CHANDIGARH, India— Enactment next week of the first major part of an accord between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and moderate Sikhs has enflamed an old dispute between Punjab and Haryana States and could spark new political violence.
The situation has reached a crisis point for Gandhi and New Delhi policymakers, who have been unable to reconcile the neighbors and face the choice of renewed large scale unrest among members of the Sikh religion in Punjab or an explosion of protests by Hindus in Haryana.
Such is the level of acrimony between the two states that the Chief Ministers Surjit Singh Barnala of Punjab and Bhajan Lal of Haryana refuse to talk to each other even though their offices are in the same building.
“Mr. Bhajan Lal has obviously declared war on Punjab and we are determined to resist it with all the resources at our disposal and to fulfill our constitutional obligations,” Barnala said last week,
The dispute centers on the Jan. 26 transfer to Punjab of Chandigarh, 120 miles north of New Delhi, a unique city designed by French architect Le Corbusier and built in the 1950s that is now administered by New Delhi and serves as the capital of both Haryana and Punjab.
“If they do not give these areas to us, we will not transfer Chandigarh,” said a key Lal aide last week. “There is going to be heavy political fallout.”
Political observers say If Barnala fails in his bid to keep the districts he not only face serious problems from within his own fragmented party, but militant Sikhs who accused the Akali Dal of selling out to Gandhi by signing the accord promise their own brand of trouble,
Haryana opposition parties plan to block all roads and rail traffic through the state Jan. 23 to protest the transfer of Chandigarh,
“We will start a new agitation,” said Davinder Singh China, a senior official in the once banned All India Sikh Students Federation. “The Chief Minister will be corralled. The Barnala government will have to resign.”
The transfer would fulfill the first major provision of the accord signed by Gandhi and Barnal as assassinated mentor, Harchand Singh Longowal, last July aimed at calming agitation by moderate Sikhs over longstanding economic and polite
The Punjab Accord which Barnala calls “sacred” led to September Assembly elections in the northern state that saw his Akali Dal Party crush Gandhi’s Congress (1) Party.
In return for getting Chandigarh, Punjab where the mother tongue is Punjabi, must compensate Haryana, the predominant language of which is Hindi, by giving it Hindi speaking areas contiguous with their common border.
It is over the precise parcel of land that must be conceded to Haryana that tensions have risen between the two neighbors.
That Chandigarh should go to Punjab is widely accepted. » The city was built as its capital when its original capital of Lahore ended up in Pakistan after Britain partitioned the subcontinent in 1947.
The seeds of dispute were sown in 1966, when New Delhi bowed to violent pressure from Punjabi speaking Sikhs to give them a state in which they were the majority. The portion of Punjab left to India after partition was itself divided, leaving the Sikhs the current state of Punjab and creating two new states dominated by Hindi speaking Hindus: Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.
Left without a capital of its own, Haryanas new government moved into the same buildings in Chandigarh as Punjab’s administration.
The move temporarily soothed Sikh sentiments. But in 1969 Sikhs began a new agitation for sole possession of Chandigarh and the following year Prime Minister Indira Gandhi granted their demand with the proviso that Punjab relinquish the agriculturally rich Fazilka-Ab-ohar district in southwestern Punjab.
The so-called Indira Award never took place. The Akali Dal lost the 1972 state election and opened a new offensive that rejected the transfer of Fazilka Abohar on grounds that residents were Punjabi-speaking and it was not contiguous with the Haryana border.
They still maintain that claim, with Barnala saying he was prepared to give Haryana what is considered unproductive land near the City of Patiala, Lal rejected the offer, maintaining a demand for FazilkaAbohar and backing it last month by allowing 15,000 opposition workers to use state-owned buses to travel to New Delhi, where they held a protest at which they clashed with police.
Last week, a commission headed by Justice K.K. Mathew, whose job it is to decide what Punjab areas are to go to Haryana, ordered 1,400 government census takers to the districts with Gandhi’s approval to determine the predominant language in an effort to end the dispute.
The plan ran into trouble when Barnala accused Lal of smuggling Hindi speakers into the districts to tip the census in Haryanas favor.
Lal accused Barnala of forcibly busing Hindus out of the Fazikla Abohar areas and charged Punjab Police intimidated Hindi-speaking residents into claiming their mother tongue is Punjabi.
He has also promised to block the transfer of Chandigarh if the Mathew Commission denies the area to Haryana, creating the potential for trouble on Jan. 26.
Akali Dal Youth Wing Deplores Bamalas Sons Action
Article extracted from this publication >> January 24, 1986
