Sikhs Celebrate Accord but Signs of Discontent Remain

Making his rounds Thursday morning in a prosperous area with many Sikh families, milkman Chowdhery Narayan Singh, known to everyone as “Baba,” reported celebrations at nearly every Sikh home.

A day earlier, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had made an announcement of dramatic importance for the Sikhs: Gandhi and Harchand Singh Longowal, president of the main Sikh political party, signed an agreement that they hope will end four years of bloodshed and tension between the Sikhs and their neighbors in northern India.

The Sikhs won many concessions, among them the incorporation of Chandigarh, an ultra-modern city, into the Sikh-dominated state of Punjab. Until now, Chandigarh has been a federal territory shared as the state capital by Punjab and neighboring Haryana state.

“The sardars (Sikhs) are all shouting ‘Chandigarh is ours! Chandigarh is ours!’ ” Baba Singh reported. The 15 million followers of the Sikh religion have great influence in India and are known for their boisterous displays of emotion.

The displays did not please the milkman, a Hindu of Haryana who favored keeping Chandigarh the way it was. “Very, very bad,” he said. “Haryana lost too much. Now what is going to be the capital for Haryana?”

Baba Singh, 60, complained that Gandhi, 40, did not consult older leaders when he made his decision. “But I cannot do anything,” the milkman complained. “No one will listen to me. My heart is not feeling well.”

There were other signs of dissatisfaction Thursday with the historic agreement, which also ordered the creation of a special tribunal to mediate water disputes between Punjab and Haryana and promised jobs to Sikh soldiers who were discharged when they deserted their units after the Indian army raided the Sikhs’ sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar in June, 1984.

State legislators in Haryana, an agricultural state of 13 million bordering Punjab on the south, threatened to resign over the issue. Some opposition leaders in the state called the agreement a “sellout” and a “grave injustice.”

Leaders of Sikh political groups that are rivals of Longowal’s Alkali Dal party, particularly the Sikhs pressing for a separate Sikh nation to be called Khalistan, held protests in Punjab cities, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

Key Meeting Today

Meanwhile, some prominent moderate Sikhs voiced concern that a meeting scheduled today by Alkali Dal in the historic Punjab temple city of Anandpur Sahib might result in conflict as Longowal explains the agreement to his party.

However, the overwhelming reaction of most Indians--Sikhs and Hindus alike and members of political parties ranging from the Communists to the ruling Congress-I Party--was relief and joy. The turmoil in Punjab, the richest and most bountiful of India’s states, has pained the whole country.

Hindus and Sikhs, historically close communities with widespread intermarriage, were torn apart by violence after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two Sikh members of her security guard last Oct. 31.

Sikhs Hold Command

India’s military units, in which a disproportionate number of Sikhs have served bravely and achieved the highest levels of command, were divided by the army’s role in the Golden Temple raid. Sikhs living outside Punjab state suffered persecution for violence committed by their fellow Sikhs in Punjab. And for the last four years, India has endured a long and agonizing outbreak of terrorism.

A final, perhaps most telling, blow came June 23 when an Air-India jetliner, a Boeing 747, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Ireland, killing all 329 aboard. Although the cause of the crash has not been established, Indian officials believe that a bomb was responsible. Widespread opinion here is that it was a terrorist bomb planted by parties involved in the Punjab conflict.

“Strangely enough, I think it might have been the plane that was the final straw,” said a senior official of one of the government ministries. “After that everyone, including the Sikhs, said that was enough. There had been enough killing.”

Critics Praise Gandhi

Even loud critics of Rajiv Gandhi and his mother, Indira Gandhi, praised the patience and openness of Rajiv in achieving the agreement, which many doubted could be reached.

“I think it is a wonderful thing that has ended all the confrontation and all the anger and all the discrimination,” said Harbaksh Singh, a retired army general who took up the cause of Sikh deserters after the Golden Temple raid. The agreement said that the government will help the deserters find new jobs outside the army.

“I am delighted,” said Sikh historian Khushwant Singh, a member of the upper house of Parliament. “But I am keeping my fingers crossed about the meeting of the Akali (party) tomorrow in Anandpur Sahib. I hope the terrorists will not create any more mischief.”

During the bitter period after Indira Gandhi’s assassination when more than 1,000 Sikhs were killed in mob violence, Charanjit Singh, a wealthy Sikh industrialist, compared being a Sikh in India to being a “Jew living in Nazi Germany.” But he was full of praise Thursday for the government and Rajiv Gandhi.

“Both the prime minister and . . . Longowal need to be congratulated on a great achievement,” he said. “The most important factor is to stabilize the tension that we have created.

“There have been hard feelings all around. We have to be reconciled to the fact that this is one nation, and people who live in this country have to forgive and forget.”