The book is nicely written and is informative. It starts with a brief history of Sikhs, the long drawn roots of the movement, how it turned into terrorism, to the army operation and its aftermath. As pointed out in the book political leadership of the time was more to blame - Government did "too much too late". Too much because they acted too late which closed all the moderate options. Too late because a movement of small issues was allowed to grow into terrorism. The struggle for power and its wrath, once again, is well established. The dastardly act of few in power after the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi is brought out without wavering. And how the government machinery stood observer to inhuman killing of innocent people. The book carefully brings out controversial accounts, but not consistently. The book fails to paint the right picture of extent of terrorism - loots, killing of individuals, sects and groups, and attacks on government machinery with bombs and arms supplied from outside the country. Things can be argued one way or the other about the army operation. Everything is fair in love and war! The fact remains that army operation was inevitable and the Congress party, SGPC and Akali Dal were all equally responsible. While the first one created the problem, the other two supported and all the three used the propagators apart from the outside worlds, which helped in kind and cash both.

I will have to say that it is not a complete account of the movement. It fails to account for all the forces that supported the movement, financial, political and moral. Origin of Sikhs is not mentioned at all.

The above review from the person from california is absolutely incorrect. I think the person has the wrong book. In no way was this book ever banned in India, rather encouraged. This is a biased one sided work that wasted so many trees in publication. For the sake of saving our environment as well as your time I recommend a more thorough and unbiased work titled: "Fighting for Faith and Nation: by Cynthia Mahmood.

I suggest all the people that don't buy this book because the author was Indian government agent during the operation of Blue Star. He didn't write a lot of things that happened but instead he wrote good things about Indian government that Indian troops took their shoes off before entering Golden Temple but it's not true. All the troops had their shoes on in the Golden Temple. I even has seen the pictures. So I request everyone not to read this book.

Gen KS Brar, a sikh himself, was chosen to lead this thankless and foolish effort called Operation Bluestar. Brar discusses the background of the operation with an objective eye of a soldier. As he understands it, the operation was necessitated when Bhindranwale and his band fortified themselves in this holy place and started ruling Punjab by issuing murder decrees. Being a sikh and coming from an Indian army family, I can say that this is only partially true. In hindsight, Bluestar should have been a police action like Black Thunder. What the book doesn't bring out as clearly is the clumsy effort of the army (that lacked any kind of intelligence input) to carry out the operation. The blame for this operation rests solely on Indira Gandhi who let the situation deteriorate to such a state that the operation had to be contemplated.

The book is a necessary read for anyone following Punjab politics if only because it comes from the actual soldier who carried out the operation rather than some hatemongers from Canada who also call themselves Sikh.