The tragic incident of Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s death, a prominent Indian leader and renowned Sikh activist marked a new chapter in the history of the Sikh community living in India while intensifying their societal insecurities. Its undeniable impacts on the complex ideological sentiments of Indian Sikhs and their socio-political indigenous characteristics augmented the ongoing tensions between the Indian state government and its estranged relations with the Sikh minority
The involvement of the Indian foreign intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) in the murder of Nijjar amplified the Sikh community’s grievances concerning their legitimate concerns of state oppression inside India. This factor can be measured through an analytical survey of the explicit marginalisation of the Sikh community in India. New Delhi, under various governments throughout Indian political history, remained active in formulating different anti-Sikh policies parallel to supporting several countrywide malevolent campaigns against the Sikh population.
The arrival of Narendra Modi in Indian politics as the fourteenth Prime Minister in 2014 initiated a new phase of the Sikh population in India, and the voices of the Khalistan movement became the prime target of Modi’s anti-minority policies. In reaction to the growing anti-minority tendencies of New Delhi and Modi’s exceptionally brutal responses to the advocators of the Khalistan movement, it became the epicentre of the global intellectual community’s attention. In addition to the increasing interest of international academic circles in India under Modi, a brief layer of literature emerged from domestic Indian society where very few authors tried to inform the world know about the actual face of Indian politics regarding indigenous minority rights. Akin to a few studies emphasising the sufferings of the Sikh population living inside and outside India, the book under review has become one of the prominent academic accounts revealing the anti-Sikh policies of New Delhi and its historical growth under different regimes.
The analysis in the book presents several intersecting facts and various sets of arguments developed by the Indian government regarding the status of the Sikh community in Indian social, political, and economic landscapes. The book’s author attempted to offer a gripping and insightful interpretation of several arguments consisting of discrete political interests behind Indira Gandhi’s decision to launch Operation Blue Star in 1984.
As a former high-ranked officer of the R&AW, the author’s unique perspective offers an insider’s view of the most tragic incident in Indian political history. The Sikh community, under the aggressive policies of Indira Gandhi’s government, was in a helpless situation to manage Sikh issues. The book’s main structure is divided into fourteen chapters, covering the political voices of the Sikh population from both inside and outside India and the response of the Indian government towards the sensitivities of the Sikh population regarding the Khalistan issue.
The author’s opinion is that the complicated political mechanisms and unambiguous intelligence failures contributed to the emergence of a countrywide Khalistan movement in India which witnessed a persistent rise under the Indian secular constitutional framework.
New Delhi’s inconsistent growth of Sikh-centric antipathy gave a countrywide rise to the Khalistan movement, and it resulted in the heart-breaking incident of the Golden Temple, according to the book’s analysis. The arguments in all chapters describe the behind-the-scenes look at an unequivocal interconnection between the Indian government and the Sikh leaders, which led to the overwhelming misconceptions of the New Delhi-based strategic community regarding the Khalistan issue.
In this way, the author has tried to offer a critical examination of certain influential factors, such as the key political figures, formal government authorities, and leading officials of Indian intelligence agencies in disregarding and managing the demands of the Sikh community for a separate homeland. The author’s nonconventional approach challenges the existing narrative regarding New Delhi’s formal actions against the empowerment of the Indian domestic Sikh population and their emerging strong acquaintances with the international Sikh community living across the globe.
In this way, the book’s central theme explains the role of the international Sikh diaspora in diverse regions in supporting and promoting the Khalistan cause. The exciting debate emerges in the history of the Sikh diaspora and their worldwide increasing acceptance based on the suffering of Sikh populations in India, which could be dignified in the post-Golden Temple scenario, as proved in the book with several convincing arguments.
Based on the above mentioned description, the intellectual efforts of a former R&AW official have provided a comprehensive analysis that Operation Blue Star was based on dirty political manipulations. This analysis sheds light on the rise of religious fundamentalism in India and the dramatic intensification of inter-religious crisis on a nationwide scale. The inclusion of several pictures and annexures in the book further enhances the author’s arguments, making his position more convincing on the issue of Khalistan and its tragic episode during Indira Gandhi’s tenure.
Therefore, this is a critical academic account of Indira Gandhi’s government and its imprudent strategy for maintaining political control over the diverse ideological divisions of society, which led New Delhi to launch a military operation against the holy place of the Sikh community. In this way, this book is an interesting intellectual investment of a former Indian intelligence officer to comprehend the issue of the Sikh population in Indian domestic politics and its growing connections with the international community. The author of the book has tried to focus on the thought-provoking re-examination of an important part of Indian political history, which is linked with the inseparable relevance of the Khalistan issue with the Indian national government. In this way, this is an important book for people specialising in Indian domestic politics and the evolution of several inter-religious clashes in India.
The book offers a critical historical account of Operation Blue Star, its planning, execution, and the aftermaths of the operations. The author’s central argument focused on Indira Gandhi’s controversial nature regarding the inception and evolution of the Khalistan movement. This feature makes this academic effort a valuable contribution with sufficient potential to inspire various scholars and historians concerning the genesis of Indian multi-ethnic and secular Indigenous society.
