Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale - Legacy

Legacy

Cynthia Keppley Mahmood wrote in Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues With Sikh Militants that Bhindranwale never learned English but mastered Punjabi. He was adept at television, radio and press interviews. Keppley further stated that "those who knew him personally uniformly report his general likability and ready humour as well his dedication to Sikhism". The author further states that "Largely responsible for launching Sikh militancy, he is valorized by militants and demonised by enemies and the accounts from the two divergent sources seem to refer to two completely different persons."

Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was praised by many Sikhs as a martyr of our times, but by others he was considered a militant. Though journalist Khushwant Singh believed himself to be on Bhindranwale's hit list, he allowed that the Sikh preacher-become-activist genuinely made no distinction between higher and lower castes, and that he had a restored thousands of drunken or doped Sikh men, inured to porno films, to their families, and that Operation Blue Star had given the movement for Khalistan its first martyr in Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. In 2003, at a function arranged by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, Joginder Singh Vedanti, former jathedar of the Akal Takht made a formal declaration that Bhindranwale was a "martyr" and awarded his son, Ishar Singh, a robe of honor. Harbans Singh's The Encyclopedia of Sikhism describes Bhindranwale as "a phenomenal figure of modern Sikhism."

Vir Sanghvi, one of India's leading political commentators said, " remains a martyr in the eyes of many Sikhs.Bhindranwale is also criticised as being directly responsible for the instigation of Operation Blue Star after he intentionally turned the Akal Takht into a fortress, but the question unanswered by the government of India is why 38 other gurdwaras in Amritsar were also desecrated on the same day.