Politics of The Early 1980s
The late 1970s and the early 1980s saw the increasing involvement of the Sikh religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in the Punjab politics. Indira Gandhi's Congress(I) party supported Bhindranwale in a bid to split the Sikh votes and weaken the Akali Dal, its chief rival in Punjab. The Congress supported the candidates backed by Bhindranwale in the 1978 SGPC elections. The Congress leader Giani Zail Singh allegedly financed the initial meetings of the separatist organization Dal Khalsa, which disrupted the December 1978 Ludhiana session of the Akali Dal with provocative anti-Hindu wall writing. In the 1980 election, Bhindranwale supported Congress-I candidates Gurdial Singh Dhillon and Raghunandan Lal Bhatia. Bhindranwale was originally not very influential, but the activities of the Congress elevated him to the status of a major leader by the early 1980s.
Read more about this topic: Khalistan Movement
Famous quotes containing the words politics and/or early:
“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently.... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”
—Ernest Hemingway (18991961)
“We passed the Childrens Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)