Word: gandhis
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...Gandhi risks her future in an attack on Sikh extremists...
...ordering her troops to storm the temple, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi took her biggest political gamble since she declared a national emergency in 1975. Last week's decision could add to the turmoil of a nation already torn by violence. Some Indian commentators voiced fears for the future of the world's largest democracy. "What happened inside the Golden Temple is a turning point in India's modern history," said the eminent Sikh Historian Khushwant Singh. But Mrs. Gandhi apparently felt she had no choice but to attack. Bhindranwale and his followers had stockpiled guns, rifles, antitank...
...violence in Punjab to alarming levels. In the past months alone, more than 300 people had died in Sikh-inspired violence. At the same time, tensions from last month's rioting among Hindus and Muslims in Bombay had built to such a degree that politicians began questioning Mrs. Gandhi's control over the country. There was speculation that further instability could cause her governing Congress (I) Party to suffer a serious setback in the national elections scheduled to be held by next January...
Three days before the attack, Mrs. Gandhi made an urgent appeal on national radio and television to all Sikhs to end their agitation. She outlined a framework for a settlement. "Let us sit around the table and find a solution," she pleaded. She had already agreed to most of the Sikh demands for religious autonomy and was willing to amend the constitution to distinguish Sikhs from Hindus. But Mrs. Gandhi felt that if she gave in to the Sikh demand for political autonomy, she would risk a Hindu backlash...
...Schell argued that the apocalyptic nature of nuclear war had rendered obsolete not only war itself but the concept of national sovereignty. He called on the superpowers to eliminate nuclear weapons and to "reinvent politics" by creating a world government loosely based on the pacifist ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. His message was ultimately defeatist: unless the world took his vaguely defined and wildly Utopian advice, it was doomed...