Meanwhile,
small arms were being smuggled into the Temple complex, it is said through kar seva trucks (which were under the control of the SGPC - or in other words, G.S. Tohra) and also in BSF trucks. When Punjab Inspector General of Police, P S Bhinder, detained two such trucks and asked for instructions from Delhi, the message received was “let them go in.” It suited Mrs Gandhi’s purpose to encourage build-up and fortification within the Temple complex to a point where she could legitimately claim that terrorist activity within the temple was well beyond the capacity of the police or paramilitary forces to control and it justified the induction of the Army. As Ved Marwah asks in “Uncivil Wars”: “Could all these fortifications have been made without the knowledge of the government?” Coming from a one-time Special Secretary Home, Government of India, this question is especially interesting.
In his book, Major General K S Brar makes the same point. He says: “Weapons were being secretly stockpiled inside the Temple and these were finding their way in through vehicles used for kar seva. The police dared not search the vehicles for fear of reprisals ... The Temple and hostel complexes were at the same time being fortified at feverish pitch; Bhindranwala never expected the police to enter the Temple and construction of defences he felt would act as further deterrent. It would be foolish to believe that those in power did not realise what was going on and that they failed to gauge the gravity of the situation. Yet no one in authority took any action. To charge those in authority for dereliction of duty would be putting it very mildly, and to forgive them for it, naivete. One of the reasons given by some people for the Government’s inaction is that, even at that stage, last minute secret parleys were going on between emissaries and Tohra in a bid to redeem the situation.”
NOTE: Perhaps General Brar is unduly worried about the arms that were smuggled in.
Those recovered from the Golden Temple area after Operation Bluestar were not particularly impressive. As enumerated by the Government White Paper, the bulk of them were World War II vintage weapons. Six hundred and fifty men and an armoury of this nature is very small potatoes indeed when the opponent is the Indian Army represented by four infantry battalions plus commando units plus one squadron of Vijayanta tanks plus a squadron of armoured personnel carriers, and all this supported by surveillance by the Air Force and Navy. This is the assessment made by senior generals after reading the White Paper, although actual recovery of weapons by the Army is said to have been much less than what has been shown in the White Paper and there were not more than 100 to 150 militants in the complex.
Institute of Sikh Studies, Chandigarh
