All the Way Back to Square One

By Michael S. Serrill

Dusk was falling as the four Sikhs climbed into the crowded bus near the small town of Tanda. They wore rough shawls against the winter cold. The bus was hardly under way when the four pulled automatic weapons from beneath their garments and forced the Hindu driver to turn onto a lonely country road. There the gunmen ordered all Sikh men--identifiable by their turbans and beards--Muslims and women to get off the bus. They commanded the remaining 33 passengers, most of them Hindu, to shout the praises of a Sikh terrorist recently killed in a police shoot-out. Then, as the frightened bus riders began to comply, the gunmen cold-bloodedly opened fire. Twenty-two men died in the fusillade. The terrorists escaped with accomplices on motor scooters.

The events "take us back to square one," said Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as he addressed a tumultuous session of Parliament the next day. Indeed, the grisly bus massacre shattered New Delhi's claims that terrorism was on the wane and dimmed hopes for future political stability in the troubled northwest Indian state. Sikhs, who make up 2% of the Indian population but form a majority in Punjab, have long wanted greater autonomy from the central government in New Delhi. But even before the Indian army's bloody 1984 invasion of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhdom's holiest shrine, an extremist minority had agitated violently for the creation of an independent state. Shortly after the temple assault, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Rajiv's mother, was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards.

Predictably, news of the latest slaughter was followed by rioting in New Delhi. Days of sporadic incidents culminated in confrontations late in the week between security forces, Sikh religious zealots and Hindu militants, leaving six dead, including three police. Since the beginning of the year, more than 500 people have been slain in Punjab-related violence.

Gandhi moved decisively to quell the crisis, pressuring Punjab Chief Minister Surjit Singh Barnala to arrest an estimated 200 Sikh political leaders and extremist figures in predawn sweeps. Chief among them: Prakash Singh Badal, leader of a breakaway faction of the Akali Dal party, which rules Punjab state, and Gurcharan Singh Tohra, the powerful head of the state committee that manages Sikh temples. Tohra, who has been accused of appeasing terrorists, was detained after he announced he would abolish the special security force that since last summer has prevented the use of the Golden Temple as a haven for terrorists.

Many observers were dismayed at the arrests of Badal and Tohra. The daily Hindustan Times editorialized that the jailings were a "costly blunder" likely only to push the two Sikh leaders closer to terrorist elements. Gandhi vigorously defended the arrests, saying the "toughest and most aggressive" measures were needed. But by jailing moderate and militant alike, the Prime Minister seemed for the moment to have abandoned his 25-month search for a political solution to the Punjab problem.

With reporting by Reported by Ross H. Munro, K.K. Sharma/New Delhi