Click to play videoNew Delhi: It's been 25 years since Indira Gandhi's Operation Bluestar to the day but Nirmal Singh remembers the sequence of events as though it happened just yesterday.
A witness to the infamous military Operation Blue star, Singh was one of the few cameramen who caught the battle on his camera.
“We took the pictures on the sly,” he recalls.
Even though the operation was carried out under strict media black out, few journalists did manage to record the final build up.
“Bhindaranwale held a press conferecen on the afternoon of June 3, hours before the attack . It was his last appearance, four days later his body was discovered at the Akaal Takht,” recalls Senior Journalist Satish Jacob.
At the end of the siege, almost 500 civilians and 83 armymen lost their lives.
Even today the walls of the Akal Takht bear the scars of that battle. But while they can be plastered over, the scars on the community's conscience may never heal.
The question that still haunts the state is would Punjab ever bury the ghost of Operation Bluestar?
Speaking at an election rally recently, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that some people are keeping the issue alive for their "selfish interests".
Was he right in suggesting so? For the new generation that didn’t witness the horror of violence in Punjab, the answer is not easy.
Some young Sikhs in Amritsar and other parts of Punjab still put up posters of Bhindaranwale, hailing him as martyr .
But for many others, it’s better to forgive and forget. Some like Harpal Singh lives by guru Granth Sahib's teachings, says its time to move on.
“If I have a wound in childhood, I cannot keep crying for the rest of my life, We have to remember our past, but the future is more important,” he recalls.
While the opinion differs on whether the past should be forgotten, one thing that everyone is certain about is that there is no looking back to it.
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