Word: gandhis
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...blamed the rash of attacks on terrorists belonging to India's Sikh minority, which for the past three years has been agitating for greater autonomy. Sikh terrorists had last, and most spectacularly, struck in New Delhi on Oct. 31, 1984, when two bodyguards, both Sikhs, assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as she was walking from her residence to a television interview in her garden. Now, declared Home Minister S.B. Chavan, "a coordinated, well- planned operation has been launched to terrorize, to create fear in the minds of citizens and to disrupt communal peace and harmony." The government, he said, would...
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, already beset by unrest in the states of Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir, immediately called his Cabinet into emergency session and ordered special security measures. Police leaves were canceled and troops in battle gear called in to patrol sensitive areas of the capital, particularly the sections along the Yamuna River that have large Sikh populations. President Zail Singh, himself a Sikh, called off a planned state visit to Zambia to be on hand in what the government considered a major emergency...
...terrorist strikes raised the possibility of another sectarian bloodletting between Sikhs and Hindus, the largest of India's religious groups. An estimated 2,000 Sikhs were killed in massacres following Indira Gandhi's murder. As Sikhs in New Delhi and elsewhere huddled in their homes, fearful of another murderous backlash, security forces sealed highways into and out of the city and subjected plane, train and bus passengers to careful searches. Police swept through ten Sikh temples in New Delhi, hunting for suspects. Some 200 Sikhs were detained in New Delhi; 600 more were arrested in sweeps in Haryana and Punjab...
...terrorists' new campaign was a defiant challenge to Gandhi's efforts to find a peaceful solution to Sikh grievances, and shattered hopes for early negotiations. Since he took office after his mother's assassination, Gandhi, 40, has given top priority to dealing with the Sikh crisis. For the past three years, that struggle has focused on Punjab, a northwestern state in which the Sikhs, a relatively prosperous 2% minority in greater India, have a slight majority. Tensions came to a head last June after armed Sikh radicals, many of them demanding an independent state to be called Khalistan, barricaded themselves...
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi last week became the latest in a long line of world leaders who have attempted to mediate an end to a conflict that hardly anyone thinks can be won by either side. "We continue to believe that there can be no military solution," U.S. State Department Spokesman Edward Djerejian declared, "and we call upon Iran to join Iraq in accepting the many international calls for a cease-fire and a negotiated settlement." The problem is that as long as Khomeini, 84, is on the scene, the Iranians are unlikely to enter into negotiations...