The Punjab divided

Richard West

Amritsar

On the night train to Amritsar, in north- west India, one thinks of the horrors along this track at the time of the partition in 1947. Trains carrying Muslims fleeing West, or Hindus and Sikhs making the opposite journey, were stopped, and later arrived at the frontier with every passenger butchered — man, woman and child. The Punjab is now divided; but once again there is communal violence, this time between the Hindus and their former ally the Sikhs. In the state still bearing the name Punjab, which includes Amritsar, young Sikhs on motor-scooters have shot up Hindu villages and bombed a Hindu religious procession. In the neighbouring area of Haryana, where Sikhs are in a minority, Hindu extremists have burnt six Sikh temples, and held up cars and buses to search out and kill men wearing the beard and turban.

The Sikh old gentleman in my compart- ment was relieved as the train came out of Haryana into Punjab. When the sun rose next morning, he indicated the prosperity of the Punjab countryside: the sturdy brick cottages, the canals, and young wheat stret- ching for miles in well-tended fields. The Punjab is the showpiece of what politicians like to call India's `Green Revolution', and it looks more prosperous than almost anywhere in Asia or Africa or, for that mat- ter, Eastern Europe.

`This land produces all the wheat that India needs,' the old Sikh told me. 'Before partition, the best land was in the West, but now under Pakistan it's poor. The irriga- tion isn't good and the people are lazy. The Sikhs are very hardworking farmers.'

And good soldiers, mechanics and athletes, he might have added; for Sikhs are not diffident. It is partly a sense of their own worth that explains the recent militan- cy of the Sikhs in what they call the Akali Party, whose extremists talk of a separate Khalistan.

Sikh politics are subordinate to a religion that springs from Hinduism but recognises only one God, and claims to reject the caste system. It is a warrior faith, which is why the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the holy place of the Sikhs, is also their fortress. Worshippers touch the miraculous tree; they bathe in the lake that forms the interi- or of the Temple; they eat the communion paste of butter, sugar and flour. Yet these days, armed Sikhs with rifles and Sten guns camp on the temple rooftops; sandbag bar- ricades have been positioned; the entrance gate is fortified with steel.

All Sikh men and women may wear the dagger or sword. The 87-year-old Sikh religious leader at the Golden Temple car- ries not only a sword and spear but a .32 calibre revolver. This ancient, walking arsenal of a man is a sant or saint to the faithful, but many Hindus in the Punjab. and Mrs Indira Gandhi's government, blame him for egging on if not harbouring terrorists.

These suggestions are ridiculed by the head of the Golden Temple Information Centre, Narindarjit Singh: 'The Congress government is working on an old British design (1 beg pardon to you) of divide and rule.' He went on to suggest that agents provocateurs were responsible for attacks on Hindus and that most of the deaths in the countryside were ordinary crimes. 'In Punjab every day there are three or four murders but now they call them all political. In Delhi there are 12 killings a day. They should give Delhi over to the army.'

Then Narindarjit Singh outlined the grievances of the Golden Temple Sikhs: boundary revisions with Haryana, higher payment for Punjab water, and less control from New Delhi. The Sikhs also want to give Amritsar 'Vatican status' with a pro- hibition on drugs like alcohol and tobacco. `Right opposite this temple,' Narindarjit Singh complained, 'There is a shop selling cigarettes.'

A colleague who had been in Iran com- pared the temple guru and his supporters with Ayatollah Khomeini and his fanatics. The Indian left, the Russians, and many supporters of Mrs Gandhi suggest that the Golden Temple men are pawns of Pakistan or the CiA. The mass-circulation Blitz magazine (a cross between the News of the World and the New Statesman) carries the front-page headline 'PLOT TO BLOW LP GOLDEN TEMPLE: The strategy of the Akali extre- mists, their Khalistani bed-fellows and the

feel out of it — the world is thinking up more evil things to do than even I can think of '

American agents who are master-rnindt° "operation destabilisation" was to 131-c114C- New Delhi into a commando operation to break into the Golden Temple in ordetiE° arrest the criminals hiding within iE5 sa precincts. This would provide the last with a pre-determined opportunity to btu- up the famous gurdwara Ta Sikh teroPle- which has been wired with the dental.; ready fer the foul deed_ The outrage wdu be blamed on New Delhi with horrenclou" consequences for India.' The Indian government. may still be aBering a plan to `take out' the Colvjl, Temple, probably from the air since tf`A winding alleyways of Amritsar bar a g.1"Tro attack. However, such an assault, ri manages to take the Golden Temple,trug- provoke an invasion of Sikhs froth .In countryside round Amritsar. It ETI10." alienate those many Sikhs who do t113tiil prove of terror; in several instances-

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have come to the rescue of Hindus attai"1",i in Amritsar and neighbouring dis,,trta Moreover any attempt by Mrs Garldwei: `take out' the Golden Temple would 51jr invite unpleasant comparisons with 1,51 'Amritsar Massacre' of 1919, the r11,,w1- sacred page in the history of the nationalist movement. On i3 April year, the British General Dyer ordered tie Gurkha troops to fire on a crowd at oset Jallianwala Bagh, an enclosed ground dale to the Golden Temple. Nearly 300 Cl,„rsz were killed during the fusillade, d result was to join Hindus. Muslims '":t1 Sikhs into a nationalistic fervour that nui advanced independence. AmlitsarAari therefore the holy place of the nationalist movement as well as of Sikhs.

Although Amritsar is outwardlY when compared with, for instance, Bel7he India has cause for anguish about ia future. Quite apart from the possibility

thof Eot;

communal bloodbath, as in 1947, ble has hit the most prosperous Part ,,,ro country. Trade has fallen 15 per cent ne: the exodus of frightened migrant worked" The disappearance of those pebble c neighbouring states, mostly Fitad„uti- Muslim, also threatens the 'Green Ntiie tion'. A Sikh farmer is quoted by one °,41.15: papers as saying of this year's prose old 'Farming today is like a dog chewing ari, of dry bone and relishing blood oozing ou` his own wounded Nor can we Britisgh regard the Punjab 1,563. distant problem that does not concerti 1.a.. According to the Golden Temple ilfiarrilirt tion Service, 80 per cent of the Indian so Britain stem from the Punjab. There "—Air many Sikhs in the West Midlands that etri India runs a twice-weekly flight bet*for Amritsar and Birmingham, mostly tor pilgrims to visit the Golden TernPle.'„ not can we be sure that the violence wt" rris spread. Already this year some Kos and living in Britain have been arrested charged with the murder of an 111,,.0 diplomat. It would prove a gruesome " if the next Amritsar massacre were to t"" place in Birmingham.