Indian Police Raid Sikhs’ Golden Temple

Indian police and paramilitary units staged a pre-dawn raid on the Sikh Golden Temple complex in Amritsar on Saturday after turban-wearing gunmen wounded a senior official of the ruling Congress-I Party, Indian news agencies reported.

Government spokesmen said they seized weapons and arrested three suspected terrorists in the dormitories next to the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. It was the first time that a significant armed force had entered the temple grounds since June, 1984, when the Indian army attacked the temple to remove Sikh separatists inside.

Saturday’s raid was immediately condemned by leaders in the Sikh religious community. “An act directed to humiliate the Sikhs as a whole and play again with their religious sentiments,” said Prem Singh Lalpura, acting president of the management committee for all Sikh temples.

Indian government officials said that they entered the temple complex seeking “criminal elements hiding there.”

“The search went off peacefully and without any untoward incident,” the government announcement said.

The early morning raid on the complex--which includes the temple itself, the storage hall for sacred texts and residential compounds for housing pilgrims to the shrine--came the day after a bold, daylight attack by two gunmen on Raghunandan Bhatia, a secretary general of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress-I Party.

Bhatia, 65, was hit by three bullets, one of which remained lodged in his neck. He was listed in stable condition Saturday night in an Amritsar hospital. A visiting colleague was killed.

Red, Black Turbans

Witnesses said the attack was carried out by two men, one wearing a red turban and the other a black one. One of them was armed with a Sten gun, the witnesses said.

Bhatia was the most senior Congress-I Party official attacked in the ongoing Sikh conflict since Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikhs on her house security staff last Oct. 31.

The latest episodes came only a week after widely heralded moves by Indira Gandhi’s son, the present prime minister, to resolve the Sikh crisis. Gandhi announced a judicial inquiry into the killings of at least 1,000 Sikhs in New Delhi by Hindu mobs, some believed to have been incited by Congress Party leaders, after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

In addition, Rajiv Gandhi announced the lifting of a ban on a militant Sikh students organization blamed by the government for a series of terrorist attacks preceding the army assault on the Golden Temple last June. He also announced that Sikh leaders detained in Punjab state under the National Security Act would be released.

These actions were seen as a breakthrough in the Sikh crisis, in which the prime minister had given Sikh leaders responsibility for solving the conflict.

“At long last, silver linings have begun to show round the dark clouds that have covered the Punjab skies for over three years,” said Sikh historian Kushwant Singh, who is a member of Parliament.

Friday’s attack on Bhatia was thus seen as an attempt by more militant Sikhs--those seeking to convert Punjab into a separate state for their people--to damage hopes for settling the lingering problem.

“These acts of violence are primarily aimed at retarding the process of reconciliation and settlement of the Punjab problem,” said a joint statement issued by Arjun Singh, former Indian chief air marshal, and I.K. Gujral, former Indian ambasssador to the Soviet Union.