Sikhs stopped and searched on the road to the 1982 Asian Games

Who: The Shiromani Akali Dal under Sant Harchand Singh Longowal; Haryana's Chief Minister Bhajan Lal and the Haryana Police; and the Sikhs, many of them ordinary travellers, who were stopped on the roads and trains to Delhi.

What: The first phase of the Dharam Yudh Morcha ended in October 1982, when Indira Gandhi ordered all Akali volunteers released. On 28 October her emissary Swaran Singh met an Akali panel at Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib, but the talks failed, and Longowal announced that the Akali Dal would organise a massive morcha in Delhi for 19 November, the opening day of the Ninth Asian Games. On 4 November volunteers were told to reach Delhi between 19 November and 4 December for marches and demonstrations. The White Paper says the Akali Dal threatened demonstrations during the Games and chose national occasions for its agitations.

Bhajan Lal announced that Akalis would not be allowed through Haryana. Gurmit Singh writes that the Haryana Police barricaded roads, searched vehicles and luggage, and asked Sikhs on trains why they were going to Delhi; he says even Sikh army officers were humiliated. J. S. Grewal writes that no Sikh, whether a Congress MP or a retired general, got through Haryana without humiliation, and that many ordinary Sikhs lost their turbans.

• 19 November: nine Sikhs shouted slogans and threw leaflets at the Nehru Stadium in Delhi and were taken to Tihar Jail. A march led by Akali MLA Parkash Singh Majitha from Gurdwara Bangla Sahib was stopped by police.
• 3 December: Harbans Singh Manchanda and Bibi Nirlep Kaur, who were to lead the next day's march, were arrested.
• 4 December: 1,400 Sikhs courted arrest. Everyone arrested during the Games was released on 5 December.
• 23 December: Sikh ex-servicemen held a convention at Amritsar. The counts differ: several hundred (Gurmit Singh, volume II), nearly 5,000 (Grewal) and about 10,000, with half a dozen major generals (Gurmit Singh, volume III).

Where: Delhi (the Nehru Stadium and Gurdwara Bangla Sahib), the roads and railways of Haryana, and Amritsar.

Why it mattered: Khushwant Singh, then a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, called the treatment discrimination against a people simply because they look different, and warned Parliament that the country would pay a heavy price. If the Khalistan movement caught on, he said, it would owe much to the "foolish shortsightedness of Bhajan Lal". Gurmit Singh says the checks confirmed the Sikhs' feeling of being second-rate citizens, strengthened the Kharkus and brought many ex-servicemen into Bhindranwale's following. Grewal quotes the journalist Kuldip Nayar that Sikhs felt humiliated as a community, and that from that day their feeling of alienation kept growing.