100,000 Mourn at Sikh Leader’s Funeral

Sikh political leader Harchand Singh Longowal, assassinated while pleading for peace in troubled Punjab, was cremated Wednesday, surrounded by 100,000 chanting mourners.

The body was brought to his home village in a motorcade of 200 vehicles, then wreathed in roses and marigolds and burned on a funeral pyre with full state honors. Police estimated that another 100,000 people lined the route to the village.

There was heavy security at the funeral, and soldiers and commandos guarded Sikh and government leaders attending. Among them were Defense Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Punjab’s state governor, Arjung Singh.

The army was placed on alert in Punjab, where Sikh extremists want to establish a separate nation, and in neighboring states. Security was tightened in New Delhi, and a curfew was ordered in most parts of Ludhiana, Punjab’s largest city and industrial center.

Longowal, moderate president of the main Sikh political party Akali Dal, was shot to death Tuesday in a temple courtyard in Sangrur district four weeks after he signed an accord with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi aimed at ending the Punjab crisis.

Longowal, a 57-year-old Sikh preacher, was appealing to a religious gathering for peace between Sikhs and India’s Hindu majority.

Another man was killed and seven were wounded, including one of the four men police said were Longowal’s killers. Police said two gunmen escaped.

Throngs of mourners chanted and tossed garlands Wednesday as the body, clad in saffron and white, was carried to the pyre in this remote village whose name he had taken as his own.

Villagers sprinkled rose water along the procession route.

Lighted by Priest

Clarified butter, camphor and incense were poured on the body. The wooden pyre in a Sikh temple courtyard was lighted by a high priest of Sikhism, whose creed combines elements of both Hinduism and Islam.

Weeping mourners shouted, “Longowal is immortal!” Many wore turbans of saffron, the Sikh color of defiance.

Gandhi pledged in Parliament: “We will fight terrorism with all our might.” Both houses were adjourned for the day after lawmakers of all parties paid tribute to Longowal.

The killing occurred 27 days after Longowal signed the peace accord with Gandhi in New Delhi. Militants have rejected the pact as a sellout of the Sikhs, who are the majority in Punjab, and extremists had vowed to kill him.

Punjab officials said that shops, markets and businesses across the state were closed by a one-day strike to protest the assassination. The United News of India news agency also reported shop closings in some other parts of India.

The peace agreement between Longowal and Gandhi was intended to end three years of turmoil in Punjab led by Sikhs who want either a separate nation or greater autonomy for the state, where most of the sect’s 13 million members live. It is the only state in which Sikhs are a religious majority.

Longowal was imprisoned for more than nine months after the army invaded the sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar in June, 1984, to drive out Sikh militants who were using it as refuge.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who ordered the raid, was assassinated Oct. 31, and Sikh members of her personal bodyguard are charged with the killing. Rajiv succeeded his mother as prime minister.

Longowal was shot hours after Sikh gunmen killed a Hindu leader of Gandhi’s Congress Party and wounded two other party members in Jullundur.