Word: punjab
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...normal circumstances, entering the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Punjab, the holiest of Sikh shrines, is a serene and majestic experience. Over the past few weeks, however, the temple has become a formidable fortress. Religious symbols mix with modern rifle muzzles, automatic weapons, swords and battle-axes. Even women are armed, and some children as young as five have daggers hanging from their belts. The Sikhs, a sect of 12 million that broke with Hinduism at the end of the 15th century, are known equally for being charitable hosts and aggressive warriors. Today they seem solely the latter, as they...
Resistance to Sikh militancy from Hindus in the Punjab and the neighboring state of Haryana has raised the latest violence to alarming levels. Within the past two months, at least 88 people have died and almost 250 have been wounded in frenzied clashes. In one instance, Sikh extremists threw a grenade into a Hindu religious festival in Amritsar. Three people were killed, 51 injured. The Hindus quickly became an outraged mob, charging the police and accusing them of favoring the Sikhs. Unable to contain the crowd with their long bamboo poles, police opened fire with tear gas and finally...
...they had enjoyed preferential treatment in the armed forces and civil services, and were given special representation in elected bodies. With independence, those privileges were lost, and the Sikhs became politically subservient to the Hindu majority. Soon they began agitating for their own state. In 1966 they were given Punjab by the federal government. Although that state has India's richest, most fertile land, the Sikhs still felt their portion was too small compared with that of neighboring Haryana, the state created at the same time for the Hindus. Therefore, the Akali Dal Party, the political...
They came by the millions when times were good, from backward villages in Anatolia and the Punjab, from the Caribbean and North Africa. For the most part, they were welcome, even sought after. They constituted a willing and indispensable Lumpenproletariat for Western Europe's postwar boom, ready to do work no one else wanted to do. Their large families, their mosques, their exotic costumes and customs were merely transitory inconveniences. One day they would vanish: the "migrants," the gastarbeiters, the travailleurs immigrés would simply go home. But they stayed, and a new generation grew to adulthood: dark...
...violence has shattered centuries of friendship between Sikhs and Hindus, and it is spreading. Three bombs have already exploded in Delhi, and last week, in Punjab's neighboring state of Haryana, Hindu mobs began storming Sikh-owned shops. With neither side giving way, tensions seem sure to mount. In the ominous words of senior Akali Leader Prakash Singh Badal, "The central government has already taken the Punjab problem to the point of no return...