Word: sikhs
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...guns fell silent last week around the Sikhs' Golden Temple complex in Amritsar, Punjab, leaving a tentative, uneasy calm in their wake. Steel-helmeted troops were positioned on many street corners, ready to quell any new outbreak of violence. The revered Golden Temple remained intact, but surrounding buildings lay in ruins or were seriously damaged. The destruction was a testament to the bloody battle that raged there for 36 hours earlier this month, after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the army to attack more than 1,000 heavily armed Sikh extremists barricaded inside the temple grounds...
Three days before the attack, Mrs. Gandhi made an urgent appeal on national radio and television to all Sikhs to end their agitation. She outlined a framework for a settlement. "Let us sit around the table and find a solution," she pleaded. She had already agreed to most of the Sikh demands for religious autonomy and was willing to amend the constitution to distinguish Sikhs from Hindus. But Mrs. Gandhi felt that if she gave in to the Sikh demand for political autonomy, she would risk a Hindu backlash...
Industrious and ambitious, the Sikhs have turned Punjab, one of the few areas in which they form a majority, into a model of agricultural efficiency, thereby helping make India self-sufficient in wheat. Sikh politicians are demanding economic improvements from the central government, such as higher wheat prices and more investment in Punjab. Some Sikhs want a form of regional autonomy that would give to Punjab authority in all areas of state government except currency, railways, communications and defense. Others want the city of Chandigarh, which is also the capital of the neighboring Hindu state of Haryana, to be designated...
...defiant and charismatic Bhindranwale, known to his followers as "the guiding light," emerged in 1978 as the most radical of the Sikh leaders. He possessed a mythic sense of his own destiny and claimed from an early age that he was fated to lead the Sikhs in their struggle for autonomy. Gradually distancing himself from the more moderate Akali Dal, Bhindranwale began in 1981 to use holy places as sanctuaries and military training grounds for Sikh fundamentalists rallying around him. The tall, lean leader always wore a sword as well as a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver on a gun belt...
...ordering the assault on the temple, Mrs. Gandhi has placated critics who accused her of dangerous inaction on Sikh terrorism. But she has seriously harmed her standing with moderate Sikhs who did not support Bhindranwale's fanaticism although they revered the Golden Temple as a shrine of peace. "I don't understand why Mrs. Gandhi gave the order," said Historian Singh. "We had been given assurances that there would never be an armed intervention, but they have gone back on their word. No serious Sikh can entertain thoughts of talking to Mrs. Gandhi now." Only through cautious maneuvering...