000 civilian deaths. (9/n)
A âvirtual massacreâ reported The Guardian; âwhole of PunjabâŠturned into a concentration campâ declared the Christian Science Monitor; the Indian government issued arrest warrants for @AP's journalist @Chellaney for his report on extrajudicial execution of Sikh devotees. (10/n)
BJP starlwarts demanding military action in Punjab. A perfect example of how the so-called differences between Congress and BJP collapse when it comes to marked communities. (11/n)
Jan Sangh, Shiv Sena rallied Hindus with trishuls on which they tied packs of bidis & cigarettes & marched to the Golden Temple (where u are not supposed to smoke) & chanted: "cigarette beedi peeyenge, shaan se jeeyenge / kadaa, kachaa aur kirpan, dhak denge pakistan". (12/n)
Listen to the testimony of Manjit Singh recorded by the #1984livinghistory
âThe smell gave us the idea of what was really going onâŠwhat was really going on was the mass burning of the bodies,â She recounts about the killings of Sikhs in Patiala (13/n)
âThe smell gave us the idea of what was really going onâŠwhat was really going on was the mass burning of the bodies,â She recounts about the killings of Sikhs in Patiala (13/n)
"They wanted to kill everyone" (14/n)
It is but obvious the blame of colonial approach lies on the authoritarianism & hunger for power of PM Indira Gandhi. This does not elide the FACT that the Indian far-right was in cahoots with the Congress regime as they led marches calling for military action in Punjab. (15/n)
âMany wounded were left to bleed to death,â wrote Amrit Wilson, in New Statesman Nov 1984. â[W]hen they begged for water, army [men] told them to drink the mixture of blood & urine on the floor. 4 months later no list of casualties or missing persons had yet been issued.â (16/n)
Re-plugging one of the most important essays on the horrendous consequences of #OperationBluestar and how it left a deep scar within Sikh psyche and the Indian polity by @mallikakaur (17/n) https://www.guernicamag.com/mallika-kaur-ten-thousand-pairs-of-shoes/
Photo by Satpal Danish a few days after #OperationBluestar
Novelist @_asandhu asks: "Whose shirt is this? Whose salwaar? Whose kurta? A trouser. Oh! I see turbans and dupatta - and shoes. So many shoes in the Joda Ghar! Tens of thousands! Who will claim them? (18/n)
Novelist @_asandhu asks: "Whose shirt is this? Whose salwaar? Whose kurta? A trouser. Oh! I see turbans and dupatta - and shoes. So many shoes in the Joda Ghar! Tens of thousands! Who will claim them? (18/n)
From the magazine Surya India (August 1984), one learns that after Operation Bluestar the Indian army carried out "Operation Kar Seva" where they bulldozed and removed rubble of the Akal Takht even before dead bodies were removed. (19/n)
In Surya India (November 1984), the SGPC gave 121 photos, names, and addresses of granthis, sevadars, and pilgrims who were not involved in any fighting but were murdered by the Indian army during Operation Bluestar. (20/n)
One sevadar was Pritam Singh. His wife Paramjit Kaur, the only surviving family member, tells Surya, "my husband and brother-in-law were led towards me. My 3 year old daughter left my arms & hung on to her father's neck. Thereupon they led them both towards the Sarai side (21/n)
...The lined them up with two other men. I thought they were going to photograph them. Instead they poured bullets into all of them. Dimple, my daughter, was also killed. ... They dragged me to the parkarma and left me lying there amidst the blood and the bodies." (22/n)
This deeply troubling photograph strips statist quoist narratives about Operation Bluestar and lays bare the ugliness of India's post-independence coloniality which has been employed to discipline, punish and kill marked communities. (23/n)
The good Sikh is one who panders to the Indian nationalist imagination, the one who sacrifices the self in wars, the one who tills his land to feed the country. The deviant Sikh is a killable body- either through extrajudicial killings or state sponsored genocide. (24/n)
"What was the truth ordinary people experienced that day?" (25/n)
People trying to gather information about killed or missing kith and kin by looking at blood soaked clothes after Operation Bluestar. #neverforget84 (26/n)
AIR and Doordarshan, state sponsored media was the only source of information back in the day. Prof. Pritam Singh reflects on their role in obfuscating ground realities. (27/n) https://www.academia.edu/39356164/_Singh_1984_AIR_and_Doordarshan_Coverage_of_Operation_Bluestar-_A_critique.PDF?fbclid=IwAR2QeFLNrpKl0eIO5XXTYzuaN2BlQvXE-bqTBBFUi4cGyXHSF5fNTxDl9zg
"But the second element which angered the establishment was the claim in the report that âseveralâ young Sikhs had been shot, with their hands tied behind their backs. The report quoted medical sources, who had conducted the post-mortem."
(28/n) https://bit.ly/2XuH0eI
(28/n) https://bit.ly/2XuH0eI
