New Delhi, Oct 12: The BJP hit out at the Congress after former Union home minister P Chidambaram’s remarks on ‘Operation Blue Star’ and said history must record the truth that it was not a national necessity but a “political misadventure” by Indira Gandhi.
Will the Congress now act against Chidambaram “for speaking the truth and exposing their false narrative?” the ruling party asked.
This came after Chidambaram, while speaking at a literary event in Kasauli on Saturday, said that Operation Blue Star, which was launched in June 1984 to clear the Golden Temple of armed terrorists led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, was “wrong” and the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi “paid the price with her life for the mistake”.
“No disrespect to any military officers here, but that (Blue Star) was the wrong way to retrieve the Golden Temple. A few years later, we showed the right way to retrieve the Golden Temple by keeping out the Army,” he said.
“Blue Star was the wrong way, and I agree that Mrs Gandhi paid with her life for that mistake. But that mistake was a cumulative decision of the Army, the police, the intelligence and the civil service. You cannot blame it only on Mrs Gandhi,” Chidambaram said and asked, “Would you?”
Indira Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984, at her residence by her two Sikh bodyguards.
Reacting to the former home minister’s remarks, Union minister Kiren Rijiu said in a post on X, “Chidambaram Ji admits the Congress blunders too late!”
“After revealing that India could not respond to Pakistan terror attacks in Mumbai, due to high pressure from USA & foreign powers, now he admits Operation Blue Star in Golden Temple was also a mistake,” the minister said.
Latching onto Chidambaram’s comments, BJP national spokesperson R P Singh slammed the Congress and said, “History must record the truth.”
Operation Blue Star was not a national necessity; it was a political misadventure, he charged. “As a nationalist, I strongly believe that Operation Blue Star was completely avoidable, as rightly mentioned by former Home Minister P Chidambaram,” the BJP spokesperson said.
Singh alleged that the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, chose the path of confrontation for “political reasons and electoral gain”, seeking to ignite nationalist fervour before the 1984 parliamentary elections by portraying the “most patriotic community of India, the Sikhs, as anti-national”.
“In doing so, she got trapped in her own political web and ultimately paid for it with her life,” he said.
“But the real tragedy was borne by my community. Over 3,000 Sikhs were brutally massacred in Delhi and more than 30,000 killed across Punjab, victims of a calculated political design that tore apart the social fabric of the nation,” Singh added.
The BJP spokesperson said that a more strategic approach like Operation Black Thunder, where electricity and water supply to the Golden Temple was cut off and militants were compelled to surrender, could have achieved the objective without “desecrating the sanctity of Sri Harmandir Sahib and the Akal Takhat, and without the tragic loss of innocent devotees’ lives”.
Reacting to Chidambaram’s comments, BJP IT department head Amit Malviya said the Congress never misses a chance to claim that Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were “martyrs”.
“But senior Congress leader P Chidambaram has now busted that myth, calling Operation Blue Star a mistake for which Indira Gandhi paid with her life,” he said.
“By the same logic, Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination too was a consequence of his disastrous handling of the situation in India’s neighbourhood,” he said and asked, “Will the Congress now act against Chidambaram for speaking the truth and exposing their false narrative?”
According to sources, the Congress leadership is “very upset” with Chidambaram for his remarks on ‘Operation Blue Star’, and is of the view that senior leaders should be careful before making public statements that create embarrassment for the party. (PTI)
