Word: punjab
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...bearded, sword-swinging Sikhs want a lion's share of the Punjab. This is a parched and heat-seared prairie land in northwest India lying south of Kashmir, where the Sikhs fought a century-long battle with invading Moguls and earned the name of being the great warriors of India. Later, fighting as professional soldiers and serving as cops for the British in odd corners of the colonial world, they made their fighting reputation stick...
...meetings if you want, but not in processions with swords at every waist." Tara Singh defied the ban and was arrested. But taking a leaf out of Gandhi's book, he instructed his followers to remain "nonviolent" and "to offer no provocation." Since then, all over th,e Punjab,, bearded Sikhs have stood in front of policemen (the favorite place: before the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar), shouting their slogans and courting arrest. Already nearly 7,000 Sikhs have been jailed...
...Karachi last week, iron-minded, frail bodied Governor General Ghulam Mohammed decreed for himself further "emergency powers." He signed an edict combining four provinces (Sind, Baluchistan, West Punjab and Northwest Frontier Province) and several princely states into one unit called West Pakistan (pop. 33.5 million). He put his civil servants to work on what Pakistan's Constituent Assembly had for seven years failed to achieve-a constitution...
Since 1952, in state elections, the Communists have stepped up their percentage of the popular vote from 8.5% to 13.5%; in Madras they have grown from 5.4% to 22% and in the Punjab from 7% to 16.7%. India's Communists, with only 60,000 card-carrying members, hold 26 seats in the New Delhi Parliament, have gained effective control of 800,000 trade unionists; they can paralyze India's biggest city, Calcutta, at will. In impoverished India the Communists also have excellent future prospects: the nation's urban unemployment is increasing by 500,000 a year...
Though eventually there should be water enough for all, the new canal will divert the Sutlej River. waters, which irrigate much of Pakistan's fertile West Punjab, before Pakistan can build compensating canals. Pakistan fears that Nehru-or a less friendly successor-could, if he wished, turn West Punjab into the desert it once...