Principal Sikh Party Supports New Agreement : Its Leader Defends Pact With Gandhi for Greater Autonomy

Akali Dal, the main political party of India’s Sikhs, agreed Friday to make peace with the government in its often-violent campaign for political and religious autonomy in Punjab state.

“The morcha (confrontation) is finished,” Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, party president, said in announcing acceptance of an accord he signed Wednesday with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to end four years of agitation in Punjab and other Sikh areas of northern India. Several thousand have died in the violence and thousands more have been jailed.

Akali Dal (Army of the Immortal) represents most of the 8 million Sikhs who live here in Punjab.

Longowal met with party leaders in a Sikh temple where nearly 300 years ago members of the sect first took up arms as part of their religion, a practice they continue to this day. He explained the accord he made with Gandhi, which grants many of the demands made by the Sikhs in previous meetings held in Anandpur Sahib, beginning in 1973.

Agreement a Compromise

The agreement represents a compromise between Akali Dal’s demands for greater autonomy for Punjab and Gandhi’s determination that any solution must be found within a united India.

Longowal, a short, soft-voiced former village preacher, said that he had consulted the Sikh holy book before signing the agreement.

“I did it on the guidance of God,” he told the 150 Akali Dal leaders assembled on the top floor of the temple. “I think it is the best thing for the Sikh people. Now it is up to you to either accept it or reject it.”

Government officials in Delhi had felt that Friday’s meeting of Akali Dal would be the biggest initial test of Wednesday’s agreement. If the political leaders had failed to ratify the accord, months of work to end the cycle of violence in northern India would have been wasted. The violence included the killings by Hindu mobs of more than 2,000 Sikhs in the wake of last year’s assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two Sikh members of her security force.

Some to Continue Protests

Some Sikh militants have vowed to continue their protests. The All India Sikh Students Federation rejected the accord at a meeting Thursday in Amritsar, and the Press Trust of India news agency quoted student leader Harinder Singh Kahlon as saying that the pact represents nothing more than an agreement between Longowal and Gandhi.

The news agency reported Friday that a hard-line Akali Dal faction headed by Joginder Singh has called a public meeting for an unspecified date at the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, Amritsar’s Golden Temple, to review the accord. Joginder Singh’s son, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a fiery preacher, was killed with about 1,000 other Sikhs when Indian troops stormed the Golden Temple in June, 1984, to quell agitation for a separate Sikh state in the Punjab.

For several hours Friday, the outcome of the meeting at the white-marble shrine here was uncertain. Akali Dal leaders, including former members of Parliament and district party heads, heard speeches from two of their number who argued stridently for rejecting the agreement.

‘It Is All Ruination’

“We have got nothing out of the accord. It is all ruination,” shouted Gurcharan Singh Tohra, one of the rejectionists. Tohra, a politician and a former president of the Sikh temple management committee, argued that there should be no agreement while thousands of Sikhs remain in jail and several thousand Sikh soldiers face courts martial for desertion.

Punjab Gov. Arjun Singh had said Friday that at least 3,000 Sikhs, mostly young men swept up from Punjabi villages by government forces, remain in jail.

“Unless there is general amnesty for these men, the dignity of the Sikhs cannot be restored,” Tohra said.