Police action at the Golden Temple, 4 July 1955

Who: The Punjab Police, led by Deputy Inspector General Ashwani Kumar according to the SGPC's history and The Tribune; Sikh volunteers and pilgrims at Sri Harmandir Sahib; the SGPC leaders Hukam Singh and Bawa Harkishan Singh; and the Punjab Government of Chief Minister Bhim Sen Sachar.

What: At the peak of the Punjabi Suba morcha in early July 1955 the police cordoned off the Golden Temple area and stopped people reaching it (Gurmit Singh). The Tribune dates the entry to the night of 3 and 4 July. Grewal says the police entered when the SGPC refused to surrender its arms, whose licences had been cancelled.

The SGPC history says that from about midnight police parties arrested the Head Granthi, Giani Bhupinder Singh, and the Akal Takht Jathedar, Giani Achhar Singh, at their homes. At about 3 or 4 a.m. armed police raided Guru Ram Das Sarai and took away, it says, five or six hundred sleeping pilgrims and jatha members in trucks. The SGPC and Akali Dal offices were raided and people working in them arrested. Gurmit Singh adds that police closed the Guru ka Langar, cut off supplies and occupied Manji Sahib. He and Grewal add that troops were ordered to flag-march through the bazars and streets around the Golden Temple, without saying whether they were army or police.

At midday on 4 July, the history says, police with lathis, guns and tear gas advanced on Manji Sahib while thousands of Sikhs sat down in their path. Tear-gas shells fell in the parikrama and some in the sarovar. Gurmit Singh says Hukam Singh and Bawa Harkishan Singh, who were running the morcha from the complex, were also taken into custody; the history says the police kept the two confined in the SGPC office. The Akali Dal's general secretary said at least two Sikhs were killed by police fire, which the history says nobody denied. It says the DIG claimed at one moment that bricks and at another that shots had come from the crowd, though no policeman had a bullet wound, and calls the firing story a pretext.

Where: The Sri Harmandir Sahib complex at Amritsar: Guru Ram Das Sarai, the SGPC and Akali Dal offices, Manji Sahib Diwan Hall, the langar and the parikrama.

Why it mattered: The Tribune calls it the first police action at the Golden Temple in independent India, and Sangat Singh calls it the first sacrilege by the Congress government since independence. Baba Kharak Singh and the Chief Khalsa Diwan condemned the entry (SGPC history). The ban on slogans was lifted on 12 July and the police left. Getting no action on its demand for a judicial inquiry, the Akali Dal named its own committee, which charged the Government on ten counts, among them tear-gas shells in the parikrama and entering Manji Sahib in shoes. Nothing followed. Sachar later apologised at the Akal Takht, on 10 November 1955 in the SGPC history.