Word: sikhs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...AFTERMATH of the brutal assassination of Prime Minister Indira Ghandi, a plethora of media coverage has catanulted Indian political and religious issues into the limelight of the international public. Most notably, the current rampant violence between Sikhs and Hindus throughout the country, but particularly in the Sikh-majority state of Punjab, has focused discussion on Gandhi's controversial decision to send the army into the Golden Temple in Amritsar last June to flush out the Sikh extremists there. But such debate has--at least in this country--typically lacked a deeper understanding of India's religious, political and historical traditions...
Among the issues that have been most distorted is the very nature of the Sikh-Hindu rift in the realm of religious doctrine. By stressing Sikh monotheism and opposition to the caste system in contrast to Hindu polytheism and age-old caste system. Western observers have presented the two religions as inherently hostile towards each other. Yet this interpretation misstates, the true nature of the Hindu religious tradition; the non-credal, non-dogmatic nature of Hinduism allows it to be extremely pluralistic and to uphold coexistence with the Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. Moreover, to pit Sikhism and Hinduism against...
Bhindranwale, by advocating the violent elimination of innocent Hindu civilians and of police and government officials, both Hindu and Sikh, who tried to maintain order, forged together a group of Sikh extremists composed largely of the unemployed, youths and criminals. He grasped initiative away from the collaborating Akali Dal, a political party of right-wing Sikhs. Wanted for arrest due to his directives to kill given Hindu leaders and Sikh moderates. Bhindranwale sought protection in the Golden Temple. There, he sent out directives to kill more individuals, organized military training exercises preparing the extremists for war, and converted the sacred...
...overstating the inevitability of Sikh, Hindu antagonism, then, Western observers have misrepresented the true nature of the Golden Temple controversy. The conflict was not simply one of conflicting groups, but of a radical seet of Sikhs committed to violence. The Sikhs who had been using the temple as their base were gathered under the fanatical but charismatic Bhindranwale, an extremist leader who was killed in the Golden Temple fighting. His Khomeini-like messianic appeal included public speeches glorifying violent means aimed at acquiring a separate Sikh nation. "It should be clear to all Sikhs...that we are slaves and want...
GIVEN Bhindranwale's radical calls to violence, it is seemingly the extremist Sikhs, not Gandhi, who bear the burden for the escalation of violence in the Sikh separatist movement. Moderate Sikhs had, until the Golden Temple incident, disowned Bhindranwale's extremists as fanatics and madmen, but in their united anger at the army takeover of their shrine, they came to look upon the same fanatics ar martyrs. Such a view betrays the fact that the moderate Sikhs had had no real voice prior to the Temple confrontation, due not to the doings of Gandhi and her party, but rather...