CHANDIGARH, Aug 4, Reuter: More than 300 Sikh leaders met in the religion’s holiest temple today to discuss the political future of Punjab, as continuing violence in the north Indian State left three more people dead.

Sources at the meeting, held amid tight security at the Golden Temple Complex in Amritsar, said it left the Sikhs sharply divided after freedom fighters rejected a resolution urging them to seek greater autonomy through peaceful means.

The freedom fighters fighting for an independent State also opposed the moderates’ decision to appoint Darshan Singh, Head Priest of the Akal Takht, the highest seat of spiritual authority of Sikhism, as leader of the campaign to win greater rights from New Delhi.

Singh had called the Assembly of leaders of India’s 16 million Sikhs, saying they were at a critical stage.

 

He urged authorities to release 378 freedom fighters detained since the Indian army stormed the Golden Temple in June, 1984, to reinstate 247 Sikhs who deserted the army after the assault and to free 4,000 other Sikhs held by police.

Labh Singh, leader of the Khalistan Commando Force, in a message to the meeting made the position of the freedom fighters clear saying: “Our target is Khalistan (an independent State for Sikhs) and we should not accept anything less than that”.

The force along with other similar groups has been waging a determined fight for an independent state carved out of Punjab.

Sources close to the freedom fighters informed World Sikh News that the groups fighting for independence feel that the question of autonomy within the Indian Union has become irrelevant in view of the unparalleled sacrifices and bloodshed of the Sikhs. They also refused to put their trust in Hindu rulers who are motivated by their fundamentalist obsession to destroy the separate Sikh identity.

While the four-hour meeting progressed, hundreds of freedom fighters, watched by an equal number of police, chanted slogans and distributed pamphlets calling for independence state Khalistan.

As the meeting was in session, one freedom fighter and two other Sikhs were shot dead in separate incidents in Punjab, bringing to more than 630 the number of people killed in the last seven months, compared with 640 for the whole of 1986.

Article extracted from this publication >>  August 7, 1987