Akali demand lists of 1981

Who: The Shiromani Akali Dal under Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, which sent the lists; and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Government of India, which answered them in a White Paper in July 1984.

What: The White Paper, reproduced by Gurmit Singh in his second volume (appendices 16 and 17), prints two lists as received by the Government. Grewal says the Akalis presented the list of 45 to the Prime Minister on 21 September.

• September 1981, 45 demands: 14 religious, 8 political, 21 economic and 2 social. They include Sikh control of gurdwaras in Pakistan, holy city status for Amritsar, a transmitter at the Golden Temple, an All India Gurdwara Act, relief from restrictions on kirpans on the national airlines, Chandigarh and the Punjabi-speaking areas, internal autonomy, a reversal of the cut in Sikh recruitment to the armed forces "from 20 per cent to 2 per cent", an Amritsar dry port and Sikh personal law.
• October 1981, a revised 15. The first asked for the unconditional release of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and a judicial enquiry into police action in connection with the Delhi rally of 7 September, Chowk Mehta and Chando Kalan. The ninth asked that, as in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, the Centre keep only Foreign Affairs, Defence, Currency and Communications, and said "the Sikhs should enjoy special rights as a nation". Others covered holy city status, "Harimandir Radio", Chandigarh and the Punjabi-speaking areas, headworks and river waters, Punjabi as a second language in neighbouring states, farmers evicted from the Terai in Uttar Pradesh and a new Sikh-controlled bank.

The White Paper says some demands had their origin in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution adopted at Anandpur Sahib on 16 and 17 October 1973, that on receipt of them the Prime Minister invited the Akali Dal to a meeting on 16 October 1981, and that the agitation the Akali Dal started was originally in support of the demands. Its replies include these. No "holy city" status exists in law, but on 27 February 1983 the Prime Minister announced a ban on tobacco, liquor and meat in a demarcated area around the Golden Temple and the Durgiana Temple. It offered to relay kirtan from the Golden Temple through All India Radio Jalandhar, which began on 8 June 1984; it says the SGPC did not facilitate this. Kirpans up to 22.8 cm with a 15.24 cm blade were allowed on domestic flights from February 1983. On waters it offered a tribunal under a Supreme Court judge, on territory four alternatives, and on Centre-State relations the Sarkaria Commission, adding that the Resolution's propositions were "at total variance" with the unity of the nation and that "the Indian people constitute one nation". It says the Akali Dal resiled from agreements reached.

On 28 February 1983, a day after the Prime Minister's announcements on religious demands, Longowal called them a fraud on the Sikhs and put eight demands, among them an All-India Gurdwara Act, Chandigarh and the Punjabi-speaking areas with the village as the unit, cancellation of the river award, and a federal structure as in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, according to Gurmit Singh.

Where: The lists went to the Government of India in New Delhi; the demands concern Punjab, Chandigarh, Amritsar and Sikh institutions elsewhere.

Why it mattered: These were the Akali Dal's stated terms for the talks that ran to 1984. The replies show where the Government placed the sticking points: territory, river waters and the Anandpur Sahib Resolution on Centre-State relations. The White Paper is the state's own account.