I. Background

A. Roots of Conflict

The 1980s in Punjab witnessed a decade-long insurgency, fueled by failed attempts at procuring greater autonomy, water rights, local control over agricultural production and prices, and redress for human rights abuses. The Sikh community’s grievances with the Indian state related to: issues fundamental to their identity, such as Article 25 of the Indian Constitution, which defines Sikhs as Hindus and thus denies the distinct existence of the Sikh religion; complaints of territorial loss, specifically the government’s transfer of Punjab’s capital Chandigarh to the Union and of Punjabi-speak-ing lands to Haryana; and economic deprivation. Throughout the 1970s, government canals diverted seventy-five percent of Punjab’s river waters to Rajasthan and Haryana, in violation of the international law of riparian rights. The diversions forced small farmers to use expensive and erratic tube well irrigation.[2] Since the 1950s, thousands of Sikhs had engaged in civil disobedience and risked arrest in protest over these issues.[3]

In the 1980s, the economic burdens on Punjabis increased. The army imposed a cap on the percentage of Sikhs in the army, which caused a dramatic rise in the educated unemployed in Punjab. The rise in educated unemployed denied many small farmers their only source of capital investment in the form of wages from family members employed in the army.[4] Central government investment in Punjab fell from 2% to 0.8%, placing further economic burdens on the state.[5] On May 24, 1984, the Akali Dal, the Sikh

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political party, channeled discontent into an agitation that blocked transport of Punjabi wheat and withheld taxes from the Indian government.[6] The government responded by deploying 100,000 army troops in Punjab, setting the stage for the violent attacks of June 1984.[7]

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