This 1984 article published in TOI by the journalist and author suggests that the attack, timed to provoke Hindu-Sikh tensions, was a cold-blooded strategy intended to alienate Sikhs from mainstream India and create a separatist base in Punjab
The oped article ‘Indira Gandhi’s Assassination: Part of Separatist Design’ by economist, journalist, and author Prem Shankar Jha, published in The Times of India on November 7, 1984, examines the context and potential motivations behind the prime minister’s assassination. Jha argues that her assassination was part of a larger, calculated separatist agenda aimed at deepening divisions between Sikhs and other communities across India, rather than an isolated act of revenge for Operation Bluestar (the military action against militants in the Golden Temple earlier that year).