Nahar Roko Morcha at Kapuri, 1982

Who: The Shiromani Akali Dal under Sant Harchand Singh Longowal; Gurcharan Singh Tohra; the CPM, which joined at first; the Punjab police; and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who inaugurated the work.

What: The Government's White Paper says the Ravi-Beas waters were settled by an agreement in December 1981 among Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and the Centre. Gurmit Singh and J. S. Grewal describe a decision by Indira Gandhi, which Gurmit Singh says the Akali Working Committee rejected: Grewal gives the estimated water as 17.17 million acre feet, 0.72 more to Punjab, 0.60 to Rajasthan, with the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal to be completed in two years for Haryana, and says Punjab withdrew its Supreme Court case. The agitation followed the break-down of the third and last meeting between the Prime Minister and the Akali leaders, on 5 April 1982, which Gurmit Singh says failed over the immediate transfer of Chandigarh and the reopening of the Ravi-Beas award. The SGPC's white paper says the Prime Minister laid the foundation of the canal on 8 April 1982 at Kapuri, on the border of the two states, while talks were still going on, leaving the Akalis no choice but a morcha.

• 8 April 1982: Indira Gandhi inaugurated work on the canal at Kapuri, in Patiala district, under heavy security, and Akali demonstrators were arrested at Ghanaur, about six kilometres away. Longowal announced a movement to prevent the digging, and the CPM joined; the SGPC's white paper says the Communists joined and then backed out when it suited them.
• 24 April: Grewal writes that the Shiromani Akali Dal organised a "block the canal" (nahar roko) agitation, with the support of the Communist parties, at a village close to Kapuri, and some volunteers were arrested. Gurmit Singh says Longowal suspended it on 25 April because of the coming mid-term poll in Haryana and the harvest in Punjab.
• 24 May: the Akalis restarted it. Tohra held a dharna near Sarala Kalan and volunteers uprooted barricades at Kapuri, and the CPM then separated itself from the agitation.
• 26 July: the Akali Dal merged the canal agitation into the Dharam Yudh, which began on 4 August with the move to Amritsar. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says the Dal had been conducting a morcha since April 1982 against the digging of the canal, based at Kapuri village.

The sources say why it failed. Gurmit Singh says the issue had no religious or emotional appeal, and Grewal that the second agitation at Kapuri also failed to mobilise the peasantry. Khushwant Singh says it did not catch on, and that it did not lie in the mouths of the Akalis to object to a settlement made by an Akali-Janata chief minister. He writes that the Akalis, whose agitation was not going well, welcomed Bhindranwale when he came to the Golden Temple after 19 July.

Where: Kapuri, in Patiala district, Punjab, with demonstrations at Ghanaur and Sarala Kalan.

Why it mattered: It was the Akali Dal's first agitation of 1982 and an attempt to stop the canal that would carry Punjab's river water to Haryana. Khushwant Singh notes that the Anandpur Sahib Resolution of 1973 said nothing about the division of river waters, which later became the Akali Dal's most important demand on the Centre. Within three months of its start the Akali Dal had merged it into the Dharam Yudh, which Gurmit Singh says was launched to seek the implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution.