Terrorists Warned : India Bombs Toll at 72; 730 Arrested

Police and army units swept through Sikh temples and neighborhoods across northern India on Saturday, seeking suspects in 30 terrorist bombings that rocked Hindu areas of the north Friday night and early Saturday and killed at least 72 people, many of them passengers on trains and buses.

By late Saturday, authorities said they had arrested more than 730 men, mostly youthful members of the Sikh faith, in New Delhi and the nearby states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Top government officials threatened even sterner action if the terrorist campaign, believed to be part of a militant effort by fundamentalists seeking a separate Sikh homeland in Punjab, continues.

The bombing attacks began Friday evening when gunpowder-filled bombs, hidden in transistor radios, exploded on buses and trains simultaneously in the federal territory of New Delhi, in adjacent Haryana state and in Uttar Pradesh. Those blasts killed at least 60, including women and children, and injured 109. Early Saturday, at a time when devout Hindus gather in parks for meditation and exercise, five more bombs went off, killing 10 people walking in the parks.

40 in New Delhi

More than 40 of the victims were killed in the capital alone, the worst episode of Sikh-Hindu violence here since the bloody aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by two Sikh members of her security staff last Oct. 31.

Government leaders used strong language in describing official reaction to the terrorist attacks. Lt. Gov. M.M.K. Wali of New Delhi promised “ruthless action” against the terrorists. In a nationally broadcast address, Home Minister S.B. Chavan vowed “grim consequences” if the terrorists were not stopped.

“There is no doubt that some anti-national elements, who do not wish the political process to begin for the solution of the Punjab problem, are indulging in these provocative acts,” Chavan said in his speech. “Their obvious intention is to create panic and to disrupt communal harmony.”

Khushwannt Singh, a Sikh historian and member of Parliament, echoed Chavan’s remarks. “The terrorist plan is fairly clear,” he said. “They want to promote a Hindu backlash so the Sikh is driven out in Delhi and other places. Eventually then, the Hindus would be forced out of the Punjab.”

More than half of India’s 15 million Sikhs live in agriculturally rich Punjab state. But at least 6 million Sikhs, including 1 million here in the capital, live outside of Punjab. The non-Punjabi Sikhs tend to be against the drive for a separate Sikh state, and the terrorists hope, government officials say, that attacks against Hindus will provoke counterattacks against the non-Punjabi Sikhs.

Such attacks on Sikhs could result in attacks on the 6 million Hindus living in Punjab and plunge north India into religious warfare.

Many prominent Sikhs immediately condemned the outbreak of terrorist bombings.

“The wanton destruction of innocent lives and property as a result of these explosions is condemned unreservedly,” said a statement issued by Sikh Forum Secretary Jangsher Singh. The Sikh Forum, a new organization formed as a counter to the militant separatist groups, is made up of Sikh military and business leaders.

In a significant political development Saturday, Harchand Singh Longowal, president of the Akali Dal Party, the most powerful Sikh party in Punjab, resigned. Longowal, who was jailed by the government for most of the past year because of his political activities before and after the army’s raid last June on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, apparently lost out to more militant Akali Dal forces.

Elements in the party have urged Joginder Singh Bhindranwale, the aged father of separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was killed in the Golden Temple raid, to take control of the party, a mostly symbolic move that would represent a shift to separatist ideology.

Indian authorities have been negotiating with Sikh leaders about ways to solve the three-year-old crisis in Punjab, but Home Minister Chavan warned in his Saturday speech, “Let no one mistake that the measures we initiated in the last two months to begin the process of normalization are a sign of weakness.”

Although nearly everyone conceded Saturday that the bomb attacks were the work of Sikh terrorists, younger Sikhs interviewed in New Delhi were bitter about quick government actions against them.

“It is not fair to blame the Sikhs,” said Mohinder Singh, 27, of New Delhi. “There are other states in India which have actions against the government. They have no proof it was Sikhs. Anyone can wear a beard or a turban (universal attire among Sikh men).”