Word: punjab
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...month after she ordered the bloody assault in Punjab against Sikh fanatics at the Golden Temple of Amritsar, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had once again pounded her fist in the name of buttressing India's system of centralized government. Mercifully, there seemed to be little immediate likelihood in Srinagar that the action would lead to the type of bloody confrontation that claimed more than 600 lives in Amritsar. The troops had been sent to Jammu and Kashmir to keep the peace as the state government was being rocked by New Delhi's ouster of the freely elected Chief...
...explosive resentments in Kashmir, however, have added to the strain of other sectarian agonies in India: the rebellion that continues to disrupt neighboring Punjab, and the Hindu-Muslim animosity that has simmered for months in India's northeastern state of Assam. The question many concerned Indians are asking is whether Mrs. Gandhi is a bulwark against disruptive regionalism, or one of its principal causes...
...India's population is Hindu; 11% is Muslim, 2.6% is Christian, and the remaining 3.4% is divided among Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and others. Over the past year there have been riots or incipient rebellions in places as scattered as Assam in the northeast, Kashmir and Punjab in the north, and Maharashtra in the west. Only a month ago rioting broke out between Hindus and Muslims in the shantytowns around Bombay, leaving 258 dead. The Assamese are upset about the influx of refugees from West Bengal and neighboring Bangladesh. Every tribe has its nationalists, every community its zealots...
...always played a disproportionately large role. According to an official spokesman last week, the interrogation of Sikh prisoners indicated that 17 retired Indian army officers above the rank of colonel had been involved in extremist activities. Of these, two officers had collected large sums of money from people throughout Punjab, even inside the temple, and used the funds to buy arms. One of the fund collectors was said to have escaped to Europe, while the whereabouts of the other was not known...
...Sikh leader, possibly retired Lieut. General Jagjit Singh Aurora, a hero of the 1971 Bangladesh war. In the past the Sikhs have sought the exclusive use of Chandigarh, the Le Corbusier-designed city that since the creation of the predominantly Hindu state of Haryana out of the heavily Sikh Punjab in 1966 has served as the capital of both states. Mrs. Gandhi is prepared to let the Sikhs have Chandigarh to themselves and build a new capital for Haryana, but has asked that, in return, Punjab should allow two of its largely Hindu districts to be transferred to Haryana...