India's grain bowl and one of the richest state, Punjab is now reaping the harvest of peace and enterprise but young and old alike, still vividly recall Operation Bluestar, the most complex and largest anti-terrorist operation in the world.
Long before September 11, 2001, became a by-word for terrorism, the chanting of gurbani in the Golden Temple was drowned by the staccato bursts of gunfire when the operation was undertaken 20 years on June 5-6, 1984.
Peace has returned to Punjab, Baisakhi is again celebrated with pomp, show and gaiety, there was mirth and a carnival spirit in the air during 300th anniversary of the establisment of the khalsa in 1999 yet memories of Operation
Bluestar still send shivers down the spine of those who saw the event from close quarters.
It is one event which divides the state in general and Sikh community in particular on diametrically opposite sides.
"The wounds have still not healed. Given the fact that governments which took office from time to time did not apologise for the operation hurts us a lot", Akal Takht Jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti said.
Vedanti who happened to be inside the temple at the time said tempers were running high during the operation. "What happened was not good and could have been avoided."
However, Manjit Singh, Member, Delhi Gurdwara Committee said forgiveness was of foremost importance in Sikh religion and the "forgive and forget" principle is only logical and positive in the current situation.

Manjit said a lot of healing had taken place and the appointment of Manmohan Singh as India's first Sikh Prime Minister had sent a very strong positive message to the community. Military officials said the Operation was unfortunate but unavoidable in given the circumstances.
When history of the 20th Century is written by dispassionate and bipartisan historians centuries later, Operation Bluestar will always be remembered as a watershed that triggered a chain of events with far reaching implications.
Thousands felt hurt over the action. It led to the assasination of General A S Vaidya. Noted author Khushwant Singh who wrote the book, "My Bleeding Punjab", returned the Padma Bhushan.
Amarinder Singh, present Punjab Chief Minister had then resigned from the Congress party while Simranjit Singh Mann, a bright IPS officer put in his papers and plunged into the so-called Sikh movement.
The operation was termed as the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's last battle and she was shot dead, changing the course of Indian politics forever.
Reverberations of the incident are still felt but as Manjit Singh said, one cannot live in the past and it is time to move on.
He said with Manmohan Singh becoming India's first Sikh Prime Minister, untouchability towards the Congress has come down drastically and a new confidence has been instilled that the party is not against the community.
But Vedanti said to offer a 'siropa' to Manmohan was a different issue altogether and must not be linked with what happened in 1984.

He said a person who sits on the Prime Minister's post is given a lot of respect and generally the Sikh panth honours and felicitates the incumbent.
It was the army which had to bear the brunt of storming the temple complex which undoubtedly was an unenviable task. As the then GOC, Western Command, Lt Gen K Sundarji had said, "we went inside with humility in our hearts and prayers on our lips".
Vedanti however alleges there was violation of human rights and many atrocities were committed by the soldiers in the heat of the moment.
Military officials now feel that it was largely a political problem which was allowed to aggravate and once things went out of hand, the highly unpopular job of flushing out the terrorists was left to the army.
Given the fortifications and well stocked aresenal with the terrorists, the army became a sitting duck with hundreds of jawans losing their lives in the operation.
Jagjit Singh Chauhan, who led the Khalistan movement from London for nearly two decades said as Operation Black Thunder, a few years later (when over 800 militants surrendered) showed, there were better ways of tackling the whole issue.
In 1984, water and ration supply to the Golden Temple had already been blocked, had the army shown patience, most of the people inside would gradually have moved out. Then, only a handful would have remained inside, to deal with them would have been much easier, he pointed out.
Army officials however said things were not all that simple and the operation was launched only when terrorists did not respond to the appeals made through the public address system.

According to the army, last minute attempts were made to avoid bloodshed. A senior civil administration member and a senior army officer through a public address system asked the terrorists and devotees to come outside.
From 4.30 pm to 7.00 pm the attempts continued. Only some 129 devotees many of them very sick were allowed to go. The other hapless ones were held as hostages inside the temple complex, to be used as a deterrent against imminent army action.
The operation prompts varied responses from the people depending which side of the fence one is in. But as Manjit Singh says the Operation was very unfortunate not only for the sikhs but the Indian nation at large.

"Congress was a loser as its main leader was assasinated, the nation lost as terrorism got a new filip, business enterprise suffered, confidence of sikhs was shattered and neighbours got another opportunity to brew trouble across the borders", he said.
Kanwarpal Singh, at present General Secretary, Dal Khalsa and a student at the time said an entire generation which had no interest in religion whatsoever became extremists overnight on hearing about the incident.
Chauhan said even today many youngsters who are not orthodox by heart and have even cut short their hair feel very strongly about the incident.
As army officials said, "we did not start the fire, it was wrong on part of the terrorists to stack arms in the temple, a place of religious peaceful worship".

While the staunch and devout Sikhs like S S Sidhu, a student at the time, feel their psyche had been hurt by the Operation, military officials are quick to point towards the situation in Punjab in the early 1980s.
Not a day went by without massacres of innocents including migrant workers and those who opposed the diktats of terrorists.
According to army officials, hit lists were drawn and death squads were dispatched from the Golden Temple. Those inside were not a rag-tag group and were in fact armed with the most sophisticated weapons including anti-tank rockets. "We lost our men in the most inhumane manner, in one case, dynamite was attached to the body of a jawan and was blown up." In another, three soldiers were exectuted with their limbs chopped off.
In the end, army lost 83 of its men and another 248 were wounded. A total of 492 terrorists and others were killed and 86 wounded. About 1,500 people were captured, which included a number of foreign mercenaries who had taken shelter there.