The Killing Fields of Majha: Tarn Taran and Amritsar in the Late 1980s
The border belt of Amritsar and Tarn Taran was the insurgency's epicentre: the corridor from Pakistan, the recruiting ground, the site of the worst predation from both sides, and the cremation registers that later revealed the disappeared.
Read More
The Bus Massacres: When the Militancy Turned Its Guns on Passengers
From Muktsar 1986 to Fatehabad 1987 to the Baddowal trains of 1991, militants stopped buses and killed passengers selected by religion. The pattern, the strategy behind it, and what the massacres did to the movement's claims.
Read More
The Air India Kanishka Bombing: Terror Crosses the Ocean
Flight 182 was destroyed over the Atlantic on June 23, 1985, killing 329 people, in a Babbar Khalsa plot built and loaded in Canada. The conspiracy, the institutional failures, the acquittals, and what Kanishka meant for the movement that claimed it.
Read More
Operation Black Thunder: The Siege That Went Differently
In May 1988 the state retook the Golden Temple complex with a siege, snipers, patience and the press watching: two hundred surrenders, minimal damage, no martyrdom. What Black Thunder proves about 1984, and what it does not.
Read More
Babbar Khalsa, KCF, KLF, BTFK: Mapping the Militant Groups
Babbar Khalsa's doctrinaire cadres, the KCF's declared army, the KLF and BTFK second wave, the splinter gangs and the black cats: mapping Punjab's militant organisations and the logic that made their violence uncontrollable.
Read More
The Panthic Committees and the Declaration of Khalistan, 1986
From a Sarbat Khalsa at the scarred Akal Takht, a five member Panthic Committee proclaimed Khalistan on April 29, 1986 and announced the Khalistan Commando Force. The declaration, Barnala's fatal response, and the franchise of factions it founded.
Read More
The Assassination of Sant Longowal: Killing the Peacemaker
Twenty six days after signing the Punjab Accord, Sant Longowal was shot dead inside a gurdwara at Sherpur. The man, the decision to sign, the killers, and how spoiler violence murdered Punjab's best chance at early peace.
Read More
The Rajiv Longowal Accord: The Peace That Never Arrived
Chandigarh, waters, the Sarkaria reference, compensation for 1984: the Punjab Accord of July 1985 addressed nearly every grievance on paper. Its signatory was assassinated within a month, and its clauses failed one by one.
Read More
Operation Woodrose: The Sweep Through Rural Punjab
The army sweep through Punjab's villages after Blue Star detained thousands of young Sikh men, produced the notorious Amritdhari circular, and drove a generation across the border into ISI camps. The insurgency's least documented chapter.
Read More
After the Fire: The Survivors of November 1984 and Their Forty Year Fight
The relief camps, the Widow Colony of Tilak Vihar, ten commissions, the Sajjan Kumar conviction, and the forty year legal fight: what happened to the survivors of November 1984 after the fires went out.
Read More