CHANDIGARH: With less than four months left for the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections, the memoir of senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, Belonging: A Journey of Love, could become a political issue in the state.
Both the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday demanded that Congress leaders in Punjab break their "criminal silence" over what they described as the clean chit given by Sonia Gandhi to those responsible for killing "thousands of innocent Sikhs" in 1984.
The two parties termed it a calculated political ploy to whitewash the alleged sins of the Gandhi family and the Congress party, 42 years after the events.
Demanding answers from the Congress leadership, Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal said, "Congress leaders in Punjab must break their criminal silence on the clean chit given by Sonia Gandhi to the killers of thousands of innocent Sikhs in 1984."
He further claimed that Sonia Gandhi’s admission that Rajiv Gandhi had personally decided against deploying Army units in Delhi because they included Sikh personnel provided conclusive evidence of the Congress government's patronage of the anti-Sikh massacre.
"The Congress government could send a Sikh General to lead Operation Blue Star on Sachkhand Sri Harmandir Sahib and Sri Akal Takht Sahib, but would not deploy Sikh Army personnel to protect innocent Sikhs in 1984? Do Punjab Congress leaders, including Sikh leaders, endorse this decision to leave innocent Sikhs at the mercy of marauding killers belonging to the Congress party and the government headed by Rajiv Gandhi? Will they ask Sonia Gandhi to explain why Rajiv Gandhi chose to stop the army deployment to save the lives of innocent Sikhs? Cowardly silence won’t do,’’ he questioned.
Meanwhile, BJP Punjab President Kewal Singh Dhillon challenged the claims made in Sonia Gandhi’s memoir on Indira Gandhi and the June 1984 'Operation Blue Star', terming it a calculated political ploy to whitewash the sins of the Gandhi family and the Congress party after 42 years.
He said that Sonia Gandhi's claim that Indira Gandhi had "tears of pain and remorse" in her eyes after watching footage of Operation Blue Star rubs salt into the wounds of the Sikh Panth.
Dhillon asked why the truth was suppressed for decades if there was genuine remorse. He said while Sonia Gandhi concedes that factional infighting within the Punjab Congress worsened the situation, she conveniently rationalizes the military assault as an "unavoidable necessity" to absolve the family and the party.
He stressed that deploying tanks and artillery against Sri Harmandir Sahib and Sri Akal Takht Sahib, followed by the state-sponsored massacre of thousands of Sikhs in November 1984, cannot be brushed aside as merely a "regrettable chapter" to escape historical accountability.
