When Congress leader P. Chidambaram spoke at the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, last weekend, it was meant to be an intellectual and not a political exchange. But one line was enough to tear open one of the Congress’s longstanding wounds—about the 1984 Operation Blue Star.

“No disrespect to any military officers here,” Chidambaram said, “but that was the wrong way to retrieve the Golden Temple. A few years later, we showed the right way (Operation Black Thunder) to retrieve the Golden Temple by keeping out the Army. Blue Star was the wrong way, and I agree that Mrs [Indira] Gandhi paid with her life for that mistake. But that mistake was a cumulative decision of the army, the police, the intelligence and the civil service. You cannot blame it only on Mrs G

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