ABSTRACT
In the mid-1970s, when militant young Sikhs first began to attack the Nirankaris - members of a small religious community perceived as being anti-Sikh - few observers cpuld have predicted that that violence would escalate into the savagery that seized the Punjab in the 1980s. The Sikhs as a community were too well off economically, too well educated, it seemed, to be a party to random acts of terror. Yet it is true that militant encounters have often played apart in Sikh history, and in the mid-1960s a radical movement very much like that of the 1980s stormed through the Punjab. The charismatic leader at that time was Sant Fateh Singh, who went on a well-publicized fast and threatened to immolate himself on the roof of the Golden Temple's Akali Takht unless the government made concessions that would lead to the establishment of a Sikh-majority state. The Indian government, captained by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, conceded, and the old Punjab state was carved in two to produce a Hindumajority Haryana and a new Punjab. It was smaller than the previous one, and contained enough Sikh-dominated areas to give it a slim Sikh majority.
