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Will Congress now take action against Chidambaram for speaking the truth and exposing his false narrative? The ruling party asked.
This came as Chidambaram, speaking at a literary event in Kasauli on Saturday, said Operation Blue Star launched in June 1984 to clear the Golden Temple from armed terrorists led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was “wrong” and then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi “paid for the mistake with her life”.
He said, “No disrespect to any army officer here, but that (Blue Star) was the wrong way to reclaim the Golden Temple. A few years later, we showed the right way to reclaim the Golden Temple by keeping the army out.”
“Blue Star was the wrong approach, and I agree that Mrs. Gandhi paid the price for that mistake with her life. But that mistake was a joint decision of the army, the police, the intelligence and the civil service. You cannot put the blame on Mrs. Gandhi alone,” Chidambaram said and asked, “Would you do that?” Indira Gandhi was assassinated at her residence on 31 October 1984 by two of her Sikh bodyguards.
Responding to the former home minister’s comment, Union Minister Kiren Rijiu said in a post on Twitter, “Chidambaram ji accepted Congress’s mistakes too late!” The minister said, “After revealing that India could not respond to Pakistan’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai due to immense pressure from the US and foreign powers, he now admits that Operation Blue Star in the Golden Temple was also a mistake.”
Taking a dig at Chidambaram’s comments, BJP national spokesperson RP Singh criticized the Congress and said, “History should record the truth.” Operation Blue Star was not a national necessity; It was a political audacity, he alleged. “As a nationalist, I strongly believe that Operation Blue Star was completely avoidable, as rightly noted by former Home Minister P. Chidambaram,” the BJP spokesperson said.
Singh alleged that the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, chose the confrontational path for “political reasons and electoral gains”, trying to ignite nationalist fervor by portraying “India’s most patriotic community, the Sikhs, as anti-national” ahead of the 1984 parliamentary elections.
“In doing so, she fell into her own political trap and ultimately had to pay the price with her life,” he said.
Singh said, “But the real tragedy was suffered by my community. More than 3,000 Sikhs were brutally murdered in Delhi and more than 30,000 people were killed across Punjab, victims of a calculated political plan that tore apart the social fabric of the country.”
The BJP spokesperson said that a more strategic approach like Operation Black Thunder, where electricity and water supply to the Golden Temple was cut and terrorists were forced to surrender, could have achieved the objective “without desecrating the sanctity of Sri Harmandir Sahib and Akal Takht, and without the tragic loss of lives of innocent devotees”.
Reacting to Chidambaram’s comments, BJP IT department chief Amit Malviya said the Congress leaves no opportunity to claim that Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were “martyrs”.
“But senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram has now broken that myth, calling Operation Blue Star a mistake for which Indira Gandhi had to pay with her life,” he said.
“Arguably, Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination was also a result of his disastrous handling of the situation in India’s neighbourhood,” he said, asking, “Will the Congress now take action against Chidambaram for speaking the truth and exposing his false narrative?” According to sources, the Congress leadership is “very angry” with Chidambaram for his comments on ‘Operation Blue Star’, and is of the view that senior leaders should be careful before making public statements that could cause embarrassment to the party.