Sikhs were massacred in 1984, and the British government has been accused of covering up the full extent of Britain’s support for India’s brutal crackdown on Sikhs 1984.
A new report calls for a full investigation into Margaret Thatcher's role in the events leading up to the massacre that killed thousands of Sikhs and Indian soldiers.
David Cameron ordered a review in 2014 after secret documents revealed that a British SAS officer had been brought in to advise the Indian authorities on removing armed Sikh militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
The documents said that the plan, code-named, Operation Blue Star was carried out with the full knowledge of Thatcher's government according to the documents.
According to ‘Sacrificing Sikhs’, a report by the Sikh Federation UK, Cameron's review, conducted by Sir Jeremy Heywood, has been described as a ‘whitewash’.
It claims that government secrecy rules and conflicts of interest have impeded attempts at full disclosure of the facts. Over fifty percent of the Foreign Office's India files from 1984 have been wholly or partially censored.
According to some documents, the Foreign Office knew what was at stake when the Indian authorities sought help.
Bruce Cleghorn, a diplomat, warned that "it would be dangerous" for the UK government "to be linked" with "any attempt to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar" a week before the Golden Temple attack. He was also named in the correspondence regarding possible SAS assistance to India immediately after the massacre. As a "sensitivity reviewer" for the Foreign Office, Cleghorn's duties in 2015 included censoring records about the Amritsar massacre before they were released to the National Archives.
Sir John Ramsden, a member of the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives, which decides on government censorship applications, was a member of the Foreign Office's South Asia section in 1984. After Operation Blue Star, Ramsden advocated in a letter in favor of providing India with more SAS support and equipment for its paramilitary forces.
The SAS officer's role in the days before Operation Blue Star as well as the number of fatalities remain shrouded in secrecy. The death toll in the attack remains disputed, with Indian authorities putting it in the hundreds and Sikh groups in the thousands.
According to the Sikh Federation's report, the Sikhs withdrew from peace negotiations as soon as the SAS officer returned from his reconnaissance mission with an Indian special forces unit because they believed they had witnessed a commando unit enter the city.
The peace negotiations never recovered and eventually, the Indian army stormed the temple in June 1984. The storming of the Golden Temple was aimed at flushing out Sikh separatists. An Indira Gandhi-led mission that started on June 3, 1984, lasted five days, killing several thousand. Two Sikh bodyguards killed Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi four months later, resulting in reprisals that killed over 3,000 Sikhs.
According to the report, the UK was eager to assist India because it was one of its biggest purchasers of military hardware between 1981 and 1990. It further asserts that to appease the Indian government and secure arms deals, repressive actions against Sikhs were carried out in the UK.
Phil Miller, the report's author, said the government should come clean about Thatcher's involvement in the Amritsar massacre. He prompted concerns that there is an “undemocratic and unsustainable” culture of secrecy around UK special forces.
Bhai Amrik Singh, chair of the Sikh Federation (UK), said that this report casts serious doubt on Cameron's in-house Heywood review. Parliament and the public have been misled by a massive cover-up. According to him, an independent public inquiry to get to the truth is the only way forward.