Unreleased news footage before the attack on Sri Harmandir Sahib скачать в хорошем качестве

Unreleased news footage before the attack on Sri Harmandir Sahib

At about 7.30 on the morning of June 6 1984, Operation Blue Star, one of the most extraordinary battles in military history, came to a head when Indian army tanks pounded the Sikh shrine, the Akal Takht, with 105mm high-explosive squash head shells. It stands opposite the centre of the Sikhs’ religion, the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The complex housing the two had been occupied and fortified by a fundamentalist Sikh preacher, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was demanding the establishment of Khalistan, a Sikh homeland. The assault was the climax of a nine-hour, gruelling battle between the Indian army and Bhindranwale with his heavily armed and well-trained followers. Sikhs in India, and in the West, were outraged by what they saw as the defilement of their holiest place. And that anger remains 30 years later, as I have found in making a documentary for the BBC World Service on the divisive legacy of Operation Blue Star. That division is highlighted today by the sword fight at the temple between Sikhs who were marking the anniversary of the raid. Back in 1984, as the BBC’s Delhi correspondent, I had been in Amritsar for the four days leading up to the Indian army’s attack. The atmosphere was tense. There had been a spate of murders by Bhindranwale’s supporters and now they were threatening to disrupt the supply of food throughout the Punjab.