Kuldip Singh Brar

His father, Digambhar Singh Brar (1898–1997), was a Subedar and then an officer of the Nabha State Forces Infantry, served in World War II and retired as a Major General of the Indian Army in 1952.

He studied at the Doon School, an all-boys' boarding school.

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.

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.

K S Brar was born in 1934 into a Sikh family.

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.

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

In 1984, Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, decided to deploy the army to flush militants along with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his associates out of the Golden Temple at Amritsar complex.

The operation was tasked to K S Brar, under the direction of Lt. General Krishnaswamy Sundarji (then chief of western army command) and Lt. General Ranjit Singh Dyal (then chief of staff in the command), who planned this operation codenamed Operation Blue Star.

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.

He and his wife were set to fly to Manila on the night of 1 June 1984 for a month-long vacation.

However, on 31 May, he was summoned to the Chandimandir Cantonment in Chandigarh, and given the mission to carry out Operation Blue Star.

His leave was cancelled in view of the urgency of the mission.

The division at Amritsar was being relocated to the Indo-Pakistani to guard against any Pakistani move to support the pro-Khalistan militants.

Before the operation started, Brar walked around the Golden Temple in civilian clothes, and saw the militants and the barricades.

His former superior, retired Major General Shabeg Singh, who led the militants, saw him making rounds, and knew that he was up to something.

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.

Brar asked the police if they could send emissaries to help get the civilians out, but the police believed that anyone sent in would be killed by the militants.

They believed the militants were keeping the pilgrims in as a shield.

Eventually, around a hundred sick and old people were let out.

These people informed the army that the others were not being allowed to come out.

When asked about why the army entered the temple premises just after Guru Arjan Dev's martyrdom day (when the number of devotees is much higher), General Brar said that it was just a coincidence.

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.

General Brar talked to his men (many of whom were Sikhs) personally on the morning on 5 June 1984, and told them what they planned to do and why they were doing it.

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.