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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Yesterday’s militants in Punjab are martyrs for today. BJP’s hope in a non-Hindu majority state

After establishing a foothold in West Bengal, the BJP eyes the Sikh-majority state by building a new, aggressive electoral strategy.

Think of an opposition leader calling militants “shaheed” or martyrs. You could trust the right-wing ecosystem to jump to its feet and label him as anti-India and anti-national. Or, they would simply label him a part of the “tukde-tukde” gang, someone who sympathises with those who wanted to disintegrate India.

However, there was no such outrage when Maharashtra minister and senior BJP leader Girish Mahajan said as much and more earlier this month at the Damdami Taksal Sikh seminary, once headed by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Mahajan called the Army’s Operation Blue Star a “black day”. He called those killed in that operation “shaheed.” Mahajan then went on to draw a parallel between the Indian Army’s actions in 1984 and Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali’s invasions of the Golden Temple.

BJP leaders, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, had supported Operation Blue Star. Advani, in his autobiography, My Country, My Life (2008), wrote that the BJP had “ultimately forced” Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to “use the military and liberate the Golden Temple from its anti-national occupants.”

But Mahajan, like many others, may contend that it’s the Advani-led BJP’s history much of which has  changed in the  Modi-Shah era. In August 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a sharp departure from the Government of India’s and his own party’s stated line on Operation Blue Star, calling it “an attack on Akal Takht.”

“It was in Mizoram that Indiraji acquired the habit of using the army against own people,” Modi said in the Lok Sabha, alleging that civilians had been attacked by the Indian Air Force in 1966. In Mizoram, the Mizo National Front (MNF) had declared independence from India on 1 March 1966. It wanted to capture the Army and paramilitary bases. The idea was to raise the flag of an independent Mizoram for at least 48 hours until Pakistan raised their cause in the United Nations. Indira Gandhi ordered the air strike to prevent the MNF from overrunning the Assam Rifles outpost in Aizawl.

Modi was probably not briefed properly about why the Indian Air Force did what it did in Mizoram. Or, he got swayed in his own rhetorical flourish. Be that as it may, the fact is that Modi hasn’t repeated these charges. He obviously realised it soon that casting aspersions on an army or air force action even to blame Indira Gandhi is never “smart politics.” Dragging the armed forces into politics........

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