Brahma Chellaney - Notable Work - Coverage of Operation Bluestar

Coverage of Operation Bluestar

Professor Chellaney began his career as a journalist in his early 20s, working as the South Asia correspondent of the leading international wire service, Associated Press. Although he worked as a journalist only for a couple of years, he covered, as AP correspondent, the June 1984 Indian security operation, known as Operation Bluestar, to flush out heavily armed Sikh militants holed up in the sprawling complex of the Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine. His exclusive coverage won him a prestigious journalism award—a Citation for Excellence in 1985 by the Overseas Press Club, New York. Mr. Chellaney later finished his Ph.D. and entered academia.

Before the storming of Golden Temple by Indian Army starting on June 3, 1984, a media blackout was enforced. Brahma Chellaney of the Associated Press was the only foreign reporter who managed to stay on in Amritsar.

His first dispatch, front-paged by the New York Times, The Times of London and The Guardian, reported a death toll about twice of what authorities had admitted. According to the dispatch, about 780 militants and civilians and 400 troops had perished in fierce gunbattles. The high casualty rates among security forces were attributed to "the presence of such sophisticated weapons as medium machine guns and rockets in the terrorists' arsenal." Mr. Chellaney also reported that "several" suspected Sikh militants had been shot with their hands tied. The dispatch, after its first paragraph reference to "several" such deaths, specified later that "eight to 10" men had been shot in that fashion. The number of casualties reported by Mr. Chellaney were far more than government reports, and embarrassed the Indian government, which disputed his facts. The Associated Press stood by the reports and figures, the accuracy of which was also "supported by Indian and other press accounts" according to Associated Press; and reports in The Times and The New York Times.

The government cited Mr. Chellaney's dispatches published in the New York Times, The Times of London and The Guardian to accuse him and the Associated Press of breaking the press-censorship order that had been promulgated in the state of Punjab. There were three reasons why no formal charges were ever filed. First, the government threat caused outrage in the journalism world and civil liberties organizations. The New York Times took the lead, carrying several editorials severely criticizing Indian authorities. In one editorial, titled "Truth on Trial—in India," it said Mr. Chellaney "provoked displeasure by doing his job too well." The Associated Press Managing Editors Association, comprising editors of major U.S. newspapers, adopted a resolution calling on the Indian government to "cease all proceedings, under way and contemplated," pointing out that '"responsible Indian officials have corroborated Mr. Chellaney's news dispatches from Amritsar." Other media organizations also protested.

Second, the Associated Press and Mr. Chellaney took the case to the Supreme Court of India, which set up a full constitutional bench to hear the matter. The government act was also challenged as "unconstitutional" by Maharaja of Patiala, Amrinder Singh, in a separate application filed in the Supreme Court. Third, Mr. Chellaney's reporting had been corroborated by several other Indian publications and by the army general who commanded Operation Bluestar, Krishnaswamy Sundarji. Sundarji, in an interview to the now-defunct Illustrated Weekly of India, confirmed Mr. Chellaney's death toll of nearly 1,200 in that operation. As a top editor of the Indian Express later wrote, investigations by the newspaper "found that what Chellaney had written was absolutely correct."

The pending preliminary investigations were formally dropped in September 1985. "Mr. Chellaney's only offenses were enterprise and accuracy," the New York Times editorialized, hailing the decision.