Word: sikhs
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Thus, in the wake of rampant killings, mounting fanaticism, and reports of the alarming military build-up of the Golden Temple, Gandhi and the center can hardly be accused of intentional brutality in calling in the Indian army. Sikhs and Sikh supporters loudly condemned the army move, outraged by the government's desecration of their holiest shrine. But does this not skirt the sacriligious behavior of the Sikhs in using a place of worship revered by millions as an arsenal and sanctuary for murderers. Furthermore, the charge made by some of Western observers, the New Yorker for example, that Gandhi...
...more valid criticism of Gandhi's treatment of the Sikhs would focus on her policies towards the Akali party when she regained power in 1980. During the two years following the 1977 election that voted Gandhi out of power, a coalition of the Sikh Akali party and the Hindu Janasangh party ruled the state of Punjab. When Gandhi and her Congress Party returned to rule the country, she made no effort to win over the ousted Akali politicians and incorporate them into the new government in Punjab. This left the Akalis to join forces with Bhindranwale, to become submerged...
Since 1980, nevertheless, the center had participated in negotiations with the Akali party and had in fact conceded to many of the Sikh demands that did not affect the status of the other Indian states. These include the constitutional recognition of Sikhism as a distinct religion different from Hinduism and the arrangement for broadcast rights from the Golden Temple on the All India Radio. The contentious issues, however, have been the very demands of religious, political, economic and territorial nature that involve other states and therefore dismiss the feasibility of simple bilateral bargaining between the Sikhs and the central government...
...SURPRISINGLY, the solution to these complex problems must lie beyond the Indian government alone--it must, to a great extent, rest in the hands of the Sikhs themselves. Sikh extremism has obviously continued without Bhindranwale, and the leading politicians of the Akali party are now in jail for their compliance with Bhindranwale. The moderate voice of the Sikhs must take the initiative in representing the whole of the Sikh community as the immediate bloody aftermath of Gandhi's death begins to be replaced by more normal conditions...
...notion of a "Khalistan," a separate Sikh state, remains an unworkable goal; the Sikhs--who represent only 2 percent of the Indian population--could never survive as an independent nation. Too many economic, territorial and population factors run against the murmurs of creating a separate state. Only 40 percent of the Sikhs live in Punjab; the rest are scattered around other parts of the country. To implement the establishment of a separate and solely Sikh nation would only result in massive and traumatizing migrations of non-Sikhs out of Punjab (almost half of the present population there) and of Sikhs...