Word: sikhs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Still, Rajiv's most immediate priority is to negotiate some sort of truce with the Sikh community and to end the bloodshed that is ravaging the country. Mrs. Gandhi contributed to the rise of Sikh extremism by refusing to compromise with the moderate faction of the Akali Dal, the Sikh political party, thereby enabling the fanatical Sant Bhindranwale to rise in the esteem of Sikh militants. Rajiv will have to find a way to seek a reconciliation at a time when emotions are inflamed on every side. One step toward solving this and other conflicts would be to permit...
Five days before her death, Indira Gandhi was talking with a foreign visitor about the problems of her country. She did not mention the Sikh problem by name, but she spoke of the need for India to "transcend its demons" and fight off the fanaticism on every side. On Saturday afternoon, her own demons vanquished at last, she was cremated and thereby freed, according to Hindu belief, to proceed with the inevitable process of reincarnation...
Standing at attention more than halfway along the path were two khaki-uniformed security men wearing the traditional beards and turbans that identified them as Sikhs. One of them, Beant Singh, was a favorite of Mrs. Gandhi's: she had known him for ten years. Only two months earlier, when Mrs. Gandhi was asked if she could trust Sikh guards in the wake of her controversial decision to have the Indian army root out Sikh extremists at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikhs' holiest shrine, she had glanced at Beant Singh and said, "When I have Sikhs like this...
...Indira Gandhi died in a tranquil New Delhi garden, a victim of her country's turbulent politics. Mahatma Gandhi was killed in 1948 by a Hindu fanatic enraged by concessions made to the Muslims and by the partition of India and Pakistan. Mrs. Gandhi's murderers were Sikhs, whose religious community of 15 million represents only about 2% of India's population but holds a disproportionately important place in the country's life. For the past two years, a Sikh rebellion has been smoldering in Punjab, their homeland on the Pakistani border. Last June, after failing to quell the Sikh...
...murder of Gandhi by two Sikh bodyguards was an act of unconscionable terrorism in a time increasingly characterized by political violence. The Punjabi Sikhs have repeated clashed with the government in their desire for an independent state, most recently in the government's bloody raid last June on the Sikh shrine at Amritsar that was being used as a base for Sikh separatists. Although we cannot tolerate acts of terrorism by any group, be it Sikhs, Palestinians or Irish, we understand that they multiply in times of frustration on issues of ethnicity and autonomy and abstinence on the part...