Indira Gandhi

Indira Gandhi was born Indira Nehru on 19 November 1917 at Allahabad. She was Prime Minister of India from 24 January 1966 to 24 March 1977 and again from 14 January 1980 until her death on 31 October 1984. In this history she is the head of the government that authorised the army attack on Sri Harmandir Sahib in June 1984, and her assassination was followed by the November 1984 pogrom against Sikhs.

She declared the Emergency on 25 June 1975 under Article 352, and her party lost the 1977 election. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism notes that after the Congress returned to power at the Centre in 1980 the Akali government in Punjab was dismissed. The same entry says that in 1984 the government made army plans while pretending all along its readiness for negotiations.

Key moments

• 1 to 10 June 1984: Operation Blue Star. Wikipedia says Indira Gandhi authorised it on the recommendation of the Army Chief, General Arun Vaidya, with Lieutenant General Krishnaswamy Sundarji planning it and Major General Kuldip Singh Brar commanding it on the ground. The assault, with tanks and artillery, came on the night of 5 and 6 June. Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale's body was found in the basement of the Akal Takht on 7 June (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• Casualties are contested. The government's White Paper (July 1984, Annexure XI) lists, for the Golden Temple area, 83 Army dead and 493 "civilian/terrorist" dead; its own table does not separate civilians from armed men. Wikipedia reports independent estimates ranging from about 4,700 civilians killed in the complex to more than 10,000 dead in all.
• 31 October 1984: she is shot dead, and mobs kill Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere over the following days.

The assassination. At about 9:20 to 9:30 in the morning of 31 October 1984, two Sikh members of her security, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, shot her in the garden of 1 Safdarjung Road as she walked toward her office. She was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and pronounced dead at 2:20 in the afternoon. Beant Singh was killed by other guards. Satwant Singh survived, and he and Kehar Singh were hanged on 6 January 1989 (Wikipedia). UPI reported that her son Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister by President Zail Singh shortly after her death was announced.

The pogrom. Human Rights Watch says at least 2,733 Sikhs were killed in Delhi in three days and hundreds elsewhere, that mobs were often instigated by Congress leaders, and that the police stood by and were often complicit. Ten commissions and committees looked into it, and Human Rights Watch counted only 30 convictions, mostly of low-ranking Congress supporters. The Tribune's review of a book on 1984 puts the official countrywide toll at about 3,350 and human rights groups' estimates above 5,000, and calls the violence a state-backed pogrom. The SGPC and the Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht Sahib call it genocide.

How she is judged. At the 40th anniversary of June 1984, Jathedar Giani Raghbir Singh described her as egoistic and tyrannical, said she sent the army into Sri Harmandar Sahib on 1 June, and called the attack the third Ghallughara. SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami said the government should apologise in Parliament. From the Congress side, P. Chidambaram said in October 2025 that Blue Star was the wrong way to deal with the armed men in the Golden Temple and that she paid with her life, but that it was a cumulative decision of the Army, intelligence, police and civil defence, so she cannot be blamed completely. Lieutenant General Brar, who commanded the assault, said in 2023 that she let Bhindranwale grow powerful and that by the time he peaked it was too late.