General Krishnaswamy Sundarji

General Krishnaswamy Sundarji (1928 to 1999) was the Indian Army officer commanding Western Command when Operation Blue Star was planned and carried out against the Darbar Sahib complex at Amritsar in June 1984. He later became the 13th Chief of the Army Staff.

Wikipedia gives his birth as 28 April 1928 at Chengelpet, Madras Presidency. He was commissioned into the Mahar Regiment in 1946 and became a Lieutenant General in 1979. The Tribune's 1999 obituary calls him the Army's "thinking General" and the officer in charge of Operation Bluestar.

Key moments

• 1983 to 1985: General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command (Wikipedia). Wikipedia says he planned and coordinated Operation Blue Star, with Major General Kuldip Singh Brar commanding the assault, and that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave permission on the recommendation of Army Chief General Arun Vaidya.
• 3 June 1984: his wife Vani Sundarji wrote that Mrs Gandhi summoned him from Chandimandir to Delhi late at night, and that he came back saying it was a tough one (PTI, in The Tribune).
• 5 to 6 June 1984: the assault took place on the night of 5 to 6 June, and the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that the Army used tanks and artillery.
• After Blue Star: in the introduction to his unfinished memoir Of Some Consequence, Vani Sundarji wrote that he was a changed man. He told her he had been trained to fight an enemy, "not to tackle our own kind".
• 1986 to 1988: Chief of the Army Staff. He guided Operation Brasstacks, which The Tribune calls the largest military exercise in post-Independence India.
• 8 February 1999: he died in New Delhi after a long illness, which the Tribune describes as a nervous-system ailment.

What he is remembered for. In the Army and in the strategic community as a modernising chief who helped shape India's nuclear thinking (Wikipedia). In the Panth as the commander under whom the Army entered the Darbar Sahib complex in June 1984. The Tribune's obituary presents Operation Bluestar without editorial criticism.