AMRITSAR, India: of Sikhs with swords and shotguns packed the Golden Temple Sunday to support militant leaders who called for a social boycott of Hindu opponents and threatened a fresh confrontation with New Delhi.

The gathering in the Sikhs holiest shrine was convened as troops in the northern states of Punjab and Haryana were alerted to prevent possible violence over a hitch in New Delhi’s plans to implement its July, 1985 peace pact with moderate Sikhs in Punjab.

For the first time since army troops stormed the Golden Temple in June, 1985 to crush the demand for autonomy, the Sikh youths took over the glittering Golden Temple complex for a ‘mass gathering known as a “sarbat Khalsa”.

Scores of submachine gun-toting paramilitary troops in riot gear were deployed outside the shrine during the daylong gathering called by the widely respected Sikh religious organization, Damdami Taksal, and the once-outlawed All India Sikh Students Federation.

‘The gathering was convened to launch the sacred restoration rites ‘of a building damaged in the 1984 army operation and represented a major victory for the radicals who forced temple authorities to abandon their own reconstruction plans

Amid chanting of prayers and Shouts of “Khalistan!” the name proposed for an independent Sikh nation militant leader led a huge procession through thousands of supporters armed with swords, spears and shotguns.

“This convention clarifies that Sikhs are slaves in India,” said/a resolution read by Damdami Taksal priests. “Independence is their fundamental right.

Militant leader Baba Joginder Singh warned New Delhi in a speech to release hundreds of Sikhs in preventive detention. “If the government does not do that, we will take some other steps” to be announced later this week, he said.

Another resolution called) for the expulsion of the temple’s two most senior priests, Sahib Singh and Kirpal Singh, for their cooperation with the government, and the appointment of Damdami Taksal pontiffis in their place.

The two priests and most of the. moderate members of the Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, the authority that oversees all Sikh shrines in India, were not in the temple during the function and ‘could not be reached for comment.

Sahib Singh and Kirpal Singh ‘were wounded last year in separate attacks.

The convention also, blasted Hindus who declared their mother tongue as Hindi during a recent survey in southwestern Punjab, rather than the Punjabi language spoken by most of the state’s 20 million people.

A resolution called on Sikhs “to socially boycott those people of Punjab who advocated the snatching away of the nights of the Sikhs”: It is said that these people were “the communal Hindus of Punjab who refused to accept their mother tongue Punjabi.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 31, 1986