BIG 'ANGER VOTE' IS SEEN IN PUNJAB
LEAD: In the prosperous state of Punjab, homeland of Indian Sikhs, an embittered and divided electorate will choose only 13 of India's 545 members of Parliament. But among those 13 may be the widow of one of Indira Gandhi's assassins and two men now in prison, charged with complicity in her murder.
In the prosperous state of Punjab, homeland of Indian Sikhs, an embittered and divided electorate will choose only 13 of India's 545 members of Parliament. But among those 13 may be the widow of one of Indira Gandhi's assassins and two men now in prison, charged with complicity in her murder.
Khushwant Singh, a prominent Sikh historian and political commentator, calls it an ''anger vote.''
Sikhs form only 2 percent of the national population but are a majority in Punjab and are represented in disproportionately large numbers in the military, business and finance. They complain of police brutality as an unelected state government imposed by the Congress Party Government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi battles Sikh militancy.
The Sikhs are solidly opposed to the Congress Party as they vote on Sunday, the last day of polling in the general election, and prominent Punjabis say the Sikhs' resentment is matched among the state's Hindus and Muslims. Anti-Congress Feeling Cited
''As far as I am aware, the feeling among all Punjabis, irrespective of religion, is against the Congress Party,'' R. S. Narula, a former chief justice of the Punjab High Court, said in an interview this week. ''Only where the opposition is fighting within itself, there the Congress will gain.''
But the anti-Congress vote will be split. Young Sikhs are being courted by the parties of the left and by an array of local militants. Many older voters, Mr. Singh said in an interview, are ''totally confused.''
Mr. Singh, a former Congress Party supporter, has urged fellow Sikhs to vote for the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, associated with Hindu fundamentalism. He thinks 90 percent of Sikhs may follow that advice.
Relations between Punjabi Sikhs and the central Government deteriorated in June 1984, after Mrs. Gandhi ordered a military invasion of the Sikh religion's holiest shrine, the 16th-century Golden Temple in Amritsar, to rout heavily armed militants.
The action alienated and radicalized many Sikhs, who with other Punjabis already felt that their state, at the heart of India's agricultural revolution, was not being given its share of industrial and other development projects.
Four months later, the Prime Minister was shot dead outside her New Delhi office by Sikh bodyguards. One of them was shot and killed while in the custody of security forces, and two other Sikhs were executed after being convicted of involvement in the assassination.
Many Sikhs question the solidity of that case, and they are angered that Mr. Gandhi's Government did not investigate and punish the perpetrators of several days of violence after his mother's death, in which Sikh neighborhoods were ransacked and burned and thousands of Sikh men and boys slain.
No comments:
Post a Comment