Kuldip Singh Brar

Lieutenant General Kuldip Singh Brar, PVSM, AVSM, VrC (born 1934) is a retired Indian Army officer, who was involved in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. As a major general, he commanded Operation Blue Star.

Early days Brar was born in 1934 into a Sikh Jat family. His brother also served in the army at Sri Lanka. He himself studied at the Doon School, an all-boys' boarding school.

Military career

1971 Indo-Pakistan war Brar joined the Maratha Light Infantry in 1954 as a second lieutenant. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Brar commanded an infantry battalion and was in the first batch of troops who entered Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh) on the morning of 16 December 1971. He was awarded the Vir Chakra for the battle fought at Jamalpur on the night of 10 December 1971. His battalion was pitted against the 31st Baluch of the Pakistani Army. The Baluch Regiment launched continuous attacks against Brar's battalion. His soldiers had to move across the river Brahmaputra, at a location where no bridges existed. Therefore, they were able to carry only limited weapons on a man-pack basis. Brar moved from company to company in the midst of the battle, motivating his soldiers to continue the fight despite the lack of sufficient weapons.

In the years following the 1971 war, Brar was involved in anti-insurgency operations in Nagaland and Mizoram states of India.

At the time, K.S. Brar was commanding 9 Division based in Meerut, as a major general. His three brigades were based in Meerut, Delhi and Jalandhar, and two of them were made up of Sikhs. According to Brar, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which was supposed to have the managerial control of the temple, had lost control of the situation.

In the afternoon of 5 June, the army kept asking the militants to surrender, using the public address system. They also asked the pilgrims inside the temple to be sent out. However, none came out till 7 PM. The operation had to be completed in a short time, before dawn. Otherwise, messages of army besieging the temple would have attracted mobs to the temple premises. The army could not have fired upon these civilians. More importantly, Pakistan could have come into the picture, declaring its support for Khalistan. He explained to them that it was not a mission against any religion, but against some militants who had defiled the sacred temple. He told his men that they may opt out of the operation, if they wished to. General Brar later said that none of his men, including Sikhs, walked away. In fact, in the unit commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Israr (whose ten guards later led the first unit into the temple premises), the Sikh Officer Second Lieutenant Jasbir Singh Raina, raised his hand, and said that he wished to be the first one to enter the Golden Temple to wipe out the militants who had defiled the holiest Sikh shrine. General Brar repeatedly asked his soldiers not to fire in the direction of the Golden Temple, even if the militants fired from that side. He later stated that there was no damage to Golden Temple, except a couple of bullet holes that could have been the militants' fire or odd stray fire from the soldiers. Since his retirement, General Brar had to reside in the heavily guarded cantonment area of Mumbai. On 4 October, Scotland Yard announced that they had arrested three people, not publicly identified at the time, for the attack, and were continuing to look for the fourth. The following day, eight others, a woman and seven men, were also arrested and charged; on 6 October, nine of the 12 individuals charged, including the woman, were released on bail.

On 8 October, two of the men involved, Barjinder Singh Sangha (born 25 March 1979; aged 33) of Wolverhampton, and Mandeep Singh Sandhu (born 30 April 1978; aged 34) of Great Barr, Birmingham, were charged with wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm on the retired general. Both appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court later. Mr. Singh Sangha was also charged with common assault on General Brar's wife, Meena. In court, the two men wore identical grey T-shirts, large, flowing beards and navy blue and black turbans. Both were remanded to police custody and scheduled to be present on 7 December at Southwark Crown Court. Barjinder Singh Sangha pleaded guilty to attacking Brar in January 2013.

On 8 February, 38-year-old Harjit Kaur, of Hayes, west London, was also charged for her part in the attack. She was formally accused of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm and was scheduled to later appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

Sandhu and 36-year-old Dilbagh Singh pleaded not guilty to the same charge. On 2 April, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said Sangha, Sandhu, Dilbagh Singh, and Kaur would stand trial around 15 July.

At the trial, which opened at Southwark Crown Court on 15 July, Kaur also denied the charge of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm. Crown Prosecutor Annabel Darlow said, "This was no random attack. This was a highly premeditated assault by people who thought about what they were doing and planned it." During the trial, it was disclosed that when the defendants discovered General Brar was holidaying in London without any security, they scoped out his movements over two days. The night of the attack, Kaur tailed Brar and his wife from a casino to a restaurant. After the couple had left the restaurant, she followed them onto the bus returning to their hotel. Kaur then relayed the couple's position to the other attackers, who ambushed them in Old Quebec Street. Sangha attacked the general with a knife while the others attempted to restrain him and his wife.

On 31 July, Sandhu, Dilbagh Singh, and Kaur were convicted of wounding with intent; Sangha had pleaded guilty to the charge earlier. The attackers were originally scheduled to be sentenced on 19 September; however, a pre-sentencing document had not been issued by then. As a result, on 14 October the Southwark Crown Court changed the sentencing date to 10 December.

On 10 December, Sandhu and Dilbagh Singh were sentenced to 14 years imprisonment; Kaur was sentenced to 11 years and Sangha to 10.5 years.

Views on Operation Blue Star

Operation Blue Star was militarily successful, but it is criticized by many for being badly planned. It is considered to be a political disaster and an unprecedented act in modern Indian history, and was followed by events like the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the assassination of A. S. Vaidya (the-then Army Chief), the subsequent 1984 anti-Sikh riots, and the Punjab insurgency.

Although General Brar later described Operation Bluestar as "most traumatic, most painful", he insisted that it was necessary. In an interview, he said that after reading his book, a Canadian Sikh who had earlier threatened him with death, realized that "the people who had let the Sikhs down were some Sikhs and the internal politics of the Akalis", and told him that he had "cleaned the temple". He also offered to pay for translating the book into Punjabi language so that more people could read it.