Gurdwara Yaadgaar Shaheedan

Gurdwara Yaadgaar Shaheedan, also called Shaheedi Yadgar, is the memorial to the Singhs and Singhnian killed in Operation Blue Star, raised beside Gurdwara Thara Sahib in the Golden Temple complex at Amritsar. The SGPC approved it and handed the kar sewa to the Damdami Taksal under Baba Harnam Singh Khalsa Dhuma. The sources opened do not say who runs it day to day.

Key moments

• 20 February 2002: the SGPC Executive decided to raise a memorial on Operation Bluestar (The Tribune).
• 27 May 2005: the SGPC executive under Bibi Jagir Kaur resolved at Anandpur Sahib to build a memorial, Minar-e-Shaheedan Ghalughara 1984, inside the complex but outside the parkarma. By November 2008 The Tribune reported the plan dropped, and the SGPC president said there was no plan to build one.
• 20 May 2012: kar sewa began. Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh dug the first soil with a silver spade and called Operation Blue Star a ghallughara. The SGPC entrusted the work to the Taksal, with funds to come from donations made directly to it. Several groups objected and the Akali Dal (Amritsar) stayed away.
• 6 June 2012: the Sikh clergy and SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar laid the foundation stone, before the main programme, in the basement adjoining Gurdwara Thara Sahib. Amarinder Singh of the Punjab Congress and the BJP's Balbir Punj opposed the memorial, and Sukhbir Badal said the state had nothing to do with it (The Tribune).
• 27 or 28 April 2013: the memorial, called Gurdwara Shaheedi Yadgar, was dedicated. An inscription at the entrance says it was built in memory of Bhindranwale and "other martyrs", and plaques name Bhindranwale, Bhai Amrik Singh, Bhai Shubeg Singh and Baba Thahra Singh. The BJP state president said the memorial could affect communal harmony (The Tribune, 29 April 2013).
• 6 July 2017: kar sewa began on a gallery of portraits in the basement, marked jointly by the Taksal head, Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh, the head priest of the Golden Temple and SGPC president Kirpal Singh Badungar. Badungar said about 300 photographs would be placed there.

The names. There was no official list of the dead, so the Taksal took the lead in identifying them. The SGPC held a list of 743 names, based on the Rs 10,000 compensation paid to kin of Sikh activists in 1984, and the Taksal with the SGPC, Dal Khalsa and a US-based organisation prepared two lists totalling 890. Harnam Singh Khalsa said some discrepancies might remain (The Tribune, 2018).

What it means today. Ashoka University's note on Sikh memorials for 1984 dates it to 2013, says it takes the form of a Sikh shrine justified in religious terms, and contrasts it with the Wall of Truth. Millennium Post calls it a controversial memorial that carries a portrait of Bhindranwale.