Word: punjab
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Thus has Amritsar, in the northwestern state of Punjab, become the center of a bitter feud between Sikhs and Hindus. Distinguished by their traditional beards and turbans, the Sikhs follow their own casteless, monotheistic religion, and over the past 15 months those in the Punjab have mounted a determined drive for greater autonomy from New Delhi. The more the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has resisted, the more savage the Sikh campaign has become. Last month six men hijacked a night bus at gunpoint, herded eleven Hindu men into a field and, with cold-blooded efficiency, shot...
Located on the Pakistani border, Punjab is one of India's most strategic states. It is also the wealthiest agricultural region, supplying the nation with 80% of its wheat. Yet when it comes to industrial development, claim the Sikhs, the government consistently slights them. Sikh moderates would be appeased by an increase in state power; a small radical minority, however, is determined to fight for an entirely separate state called Khalistan. So far, more than 100,000 Sikhs, known as the Akali Dal (Action Party) "Sacrifice Squad,"' have sworn to lay down their lives in the present struggle...
...Just flying over the Punjab today gives a feeling that terrible things have happened below. The number of smoking villages that can be counted from Ambala up to Lahore must be at least...
...Lahore's Central Station, Sikh and Hindu refugees from North or West Punjab were mobbed on the platform, often stabbed to death and their few belongings looted. A major incident involved a big convoy carrying perhaps 1,000 from Sialkot to Amritsar. The convoy was stopped and attacked at the Ravi River bridge. Hundreds were stabbed to death and other hundreds wounded...
...Refugees from Lyallpur in West Punjab say that so many Sikhs and Hindus were murdered and their bodies thrown into the canal that the canal actually had a pinkish color for a day after. Moslem refugees told how Sikhs stripped and paraded Moslem women through the streets, raped them and then killed them...