Punjab Tension Grows as Sikhs Seize Temple

India’s troubled Punjab state appeared headed for a fresh crisis Monday after armed Sikh militants seized control of the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar and the government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi failed to meet a deadline in its agreement with Sikh political leaders.

For the first time since the bloody raid in June, 1984, by the Indian army on the Golden Temple, the Sikh religion’s holiest shrine, militants seeking an independent Sikh homeland in Punjab gained control of the temple.

About 8 million Sikhs live in Punjab, India’s most prosperous agricultural state, as do at least 6 million Hindus who find themselves increasingly alienated from the Sikh community.

Tension Building Again

For several months after a July, 1985, accord between Gandhi and leaders of the mainstream Sikh political party, the Akali Dal, Punjab remained relatively quiet. However, in recent weeks, tensions have been building again--especially last week after a New Delhi judge sentenced three Sikhs to death by hanging for their roles in the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi’s mother, in October, 1984.

Visitors Monday to the nearly 400-year-old temple said that several hundred Sikh youths were on the grounds, most of them armed with swords and shotguns.

The actions by the militants have drawn angry responses from Sikh moderates. At a meeting Monday in Chandigarh, the capital that Punjab shares with the neighboring state of Haryana, leaders of Akali Dal condemned the temple seizure as “part of a big conspiracy to destroy the Sikh faith.”

Followers of Slain Militant

Most of the militants appeared to be followers of the late Sikh fundamentalist leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was killed in the 1984 army raid, in which the government says 491 other Sikhs died.

“They have seized the place physically,” said Sikh historian and political leader Khushwant Singh, a member of the Indian Parliament. “They will have to be physically ejected--there is no doubt.”

In the temple on Sunday, militant leaders, members of the All-India Sikh Students Federation, which formed the political base for Bhindranwale and the separatist Damdami Taksal religious group, repudiated the five official high priests of Sikhism and named Bhindranwale’s nephew, Jasbir Singh, as head of the Golden Temple. Jasbir Singh is in jail in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Meanwhile, one of the main pledges in the Punjab peace agreement initiated by Prime Minister Gandhi failed to materialize as the government missed its deadline for transferring the city of Chandigarh to Punjab, and Hindu areas of Punjab to the neighboring state of Haryana.

Shared Capital

For the last 20 years, Chandigarh, a modern city of 450,000 designed by the French architect Le Corbusier, has been shared by Punjab and Haryana. According to the agreement signed by Gandhi and a since-slain moderate Sikh leader, Harchand Singh Longowal, Chandigarh on Sunday was to have become exclusively a part of Punjab. This was to have coincided with an Indian national holiday, Republic Day.

The transfer was considered an important step in resolving the agonizing Punjab conflict, which for the last five years has constituted the greatest single threat to the country’s integrity. In those years, more than 2,000 people have died, including Indira Gandhi, in incidents related to the Punjab and to Sikh-Hindu enmity generally.

After a commission appointed by Rajiv Gandhi failed to come up with a recommendation for transfer of Punjab territory to Haryana in exchange for the loss of Chandigarh, the government canceled the Chandigarh move.

The chief ministers of the two states, Congress Party politician Bhajan Lal in Haryana and Sikh leader Surjit Singh Barnala in Punjab, have been at the center of an increasingly hostile dispute over the territories. “They are behaving like they are heads of two sovereign states,” one Indian official said.

Recent Violence

In the last month, as the number of violent incidents in both Punjab and Haryana has increased, tensions in the two states have heightened considerably.

On Jan. 6, terrorists struck in Punjab, killing seven and wounding 12. Last Tuesday, five Hindu protesters against the Chandigarh transfer were killed by police fire in Haryana.