India Strike to Protest Sikh Killings Erupts in Violence

A strike called to protest terrorist killings by Sikh separatists in northwestern India erupted in violence here Thursday, with Hindus attacking Sikh shops and houses.

Police fired tear gas to break up Hindu mobs after a Sikh temple was set on fire and damaged. No serious injuries were reported, but 200 people were arrested.

Eight more killings were reported in Punjab state, bringing to more than 90 the number of such killings since Monday, when the current round of violence began. Among Thursday’s dead, according to the Press Trust of India, were a prominent Communist Party leader and four members of his family.

In the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, security forces escorted hundreds of Sikh pilgrims from the holy city of Rishikesh, where two Sikhs had been killed the day before by enraged Hindus.

Rishikesh was the destination of a bus that was hijacked Monday by Sikh terrorists who shot to death 38 of the passengers. On Tuesday, terrorists attacked two buses and killed 34 people.

The killings are believed to be part of an effort to polarize the Sikh and Hindu communities in connection with a campaign for a separate Sikh state, Khalistan. Sikhs are a tiny minority in India but are the majority in the Punjab region of the northwest.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who took direct control in Punjab state in May after he dismissed the Sikh government for failing to maintain order, on Thursday deplored the religious aspect of the violence.

“There will be peace,” Gandhi said at a ceremony dedicating a research institution, “only if killing people in the name of religion is put to an end.”

The strike, which was called by the Hindu-based Indian People’s Party, paralyzed public transportation not only in Delhi but in several other cities as well. Most shops were closed and security forces were on the alert. Police placed sections of Delhi under curfew, affecting 300,000 residents.

The most violent incidents here took place in the Patel Nagar section of West Delhi, which is home to Hindu refugees from the Punjab and Sikh families that lost husbands, fathers and brothers in the turbulence that followed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by members of her Sikh bodyguard in 1984.

In the northwest, the situation was described as very tense. Police spokesmen in the region said many people have been outraged by pictures and articles in the press dealing with the massacres of Monday and Tuesday.