Opinion: Why Operation Blue Star Remains A 'Ghallughara' For Sikhs After 42 Years

Updated: Jun 06, 2026 18:56 pm IST Published On Jun 06, 2026 18:13 pm IST Last Updated On Jun 06, 2026 18:56 pm IST

Published On Jun 06, 2026 18:13 pm IST

Last Updated On Jun 06, 2026 18:56 pm IST

Every year in the first week of June, something shifts in the air over Amritsar. It is not the security cordons, not the police flag marches, not the official advisories. It is something older and heavier, the return of a memory, mourning and an unfinished chapter of 1984.

In government records, it is called Operation Blue Star. Among millions of Sikhs across Punjab, the diaspora in Canada, Britain and California, it is remembered as a "Ghallughara", a collective wound linked to faith, identity and dignity. The choice of that word is not incidental; it is an argument.

The word Ghallughara has deep historical meaning in Sikh memory. It is generally used for a large-scale massacre or collective destruction faced by the Sikh community. Sikh history remembers the Chhota Ghallughara of 1746 and the Vadda Ghallughara of 1762, when thousands of Sikhs were killed during a period of persecution.

Operation Blue Star was carried out in June 1984 inside the Sri Darbar Sahib complex in Amritsar. The official position was that the operation was meant to flush out armed militants led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and others who had taken positions inside the complex.

Punjab in 1984 had been bleeding through a very tense period of militant violence. The state had a security problem that........

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