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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 2, 1984
PAGE 9
historian, "how many of them there are in the world, and he may
well reply 1.5 billion. This is a vast but understandable exag
geration, as every Sikh looks upon himself as� lakh [equal to
125,000 other people]..•and, he is committed to the ideal that
anything anyone else can do, a Sikh can do better."
The leaders of India have often portrayed their nation as espousing a
peaceable middle way between the military powers of the East and the West.
But at home, peace is a rather rare commodity, as this November 1 ASSOCIATED
PRESS dispatch from New Delhi reveals:
The wise men of India have preached love, tolerance and pacifism.
Flower children from around the world have flocked here in search
of spiritual enlightenment. Political leaders have called for
peace and disarmament in a troubled world. But India itself was
born out of communal carnage [in 1947] in which 1 million Hindus
and Moslems died. Its 37 years of independence have been marked
by wars, feuds, insurgencies and daily, random cruelties that
make India one of the world's most violent societies••••
Just four months ago, before the army raid [ at the Golden Tem
plel, Mrs. Gandhi called on Sikhs and Hindus, "Let us join to
gether to heal wounds..•. Don't shed blood, shed hatred." India,
she said, belongs equally to Hindus, Moslems, Christians, Sikhs,
Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and others. Sikhism itself, she said,
was born as a faith to bring together people of different reli
gions. "Let not a minuscule minority among the Sikhs be allowed
to trample underfoot civilized norms for which Sikhism is well
known," she said.
The bloody campaign for Sikh independence that brought death to
Indira Gandhi is but the latest chapter of Indian violence.
Daily the newspapers are filled with routine reports of bandit
murders, police brutality and rape, labor violence, caste feuds,
communal troubles and the burning of brides by dowry-greedy in
laws. In some states landlords keep armies to suppress tenants
who want more land and rights. In India, the slightest provoca-
tion, even a traffic accident, can trigger a riot. Police fre
quentlycITsperse crowds with steel-tipped bam15c5c>staves or gun-
fire••••
Communal riots between Hindus and Moslems broke out last May in
the cosmopolitan Arabian seaport city of Bombay, and in the near
by town of Bhiwandi Hindus torched a Moslem settlement. More
than 280 people died•••• In February and March 1983 native Assam
ese in the northeast massacred 3,500 Bengali settlers from Bang
ladesh; Indian commentators said the nation shrank from facing
itself in a mirror.
The coming days and months could be very tense in the world's largest and
yet most tenuous democracy. Will the government use the Indian Army to
crack down on Sikh extremism? Will Sikh officers and recruits desert the
army in protest? Said one American observer: "If the Sikhs can't be trusted
in the Indian Army, then India doesn't have-an army."
Then too, Sikh
farmers in the Punjab, in reaction to any crackdown, might be tempted to lay
down their plows in protest. · All of India would soon face a serious