ON THE WORLD SCENE

GANDHI ASSASSINATION; ETHIOPIA'S ORDEAL The shocking assassination of India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two Sikh bodyguards — one a trusted servant of 15 years — again points up the dangers that daily confront world leaders. Just a short while back (during the Feast of Tabernacles) British Prime Minister Thatcher narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Irish Republican Army when the hotel she was staying at during a Conservative party conference was partially blown up. Had she lingered in her suite for another two minutes, she might have been killed.

How safe is Mrs. Thatcher? And what of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles and his family and other Royal Family members? The Queen is reluctant to increase visible security measures, feeling this would restrict contacts with the public such as her popular "walkabouts." But the IRA would love to score a spectacular hit. It got close to the Royal Family with the 1979 killing of Lord Mountbatten.

In Mrs. Gandhi's case, she had apparently been living on borrowed time ever since this past June, when she ordered the Indian Army into the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the most revered shrine of the Sikh national/religious group. She did this in order to clean out a band of secessionist militants who had taken refuge there and built up a huge arsenal on the premises. The radicals had been responsible for killing hundreds of Indians, mostly Hindus, since 1981. In the temple assault, at least 600, perhaps 1,000, Sikhs died, plus 200 army troops.

As if sensing her end was near, Mrs. Gandhi, the very night before her assassination, told a huge political rally: "Even if I die in the service of the nation, I will be proud of it. Every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation."

While most Indians deeply mourned her loss and world leaders condemned the violent act, the Sikh community worldwide appeared divided. The Secretary General for the Supreme Council of Sikhs in Britain called the slaying "the act of a coward" but said the Prime Minister had been "more or less asking for it." A spokesman for the World Sikh Organization in Southern California was far from grieving. "We are ecstatic," he said. "Justice has been done by God's grace by the shooting down of Indira Gandhi." He added later: "My reaction is the same as any Jewish family to Hitler's death."

Immediately after the assassination, Sikhs across India were set upon by Hindu mobs, their businesses ransacked and burned and their automobiles torched. (They are the taxi drivers of India.) This was a tragic development since the two communities have lived largely at peace for centuries. Some Hindu families have even made it a practice to rear one of their sons as a Sikh.

During the 1980s, however, relations between the Hindus and Sikhs have soured. Militants among the 15 million Sikh minority in India have been pushing for total independence for their home area, centered around the northwestern state of Punjab. Sikhs comprise about 52% of the population of Punjab — formed out of neighboring regions in 1966 as a result of Sikh agitation. The central government has yielded to pressure for more home rule for the Sikhs and recognition of their uniqueness, but has stopped short of allowing an independent "Khalistan" (the Sikh's suggested name) to arise. In early 1983, for example, Mrs. Gandhi gave in to several Sikh religious demands, including the permission to carry their ceremonial six-inch daggers aboard domestic flights all over India. But every concession was met with new demands on the part of the militants.

The Sikhs, of course, have had grievances, too. Here is an article from the December 17, 1982 WALL STREET JOURNAL giving a short history of this unusual religious group, which, though small, is very important to India's overall well-being.

"Sikh" (pronounced "seek") means disciple in Sanskrit, and there are about 15 million of them, followers of a 15th century guru who preached a cross between Hinduism and Islam with a few touches of its own. [The religion is monotheistic and its believers eat meat.] Even in exotic India, the Sikhs stand out. [Their tenth and last guru, in the early 1700s] taught them not to cut their hair, so Sikh men wear turbans to cover long locks and cultivate vast beards that a razor will never touch.

The guru also taught his followers to arm themselves against evil. A citified Sikh might carry only a small kirpan, or dagger, but in the villages a believer also will tote a spear, a saber or perhaps a carbine and a double-barreled shotgun. A Sikh takes off his shoes to approach the Golden Temple he never takes off his kirpan, even to bathe in the temple's holy pool.

By India's humble standards, the Sikhs are prosperous. There is, for example, a parking lot under the Golden Temple — in a country where bullocks and bicycles provide most other people their transport. Luxury buses equipped with TV sets and video recorders deposit Sikh pilgrims in Amritsar.

The Sikhs control whole industries in northern India, including transport and construction. The Punjab, the native Sikh state, on the border with Pakistan, is India's granary. Sikhs have been the backbone of the army since the days of the raj, when they stood with the British against the 1857 mutineers.... But the Sikhs worry that their prosperity won't last. The army is cutting back recruitment.... The "green revolution" meant a decade of growth for the Punjab, but farm output has reached its limit, too. Now the Punjab wants factories.

A factory is a political decision in India, though. The government decides who can build a new factory and where, as well as who can enlarge an old factory and by how much. ... It parcels out electricity and raw materials. It is the government's policy, too, to put industry and investment in the poorer of India's states as a way to distribute the wealth, or at any rate equalize living standards. So although Punjab grows much of India's wheat and sugar, businessmen say they can't get licenses to build refineries or mills. Their crops go to other states for processing, they complain.

Shortly after the assault on the Golden Temple, the June 18, 1984 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR carried an important and ominous — report on the Sikh situation. Here are excerpts:

India's 15 million Sikhs...face a dilemma of exactly how to react to the June 6 Army attack on their Golden Temple. Fiercely proud, imbued with tradition, a martial and privileged class, the Sikhs are clearly outraged and embittered by the assault. And Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in what undoubtedly the greatest political gamble in her years as premier, appears to have played straight into the hands of militant Sikhism, across the length and breadth of this disparate land. Many say she has even made Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale — a militant Sikh leader who was largely responsible for creating the crisis that led to the attack on the Golden Temple — a martyr, as he always wanted to be.... Mrs. Gandhi has thus placed the moderates in the Sikh political party, the Akali Dal, in an untenable position....

In terms of votes cast in elections, the Sikhs may not be that vital for Mrs. Gandhi they are but 2% of India's population of nearly 700 million. But the Sikhs have influence far beyond their numbers, holding top posts in almost every profession.

In the days of the British Empire, when they stood by their colonial masters in the "great mutiny" of 1857-58, the Sikhs were guaranteed a place in the elitist civil and military service — a position which they continue to retain today, though in smaller numbers. Sikhs comprise 11% of the country's 960,000-man Army. They are descendants of the 19th century British "martial class" that accounted for one-third of the Indian Army fighting on the Western front in World War I....

A proud and martial race, the Sikhs' politics and faith are often fused. The paintings of "Sikhs in the Golden Temple's portrait gallery are a testament to the ferocity with which these people have invaded or withstood invasions. Many of the portraits are splashed with blood-red oils — "a reminder," according to artist Kirpal Singh [nearly all Sikhs carry the surname of Singh, which means lion].

Yet farming remains the Sikhs' main livelihood: 80% of them live off the soil. They are 52% of the population in the Punjab.... Without the Sikh farmers in the Punjab, Indians would literally starve. There is no better land, nor richer harvest, in the country, than that of the Punjab's 50,000 square kilometers of land. The state's 9.3 million farmers, 70% of them Sikh, produce 60% of the government's critical stockpiles of food.

The Sikhs are everywhere with their bright, striking turbans and long flowing beards. [One million of New Delhi's population of five million people are Sikhs.] They drive trucks and taxis from southernmost Kanyakumari to northernmost Kashmir. They succeed in many professions. Large numbers are academicians, lawyers, doctors, and civil servants.

There are no official figures on their numbers in India's still prestigious civil service and diplomatic corps, but they are in some front-line positions in India's most critical embassies abroad. "Ask a Sikh," wrote Khushwant Singh, the author and Sikh historian, "how many of them there are in the world, and he may well reply 1.5 billion. This is a vast but understandable exaggeration, 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 Temple], Mrs. Gandhi called on Sikhs and Hindus, "Let us join together 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 religions. "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 provocation, even a traffic accident, can trigger a riot. Police frequently disperse crowds with steel-tipped bamboo staves or gunfire....

Communal riots between Hindus and Moslems broke out last May in the cosmopolitan Arabian seaport city of Bombay, and in the nearby town of Bhiwandi Hindus torched a Moslem settlement. More than 280 people died.... In February and March 1983 native Assamese in the northeast massacred 3,500 Bengali settlers from Bangladesh; 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 food shortage. What would happen to the civil service if Sikh bureaucrats try to emigrate en masse?

Will the "Indian Union," as it is often called, be able to hold to the center? Or will the centrifugal forces of religion, language and ethnicity ultimately cleave the nation into several warring regional ethnic communities, some of whom could be ripe for communist subversion and control? The tremendous load of trying to keep India together falls on the largely untrained shoulders of Mrs. Gandhi's 40-year-old son, Rajiv, who was quickly appointed Prime Minister. Rajiv Gandhi has been active in politics only since 1980. He is considered soft-spoken, not tough-skinned like his mother, not yet possessing darshan, that curious Asian combination of grace and charisma. Mrs. Gandhi was widely accepted as India's "mother," a lofty status that will be hard for any successor to approach.

Sikh extremism may be hard to root out. Said the leader of one radical faction, months before even the Golden Temple action: "We have finished with the organizational stage and are now involved in propagation. Next will come direct action and then, finally, full-scale confrontation. Like the P.L.O., we are seeking international recognition, and at home we are prepared to use terror, the political language of the 20th century.”

Ethiopia's Plight — and Political Cynicism

The Western world has been responding generously to the widening famine in Ethiopia, which afflicts up to six million people. Latest figures estimate that nearly one million are in serious danger of starvation. Public campaigns in Britain and the United States have resulted in an unprecedented response of charitable funds to buy grains from stockpiles to ship to the stricken East African country. Schoolchildren in both countries have been especially moved at televised news accounts of the famine conditions.

Will the emergency action, however, be successful? Frustrated aid agencies now wonder. Already food is piling up at Ethiopian entry ports. Primitive facilities at the main Red Sea port of Assab can unload 3,000 tons a day, but the maximum amount that can be trucked into the drought-stricken northern interior is only one-third that amount. Poor roads, a lack of lorries (trucks) and four-wheel drive vehicles necessary to deliver the grains over the rugged terrain pose additional problems. Ethiopia's only railroad does not run anywhere nearby.

The famine is further complicated by the various wars between the central government of Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and several rebel armies who are fighting against Mengistu's hard-line communist rule. Many of the starving people are caught in the contested areas, especially in the north. These wars not only set more and more refugees in motion, they disrupt any orderly program to distribute relief aid. Until very recently, the central government's army had resisted diverting personnel and vehicles from their task of battling the insurrections. The rebels in turn have cut vital roads and trails inland from the port. They have not allowed government relief vehicles into their areas, believing Mengistu's forces will use the opportunity to infiltrate these areas. (Some rebel leaders have called for a cease-fire to aid relief columns.)

The Marxist central government, a radical and doctrinaire regime, very much in Moscow's hip pocket, was reluctant to even admit the growing crisis. It took Western pressure amid the sudden blaze of worldwide publicity to finally shove the government into cooperating with international famine-relief organizations. In the October 28, 1984 issue of THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH appeared an article entitled "The Politics of Famine," by Gordon Brook­ Shepherd. One paragraph was particularly poignant:

That six million of Ethiopia's 40 million people might die away does not seem to have unduly troubled the consciences of the junta, especially as so many of those threatened with starvation come from the troublesome northern tribes. It is, at any rate, hard to find words for the callous vanity of a regime which can spend — as Mengistu did — no less than 30 million pounds on founding his "Ethiopian Workers' party," which was launched at his 10th anniversary celebration six weeks ago. A fraction of that sum could have saved the lives of thousands of his subjects, provided the money were properly applied.

All during September, in fact, Colonel Mengistu and his staff were busy preparing, not for famine relief, but for the glorious tenth-anniversary celebration of Communist rule. An estimated 150 to 200 million dollars were sent on the festivities. The government refused to permit journalists attending the celebrations to visit drought-affected areas.

Colonel Mengistu, in a rambling, typically Communist, six-hour long speech heaped praise on the founder of Ethiopia's first Communist Party — but made no mention of the looming crisis. Instead he issued only a general appeal for international aid for the millions of Africans affected by recurring droughts around the continent.

Meanwhile Mengistu's "socialist" friends and allies have done little to help in humanitarian terms. Since Ethiopia's revolution began in 1974 (interestingly, at another time of famine, which the late Haile Selassie also tried to cover up), the Soviet Union has shipped anywhere from $2.5 billion to $4 billion in arms to consolidate the revolution — but a mere $3 million dollars worth of rice. Moscow couldn't help with much food aid even if it were so inclined. Yet another poor harvest season means the Soviets will themselves be in the market for huge amounts of grain.

The Ethiopian military will continue, despite the crisis, to get the lion's share of the country's meager public resources. About 50% of Ethiopia's national budget is now being spent on the military in order to support its highly mechanized standing army of 400,000 troops. And to better control the black market, says the government, the state trading company has ordered a shipment of 40,000 cases (nearly half-a-million bottles) of Scotch whiskey.

Ethiopia's famine conditions are expected to be even worse in 1985 because of such poor domestic harvests this year. Worse still, the government's communization efforts will assure that future harvests will also be poor. This is because the current ten-year plan calls for the incorporation of half the nation's peasants and land into state farms and producers' cooperatives by 1994. Ethiopians don't take naturally to such collectivization. (Does anybody?) Thus, a more widespread rebellion against the central government is also assured, with continual disruption of food distribution even when the rains return to the parched, deforested highlands of this troubled country.

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau