Word: akali
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...emerged with enough strength to form a government. As a result, the Congress Party, which ended up 42 seats short of a majority, is attempting to organize a government by lining up the support of independent legislators. But in the northern state of Punjab, the Sikh communalist party, the Akali Dal, entered into a working arrangement with the Hindu Jana Sangh Party that will enable the two parties to form a coalition government...
...party fared better last week in another of India's new states. In the northwest prairie state of Punjab, Tara Singh, 71, the white-bearded leader of India's 6,000,000 Sikhs, abandoned his fight for a state of Sikhistan, and ordered his 36-year-old Akali Party of bearded, sword-wearing zealots to join the Congress Party. Henceforth, said Masterji Singh, Akali will stick to religious, economic and cultural matters only. His admonition to his Sikhs, traditionally the great warriors of India: "Girdle your loins. Buckle your sword-hilted belts. Shave no more. Visit our temples...
...Moslems can get Pakistan, and the Hindus India, why not a Sikhs' Sikhistan?" But Nehru's Congress Party won over many of Tara Singh's followers to the idea of peace, and of a multiracial India. In the 1951 general elections, Tara Singh's Shiromani Akali party lost heavily. "Ye unbelievers," cried old Tara Singh from out the depths of a magnificent beard, "there will come a time when you will need me and flock around me-for your very survival...
Party regularity is enforced one way in Russia, another way in the Fifth Congressional District of Missouri (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), and still a third way in the Akali Party which represents India's tough, handsome, primping Sikhs. Last week Akali headquarters cracked down on four members who confessed supporting a Congress Party candidate in last July's elections. All four were ordered to sweep the floor of the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar. Then each got individual punishment...