Government publishes its White Paper on the Punjab Agitation

Who: The Government of India, which wrote it; the Akali Dal, the SGPC and Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, whom it blames; and the writers who answered it.

What: The Government of India published the White Paper on the Punjab Agitation on 10 July 1984, a month after Operation Blue Star and, Khushwant Singh says, after several postponements. It has five parts (introduction, the Akali demands and the Government's response, terror and violence, the Army action, and "some issues") and eleven annexures, among them the lists of 45 and 15 demands, a calendar of meetings with the Akali Dal, a calendar of violent incidents and the casualty figures.

Its central claim is that the essence of the problem was not the demands the Akali Dal made in 1981 but the maturing of a secessionist and anti-national movement, backed by a few groups abroad, and that the Akali leadership let the initiative pass out of its hands. It says the Akali Dal and the SGPC cannot have been unaware that the Darbar Sahib precincts were being misused. On the Army action it says troops were ordered to use minimum force and to avoid damage to Sri Harmandir Sahib; that 129 people surrendered on 5 June; that Longowal and Tohra came out with about 350 people at 1 am on 6 June and that armed men in the complex then fired and threw grenades, killing 70 of them; that the bodies of Bhindranwale and Amrik Singh were found among 34 others; and that no women or children were killed by the troops. Annexure XI counts to 30 June, in the Darbar Sahib area, 493 civilians and "terrorists" killed and 83 Army dead (four officers, four junior commissioned officers, 75 other ranks), and for all Punjab 554 and 92 dead. It does not separate civilians from armed men.

Where: Issued in New Delhi; its subject is Punjab and the Darbar Sahib complex at Amritsar.

Why it mattered: It is the Government's own account, and the text that Sikh writers answered. Gurmit Singh quotes Noorani saying it answered none of the pertinent questions, and calls it a tissue of lies. Khushwant Singh writes that it had many factual inaccuracies, put the blame on the Akalis for what Bhindranwale did, and left out the Government's own part in building him up; he adds that eyewitness accounts gathered in 1985 did not bear out its sequence of events, and that the book carrying them was banned. The Tribune reported in 2014 that the paper says a last attempt at settlement was made the week before the Army was called in. The number of dead is the subject of a separate debate page.