More than four decades have passed since June 1984, but for the Sikh community, the turning of the calendar offers no real distance from the pain. History is not just a collection of dates; it is a landscape of shadows, and the shadow cast by that year is long and cold. The events of 1984 are not a distant chapter in a textbook; they are a living, unreconciled wound on the body of a people and a question that continues to haunt the Indian state.

The official story is one of stern necessity. Operation Blue Star, we are told, was a required military action to remove armed militants from the Harmandir Sahib complex, Sikhism’s most sacred ground. But for those whose faith is anchored to that hallowed space, this clinical explanation is an insult to an unforgettable desecration. It was Guru Arjan Dev’s martyrdom day, a time when the complex was filled not just with militants, but with hundreds of innocent pilgrims—families who had come to pray, not to die. They remember the thunder of tanks, the sacrilege of army boots on pristine marble, and a storm of bullets that made no distinction between........

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