Sonia Gandhi Recalls Indira Gandhi's Tears Over Operation Blue Star Aftermath

NEW DELHI: Indira Gandhi cried while watching the harrowing visuals of the aftermath of Operation Blue Star in 1984, says Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, claiming that there were tears of pain and regret as well as of sorrow in the then PM's eyes at the manner which the siege at the Golden Temple had ended. In her memoir Belonging: A Journey Of Love , Sonia Gandhi says that over 15 years, a formerly unknown Sikh preacher, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, had come to gain prominence in Punjabi politics, and leaders of two warring factions within the Punjab Congress party had allegedly promoted him, each seeking to weaken the other. "Now he withdrew his allegiance to them and began to rally people around a series of political demands. Bhindranwale led a violent separatist movement essentially aimed to polarise the Hindu and Sikh communities. "Pakistani intelligence agencies had infiltrated the agitation, escalating the mayhem to incite the mass flight of Hindus from Punjab, with the aim of getting the state to secede from India," she says. She recalls that bomb blasts and the killing of innocent people had become the order of the day. There were frequent instances of buses being hijacked, their Hindu passengers being pulled off and mercilessly gunned down, Sonia Gandhi recalls. A rift appeared for the first time after Independence between Sikhs and Hindus, she says in the book. "Where the two communities had lived in amity, there was now growing alienation. The most dangerous objective in promoting the hostility was the idea of creating Khalistan, separate sovereign homeland for Sikhs, purportedly to safeguard Sikhism," she says.