title: Ukraine national football team

text: The 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification saw Ukraine in Group 5. With Lobanovsky as a head coach there were expectations of the first qualification to the finals. Yet, Ukraine suffered a home loss to Poland in their opening match, and a number of draws had resulted in Ukraine qualifying for the playoff again, losing to Germany, 5–2 on aggregate. Under a public pressure, particularly the Higher League head coaches who argued that the national team head coach cannot competently serve for both club and national, as well as health issues of Lobanovsky himself, the Federation decided not to renew contract with Lobanovsky letting him concentrate on Dynamo Kyiv.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: In UEFA Euro 2004 qualifying, Ukraine with the new head coach and another former Dynamo Kyiv star Leonid Buryak was assigned into Group 6, with Spain and Greece. Ukraine failed to qualify.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: After Euro 2004 qualifying, Ukraine appointed Oleg Blokhin as the national team's head coach. Seeded at the Group 2 Ukraine went on to qualify as a group winners for their first-ever FIFA World Cup on 3 September 2005 after drawing 1–1 against Georgia in Tbilisi and ahead of Turkey, Denmark and the last campaign rivals Greece among others. This also was the first successful qualification campaign for Ukraine despite a poor home turf performance.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: In the 2006 World Cup, they were in the Group H with Spain, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. After losing 4–0 in the first match against Spain, the Ukrainians won the next two matches to face Switzerland in the round of 16. Tying at 0, Ukraine managed to take Switzerland to penalty shoot-out where two saves from Oleksandr Shovkovsky secured a positive outcome for his side despite the first kick miss by Andriy Shevchenko. Switzerland that did not lose or yield a single goal was sent home early with Ukraine advancing to the quarterfinals. In the quarterfinals Ukraine facing Italy was defeated with the second half two goals from Luca Toni securing a comfortable 3–0 win for the future 2006 World Cup champions.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: After the World Cup, Ukraine were placed in UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying Group B, along with Italy and France; Ukraine had also performed poorly against Scotland, Georgia and Lithuania, ultimately finishing in fourth place. Due to the bleak performance of the national team Oleg Blokhin resigned and surprisingly signed with the recently established FC Moscow.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: With another Soviet football star player Oleksiy Mykhaylychenko as the new head coach, 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification saw Ukraine in Group 6, drawing Croatia and winning against England, sending Ukraine to the playoff. Greece, which had been eliminated by Ukraine in the qualifiers four years earlier, would eventually get revenge. Following failure to qualify, the Federation decided not to renew contract with Mykhaylychenko.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: As co-hosts, Ukraine qualified automatically for Euro 2012, marking their debut in the UEFA European Championship. The Federation decided to appoint Myron Markevych to prepare and lead the national team in the Euro finals. However, following few friendlies Markevych resigned due to the off-pitch politics and having holding coaching office of both national team and Metalist Kharkiv. For the next several games in 2010-11 the national team was led by a caretaker Yuriy Kalitvintsev who starred for Ukraine back in its first qualification campaign for the Euro 1996.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: On 21 April 2011 Blokhin was again appointed head coach of the Ukrainian national team signing a four year contract. With Blokhin at helm in their opening game against Sweden, Ukraine won 2–1 in Kyiv. In Donetsk, Ukraine was eliminated after a 2–0 loss to France and a 1–0 defeat to England.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Seeded at the UEFA Group H Ukraine qualified for yet another playoff, after two wins over Poland and two draws over England, where they would play against France. Ukraine beat France at home 2–0, but suffered a 3–0 loss away, thus being eliminated from the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Blokhin who remained a head coach following the home Euro 2012 had to stepped down due to health concerns in autumn of 2012 soon after the first home game against England and was replaced by Andriy Bal and later Oleksandr Zavarov. While considering hiring a first foreign specialist, the Federation finally appointed Mykhailo Fomenko as a head coach by end of 2012. Even though Fomenko did not manage to qualify for the World Cup, the Federation decided to retain his services until end of 2015. With qualification to the Euro 2016, Fomenko was honored to lead the national team in the finals.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: With the ongoing Russian aggression, Ukraine in Euro 2016 qualifying were drawn against Spain, Slovakia, Belarus, Macedonia and Luxembourg. Despite having won all matches besides Spain, they finished third due to results against Spain and Slovakia. They defeated Slovenia in the playoff.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Ukraine lost all three games at Euro 2016 without scoring a goal; a 2–0 loss to Germany, a 2–0 loss to Northern Ireland, and Poland 1–0.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Following the Euro 2016, Fomenko was replaced with Andriy Shevchenko as a head coach who served as his assistant during the Euro finals. Seeded in the UEFA Group I, Ukraine started off with a home draw to Iceland in 2018 World Cup qualifying and an away draw to Turkey. This was followed by two home wins, 3–0 against Kosovo and 1–0 against Finland. After a 1–0 away loss to Croatia, they beat Finland 2–1 away and Turkey 2–0 at home, they lost 2–0 away to Iceland and won 2–0 away win against Kosovo. Losing to Croatia at home, they failed to qualify for the playoffs for their first time since UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying and in all its previous FIFA World Cup qualification.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: In the inaugural UEFA Nations League, Ukraine were drawn with Czech Republic and Slovakia in League B. They beat the Czech Republic 2–1 away and Slovakia 1–0 at home, before earning a promotion to League A with a 1–0 home win to the Czech Republic, before ending with a 4–1 away loss to Slovakia.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Ukraine were placed in a group with Euro 2016 title holders Portugal as well as Serbia among other teams. Its opening game of the qualifying campaign Ukraine visited Portugal which was led by returning Cristiano Ronaldo. The match ended 0–0. The second game, against Luxembourg, ended up as a 2–1 win, preceding Ukraine's 5–0 win against Serbia, along with a narrow 1–0 win against Luxembourg. Two matches—away and home against Lithuania (winning 3–0 and 2–0 respectively) saw Ukraine with 16 points and in need of only a point against Portugal. Ukraine won 2–1 and the group before drawing Serbia 2–2.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Ukraine were drawn with Switzerland, Spain, and Germany in the next Nations League. The Ukrainians started their campaign by overcoming Switzerland at home 2–1 to temporarily take first place. However, their next opponent Spain won 4–0. Germany then won 2–1 in Kyiv. Ukraine then defeated Spain for the first time with a 1–0 win. Germany swept Ukraine after a 1–0 deficit was cancelled for a 3–1 victory.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: As the COVID-19 crisis in Ukraine worsened, eight players from the starting squad tested positive (including one positive SARS-CoV-2 test upon arrival to Lucerne), and as a result, the entire delegation was put into quarantine by the Department of Health of the Canton of Lucerne. Their game against Switzerland away was sequently cancelled. Ukraine faced relegation if the game was to be awarded 3–0 to Switzerland, or if the result is decided by a drawing of lots and Switzerland were to be handed a 1–0 victory. Eventually, UEFA decided that the match result would be 3–0 in favour of Switzerland, meaning that Ukraine had been officially relegated after just one season in League A.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Ukraine managed to qualify to the knockout stages in the European Championship for the first time in 2020, as one of the best third-placed teams. They beat Sweden 2–1 in the round of 16, after Artem Dovbyk scored the winning goal in the first minute of the second half in extra time. They were then defeated by England in the quarter-final, recording their best finish at a major tournament since 2006.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Ukraine drew 1–1 in both games against France in 2022 World Cup qualifying. Ukraine would then qualify for the playoff after breaking the record set by Australia for the most consecutive draws in World Cup qualification, with five straight draws. After five years and under the spell of draws in the recent campaign, Shevchenko announced his resignation in August 2021 and was replaced with Oleksandr Petrakov who recently led the Ukraine U-20 team to the World Cup victory. Ukraine eventually picked up a much-needed victory over Finland, ending their run of draws and giving them a two-point lead over Bosnia and a three-point lead over Finland. However, both Bosnia and Finland had a game in hand over Ukraine, who managed to qualify for the playoffs after a 2–0 win over Bosnia and a Finnish loss to France. Ukraine faced Scotland in the Group A playoff semifinals, postponed in March 2022 to June after Russia invaded the country in February, winning 3–1 at Hampden Park, but ultimately losing 1–0 to Wales in an emotional playoff final at the Cardiff City Stadium.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: During the Soviet era (before 1991), only three stadiums in Ukraine were used in official games, the Olimpiysky NSC in Kyiv (known then as Republican Stadium), the predecessor of Chornomorets, BSS Central Stadium in Odesa, and the Lokomotiv Stadium in Simferopol.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Since May 2022, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, home game matches have been taking place in Łódź.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: On 29 March 2010, Ukraine debuted a new Adidas kit. This replaced the Adidas kit with a yellow base and the traditional Adidas three stripe with a snake sash which was used in 2009.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Prior to 5 February 2009 Ukraine wore a Lotto kit. In 2009 the official team kit was produced by German company Adidas which has a contract with the Ukrainian team until 31 December 2016. Joma manufactured the kits starting from the year 2017 for the match against Croatia on 24 March 2017.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: Marketing for the Football Federation of Ukraine is conducted by the Ukraine Football International (UFI).


title: Ukraine national football team

text: The following matches were played or are scheduled to be played by the national team in the current or upcoming seasons.


title: Ukraine national football team

text: The following players were called up for the 2022–23 UEFA Nations League matches against Scotland (twice) and Armenia in September 2022.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle, officially "Rifle, 7.62mm, L1A1", also known just as the SLR (Self-Loading Rifle), by the Canadian Army designation C1A1 (C1) or in the US as the "inch pattern" FAL, is a British version of the FN FAL battle rifle produced by the Belgian armaments manufacturer FN Herstal. The L1A1 was produced under licence and has seen use in the Australian Army, Canadian Army, Indian Army, Jamaica Defence Force, Malaysian Army, New Zealand Army, Rhodesian Army, Singapore Army and the British Armed Forces.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The original FAL was designed in Belgium, while the components of the "inch-pattern" FALs are manufactured to a slightly modified design using British imperial units. Many sub-assemblies are interchangeable between the two types, while components of those sub-assemblies may not be compatible. Notable incompatibilities include the magazines and the butt-stock, which attach in different ways. Most FALs also use SAE threads for barrels and assemblies. The only exceptions are early prototype FALs, and the breech threads only on Israeli and Indian FALs. All others have standard Imperial or "unified" inch-standard threads throughout.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Most Commonwealth pattern FALs are semi-automatic only. A variant named L2A1/C2A1 (C2), meant to serve as a light machine gun in a support role, is also capable of fully automatic fire. Differences from the L1A1/C1 include a heavy barrel, squared front sight (versus the "V" on the semi-automatic models), a handguard that doubles as a foldable bipod, and a larger 30-round magazine although it could also use the normal 20-round magazines. Only Canada and Australia used this variant. However, Australia, the UK and New Zealand used Bren light machine guns converted to fire the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge for use in the support role. Canadian C1s issued to naval and army personnel were also capable of fully automatic fire.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The L1A1 and other inch-pattern derivatives trace their lineage back to the Allied Rifle Commission of the 1950s, whose intention was to introduce a single rifle and cartridge that would serve as standard issue for all NATO countries. They originally adopted the Rifle No. 9 Mk 1 chambered for a 7 mm intermediate cartridge. However, to meet this plan and strengthen ties with the United States, the UK soon dropped the No.9 rifle in favor of the Belgian FAL chambered for the proposed American 7.62×51mm cartridge. Based on Canada's experiments with the FAL that led to the C1A1, the UK and Australia adopted the L1A1 (or "Self-Loading Rifle") as their new service rifle in 1954.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: NATO standardized on the 7.62mm NATO cartridge in 1954, but did not adopt a standard rifle. Most adopted a native design chambered for 7.62mm NATO, with Germany eventually adopting the G3 and the US adopting the M14. Even the C1A1 and L1A1 used inch measurements and were not interchangeable with the FAL's metric parts. France's participation was to adopt a natively-designed service rifle that used their national 7.5mm MAS cartridge.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The British experimental version of the FAL (designated the X-1) initially used an 8-round "horseshoe charger" (a "U"-shaped clip that held the bullets) that was based on an experimental 10-round Belgian design. The operator would open the bolt and place the charger into guide rails over the chamber. The rounds would then be slid down into the detachable box magazine through the bolt. The 8-round horseshoe charger was replaced in trials with a 5-round model due to problems with them becoming damaged when packed in pouches or bandoliers. The 5-round horseshoe charger had similar problems and was replaced with an conventional straight 5-round charger.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The L1A1 subsequently served as the UK's first-line battle rifle up to the 1980s before being replaced by the 5.56mm L85A1.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The L1A1 and variants have seen use in several conflicts, including as part of the Cold War. L1A1s have been used by the British Armed Forces in Malaysia, Northern Ireland, and in the Falklands War (in opposition to FN FAL-armed Argentine forces), the First Gulf War (where it was still on issue to some second line British Army units and RAF personnel not yet issued with the L85A1), by the State of Kuwait Army during the First Gulf War, by Australia and New Zealand in Vietnam, by the Indian Army in the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars and by various paramilitary and state police forces in counter insurgency operations up to the early 1990s, by Nigerian and Biafran forces during Nigerian Civil War and by Rhodesia in the Rhodesian Bush War.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Starting in the mid-1980s, the UK started replacing its 30-year-old L1A1 rifle with the 5.56 NATO bullpup design L85A1 assault rifle. Australia chose the Steyr AUG as a replacement in the form of the F88 Austeyr, with New Zealand following suit shortly after. Canada replaced its C1 rifle with the AR-15 variants: the C7 service rifle and C8 carbine. Australia replaced its L2A1 heavy barrel support weapons with M60s and later with an FN Minimi variant: the F89. Canada also replaced its C2 heavy barrel support weapons with an FN Minimi variant: the C9, respectively.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The Australian Army, as a late member of the Allied Rifle Committee along with the United Kingdom and Canada adopted the committee's improved version of the FAL rifle, designated the L1A1 rifle by Australia and Great Britain, and C1 by Canada. The Australian L1A1 is also known as the "self-loading rifle" (SLR), and in fully automatic form, the "automatic rifle". The Australian L1A1 features are almost identical to the British L1A1 version of FAL; however, the Australian L1A1 differs from its British counterpart in the design of the upper receiver lightening cuts. The lightening cuts of the Australian L1A1 most closely resembles the later Canadian C1 pattern, rather than the simplified and markedly unique British L1A1 cuts. The Australian L1A1 FAL rifle was in service with Australian forces until it was superseded by the F88 Austeyr (a licence-built version of the Steyr AUG) in 1988, though some remained in service with Reserve and training units until late 1990. Some Australian Army units deployed overseas on UN peacekeeping operations in Namibia, the Western Sahara, and Cambodia still used the L1A1 SLR and the M16A1 rifle throughout the early 1990s. The British and Australian L1A1s, and Canadian C1A1 SLRs were semi-automatic only, unless battlefield conditions mandated that modifications be made.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Australia, in co-ordination with Canada, developed a heavy-barrel version of the L1A1 as a fully automatic rifle variant, designated L2A1. The Australian heavy-barrel L2A1 was also known as the "automatic rifle" (AR). The L2A1 was similar to the FN FAL 50.41/42, but with a unique combined bipod-handguard and a receiver dust-cover mounted tangent rear sight from Canada. The L2A1 was intended to serve a role as a light fully automatic rifle or quasi-squad automatic weapon (SAW). The role of the L2A1 and other heavy barrel FAL variants is essentially the same in concept as the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) or Bren, but the Bren is far better suited to the role of a fire support base for a section, being designed for the role from the start. In practice many considered the L2A1 inferior to the Bren, as the Bren had a barrel that could be changed, and so could deliver a better continuous rate of fire, and was more accurate and controllable in the role due to its greater weight and better stock configuration. For this reason, Australia and Britain used the 7.62mm-converted L4 series Bren. Most countries that adopted the FAL rejected the heavy barrel FAL, presumably because it did not perform well in the machine gun role. Countries that did embrace the heavy barrel FAL included Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, and Israel.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Unique 30-round magazines were developed for the L2A1 rifles. These 30-round magazines were essentially lengthened versions of the standard 20-round L1A1 magazines, perfectly straight in design. Curved 30-round magazines from the L4A1 7.62 NATO conversion of the Bren are interchangeable with the 30-round L2A1 magazines, however they reputedly gave feeding difficulties due to the additional friction from the curved design as they must be inserted "upside down" in the L2A1. The L4A1 Bren magazines were developed as a top-mounted gravity-assisted feed magazine, the opposite of what is required for the L2A1 FAL. This was sometimes rectified by stretching magazine springs.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The Australian L1A1/L2A1 rifles were produced by the Small Arms Factory – Lithgow, with approximately 220,000 L1A1 rifles produced between 1959 and 1986. L2A1 production was approximately 10,000 rifles produced between 1962 and 1982. Lithgow exported a large number of L1A1 rifles to many countries in the region. Among the users were New Zealand, Singapore and Papua New Guinea.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: During the Vietnam War, the SLR was the standard weapon issued to Australian infantrymen. Many Australian soldiers preferred the larger calibre weapon over the American M16 because they felt that the SLR was more reliable and that they could trust the NATO 7.62 round to kill an enemy soldier outright. The Australians' jungle warfare tactics used in Vietnam were refined by their experience in earlier jungle conflicts (e.g., the Malayan Emergency and the Konfrontasi campaign in Borneo) and were considered far more threatening by their Viet Cong opponents than those employed by U.S. forces. The Australians considered the strengths and limitations of the SLR and its heavy ammunition load to be better suited to their tactical methods.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Another product of Australian participation in the conflict in South-East Asia was the field modification of L1A1 and L2A1 rifles by the Special Air Service Regiment for better handling. Nicknamed "the Bitch", these rifles were field modified, often from heavy barrel L2A1 automatic rifles, with their barrels cut off right in front of the gas blocks, and often with the L2A1 bipods removed to install XM148 40 mm grenade launchers mounted below the barrels. The XM148 40 mm grenade launchers were obtained from U.S. forces. For the L1A1, the lack of fully automatic fire resulted in the unofficial conversion of the L1A1 to full-auto capability by using lower receivers from the L2A1, which works by restricting trigger movement.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Australia produced a shortened version of the L1A1 designated the L1A1-F1. It was intended for easier use by soldiers of smaller stature in jungle combat, as the standard L1A1 is a long, heavy weapon. The reduction in length was achieved by installing the shortest butt length (there were three available, short, standard and long), and a flash suppressor that resembled the standard version except it projected a much smaller distance beyond the end of the rifling, and had correspondingly shorter flash eliminator slots. The effect was to reduce the length of the weapon by 2 1/4 inches. Trials revealed that, despite no reduction in barrel length, accuracy was slightly reduced. The L1A1-F1 was provided to Papua New Guinea, and a number were sold to the Royal Hong Kong Police in 1984. They were also issued to female staff cadets at the Royal Military College Duntroon and some other Australian personnel.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: In 1970, a bullpup rifle known as the KAL1 general purpose infantry rifle was built at the Small Arms Factory Lithgow using parts from the L1A1 rifle. Another version of the rifle was also built in 1973.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: An L1A1 SLR was used by Martin Bryant in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Bryant murdered 35 people and injured 23 others with an L1A1 and a Colt AR-15. The massacre caused a massive change in Australian gun laws, resulting in much stricter regulations and the banning of military style automatic and semi-automatic firearms.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The Canadian Armed Forces, the Ontario Provincial Police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police operated several versions, the most common being the C1A1, similar to the British L1A1 (which became more or less a Commonwealth standard), the main difference being that rotating disc rear sight graduated from 200 to 600 yards and a two-piece firing pin. Users could fold the trigger guard into the pistol grip, which allowed them to wear mitts when firing the weapon. The Canadian rifle also has a shorter receiver cover than other Commonwealth variants to allow for refilling the magazine by charging it with stripper clips. It was manufactured under license by the Canadian Arsenals Limited company. Canada was the first country to use the FAL. It served as Canada's standard battle rifle from the early 1950s to 1984, when it began to be phased out in favor of the lighter Diemaco C7, a licence-built version of the M16, with a number of features borrowed from the A1, A2 and A3 variations of the AR platform assault rifle.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The Canadians also operated a fully automatic variant, the C2A1, as a section support weapon, which was very similar to the Australian L2A1. It was similar to the FN FAL 50.41/42, but with wooden attachments to the bipod legs that work as a handguard when the legs are folded. The C2A1 used a tangent rear sight attached to the receiver cover with ranges from 200 to 1000 metres. The C1 was equipped with a 20-round magazine and the C2 with a 30-round magazine, although the two were interchangeable. Variants of the initial C1 and the product improved C1A1 were also made for the Royal Canadian Navy, which were capable of automatic fire, under the designations C1D and C1A1D. These weapons are identifiable by an "A" for "automatic", carved or stamped into the butt stock. Boarding parties for domestic and international searches use the C1D. The C2A1 was produced to replace the Bren Gun for the Canadian Armed Forces, however the C2A1 was unpopular among Canadian soldiers due to poor handling and sustained fire capability. With roughly 2700 examples produced, the C2A1 would be replaced in the late-1980s by the FN Minimi in the Canadian Armed Forces, ending its military service.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The Rifle 7.62 mm 1A1 which is also known as Ishapore 1A1, is a copy of the L1A1 self-loading rifle. It is produced at Ordnance Factory Tiruchirappalli of the Ordnance Factories Board. It differs from the UK SLR in that the wooden butt-stock uses the butt-plate from the Lee–Enfield with trap for oil bottle and cleaning pull-through. The 1A1 rifle has been replaced in service with the Indian Army by the INSAS 5.56 mm assault rifle.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: A fully automatic version of the rifle (known as the 1C or Ishapore 1C ) is also available, meant for use in BMP-2s via firing ports.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The 1A (which is also known as Ishapore 1A), is the full automatic version based on the FN FAL while the 1A1 (which is also known as Ishapore 1A1), is the semi-automatic version based on the L1A1. They can be equipped with the 1A and 1A Long Blade bayonet, based on the L1A4 bayonet.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Production started in 1960 after the Armament Research & Development Establishment (ARDE) evaluated several Australian, Belgian and British FAL rifles and each one was disassembled and examined. ARDE researchers began to make plans to make their own rifle after negotiations with FN were unsuccessful because of royalty requirements and the clause that Belgian technicians help manage the production lines. 750 rifles were made per week.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: FN threatened a lawsuit when they learnt of the unlicensed variant. Then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was not made aware of it and after he had heard it, offered to settle FN's complaints by agreeing to purchase additional Belgian-made FALs, FALOs and MAG 60.20 GPMGs.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: In 1998 onward, Ishapore 1A1, 1A and 1C were gradually withdrawn from service and replaced by INSAS rifle. The Ishapore 1A1, A and 1C is still in use by Central Armed Police Forces, some law enforcement bodies and also used during parades by the National Cadet Corps (India).


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: In 2012, around 6,000 rifles were made annually in India. As of September 2019, around a million rifles were made.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The New Zealand Army used the L1A1 as its standard service rifle for just under 30 years. The Labour government of Walter Nash approved the purchase of the L1A1 as a replacement for the No. 4 Mk 1 Lee–Enfield bolt-action rifle in 1959. An order for a total of 15,000 L1A1 rifles was subsequently placed with the Lithgow Small Arms Factory in Australia which had been granted a license to produce the L1A1. However the first batch of 500 rifles from this order was not actually delivered to the New Zealand Army until 1960. Thereafter deliveries continued at an increasing pace until the order for all 15,000 rifles was completed in 1965. As with Australian soldiers, the L1A1 was the preferential rifle of New Zealand Army and NZSAS troops during the Vietnam War, over the American M16 during the Vietnam War as they used the same combat tactics as their Australian counterparts. After its adoption by the Army, the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the Royal New Zealand Navy also eventually acquired it.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Unlike L1A1s in Australian service, New Zealand L1A1s later used British black plastic furniture, and some rifles even had a mixture of the two. The carrying handles were frequently cut off. The British SUIT (Sight Unit Infantry Trilux) optical sight was issued to some users in infantry units. The L2A1 heavy barrel variant was also issued as a limited standard, but was not popular due to the problems also encountered by other users of heavy barrel FAL variants. The L4A1 7.62mm conversion of the Bren was much-preferred in New Zealand service.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The New Zealand Defence Force began replacing the L1A1 with the Steyr AUG assault rifle in 1988 and were disposed through the Government Disposal Bureau in 1990. The Steyr AUG was phased out across all three services of the New Zealand Defence Force in 2016. The Royal New Zealand Navy still uses the L1A1 for line throwing between ships.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The United Kingdom produced its own variant of the FN FAL incorporating the modifications developed by the Allied Rifle Committee, designating it the L1A1 Self Loading Rifle (SLR). The weapons were manufactured by the Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield, Birmingham Small Arms, Royal Ordnance Factory and ROF Fazakerley. After the production run ceased, replacement components were made by Parker Hale Limited. The SLR served the British Armed Forces from 1954 until approximately 1994, being replaced by the L85A1 from 1985 onwards.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The SLR was designed using Imperial measurements and included several changes from the standard FN FAL. A significant change from the original FAL was that the L1A1 operates in semi-automatic mode only. Other changes include: the introduction of a folding cocking handle; an enclosed slotted flash suppressor; folding rear sight; sand-clearing modifications to the upper receiver, bolt and bolt carrier; folding trigger guard to allow use with Arctic mitts; strengthened butt; enlarged change lever and magazine release catch; vertical stripping catch to prevent unintended activation; deletion of the automatic hold-open device and the addition of retaining tabs at the rear of the top cover to prevent forward movement of the top cover (and resulting loss of zero) when the L2A1 SUIT was fitted. The flash suppressor is fitted with a lug which allows the fitting of an L1-series bayonet, an L1A1/A2 or L6A1 blank firing attachment or an L1A1/A2 Energa rifle grenade launcher.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Initial production rifles were fitted with walnut furniture, consisting of the pistol grip, forward handguard, carrying handle and butt. The wood was treated with oil to protect against moisture, but not varnished or polished. Later production weapons were produced with synthetic furniture. The material used was Maranyl, a nylon 6-6 and fibreglass composite. The Maranyl parts have a "pebbled" anti-slip texture along with a butt has a separate butt-pad, available in four lengths to allow the rifle to be fitted to individual users. There was also a special short butt designed for use with Arctic clothing or body armour, which incorporated fixing points for an Arctic chest sling system. After the introduction of the Maranyl furniture, as extra supplies became available it was retrofitted to older rifles as they underwent scheduled maintenance. However, this resulted in a mixture of wooden and Maranyl furniture within units and often on the same rifle. Wooden furniture was still in use in some Territorial Army units and in limited numbers with the RAF until at least 1989.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The SLR selector has two settings (rather than the three that most metric FALs have), safety and semi-automatic, which are marked 'S' (safe) and 'R' (repetition.) The magazine from the 7.62 mm L4 light machine gun will fit the SLR; however, the L4 magazine was designed for gravity assisted downwards feeding, and can be unreliable with the upwards feeding system of the SLR. Commonwealth magazines were produced with a lug brazed onto the front to engage the recess in the receiver, in place of a smaller pressed dimple on the metric FAL magazine. As a consequence of this, metric FAL magazines can be used with the Commonwealth SLR, but SLR magazines will not fit the metric FAL.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: Despite the British, Australian and Canadian versions of the FAL being manufactured using machine tools which utilised the Imperial measurement system, they are all of the same basic dimensions. Parts incompatibilities between the original FAL and the L1A1 are due to pattern differences, not due to the different dimensions. Confusions over the differences has given rise to the terminology of "metric" and "inch" FAL rifles, which originated as a reference to the machine tools which produced them. Despite this, virtually all FAL rifles are of the same basic dimensions, true to the original Belgian FN FAL. In the US, the term "metric FAL" refers to guns of the Belgian FAL pattern, whereas "inch FAL" refers to ones produced to the Commonwealth L1A1/C1 pattern.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: SLRs could be modified at unit level to take two additional sighting systems. The first was the "Hythe sight," formally known as the "Conversion Kit, 7.62mm Rifle Sight, Trilux, L5A1" (L5A2 and L5A3 variants with different foresight inserts also existed) and intended for use in close range and in poor lighting conditions. The sight incorporated two rear sight aperture leaves and a tritium illuminated foresight insert for improved night visibility, which had to be replaced after a period of time due to radioactive decay. The first rear sight leaf had a 7 mm aperture which could be used alone for night shooting or the second leaf could be raised in front of it, superimposing a 2 mm aperture for day shooting. The second sight was the L2A2 "Sight Unit, Infantry, Trilux" (SUIT), a 4× optical sight which mounted on a rail welded to a top cover. Issued to the British Infantry, Royal Marines and RAF Regiment, the SUIT featured a prismatic offset design, which reduced the length of the sight and improved clearance around the action. Also, the SUIT helped to reduce parallax errors and heat mirage from the barrel as it heated up during firing. The aiming mark was an inverted, tapered perspex pillar ending in a point which could be illuminated by a tritium element for use in low light conditions. The inverted sight post allowed rapid target re-acquisition of the target after the recoil of the firearm raised the muzzle. The scope was somewhat heavy, but due to its solid construction was durable and robust.


title: L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle

text: The SLR was officially replaced in 1985 by the bullpup design L85A1 service rifle, firing the 5.56×45mm NATO cartridge. The armed forces were re-equipped by 1994 and during this period the L1A1 rifles were gradually phased out. Most were either destroyed or sold, with some going to Sierra Leone. Several thousand were sent to the US and sold as parts kits, and others were refurbished by LuxDefTec in Luxembourg and are still on sale to the European market.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (; born Jarnail Singh Brar; 2 June 1947– 6 June 1984) was a militant leader of the Sikh organization Damdami Taksal. He was not an advocate of Khalistan. He was the fourteenth "jathedar", or leader, of the prominent orthodox Sikh religious institution Damdami Taksal. He was an advocate of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, gaining significant attention after his involvement in the 1978 Sikh-Nirankari clash.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In the summer of 1982, Bhindranwale and the Akali Dal launched the Dharam Yudh Morcha ("righteous campaign"), with its stated aim being the fulfilment of a list of demands based on the Anandpur Sahib Resolution to create a largely autonomous state within India. Thousands of people joined the movement in the hope of retaining a larger share of irrigation water and the return of Chandigarh to Punjab. There was dissatisfaction in some sections of the Sikh community with prevailing economic, social, and political conditions. Over time Bhindranwale grew to be a leader of Sikh militancy.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In 1982, Bhindranwale and his group moved to the Golden Temple complex and made it his headquarters. Bhindranwale would establish what amounted to a "parallel government" in Punjab, settling cases and resolving disputes, while conducting his campaign. In 1983, he along with his militant cadre inhabited and fortified the Sikh shrine Akal Takht. In June 1984, Operation Blue Star was carried out by the Indian Army to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib in the Golden Temple Complex, which resulted in hundreds to thousands of deaths according to various reports, including that of Bhindranwale.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale has remained a controversial figure in Indian history. While the Sikhs' highest temporal authority Akal Takht describe him a 'martyr', with immense appeal among rural sections of the Sikh population, who saw him as a powerful leader, who stood up to Indian state dominance and repression, to most Indians, he symbolized a revivalist, extremist and terrorist movement, which remains a point of contention.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale was born on 2 June 1947, as Jarnail Singh Brar to a Jat Sikh family, in the village of Rode, in Moga District (then a part of Faridkot District), located in the region of Malwa. The grandson of Sardar Harnam Singh Brar, his father, Joginder Singh Brar was a farmer and a local Sikh leader, and his mother was Nihal Kaur. Jarnail Singh was the seventh of eight siblings of seven brothers and one sister. He was put into a school in 1953 at the age of 6 but he dropped out of school five years later to work with his father on the farm.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: He married Pritam Kaur, the daughter of Sucha Singh of Bilaspur at the age of nineteen. The couple had two sons, Ishar Singh and Inderjit Singh, in 1971 and 1975, respectively. After the death of Bhindranwale, Pritam Kaur moved along with her sons to Bilaspur village in Moga district and stayed with her brother. She died of heart ailment at age 60, on 15 September 2007 in Jalandhar.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In 1965, he was enrolled by his father at the Damdami Taksal also known as Bhindran Taksal, a religious school near Moga, Punjab, named after the village of Bhindran Kalan where its leader Gurbachan Singh Bhindranwale lived. Though based out of Gurdwara Akhand Parkash there, he took his pupils on extended tours of the countryside. After a one-year course in scriptural, theological and historical studies with Gurbachan Singh Khalsa, partly during a tour but mostly during his stay at Gurdwara Sis Asthan Patshahi IX near Nabha, he rejoined his family and returned to farming, marrying in 1966. Maintaining ties with the Taksal, he continued studies under Kartar Singh, who became the new head of the Taksal after Gurbachan Singh Khalsa's death in June 1969, and would establish his headquarters at Gurdwara Gurdarshan Prakash at Mehta Chowk, approximately 25 kilometers northeast of Amritsar. He quickly became the favourite student of Kartar Singh. Unlike other students he had had familial responsibilities, and he would take time off from the seminary and go back and forth month to month to take care of his wife and two children, balancing his familial and religious responsibilities.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Kartar Singh Khalsa died in a car accident on 16 August 1977. Before his death, Kartar Singh had appointed the then 31-year-old Bhindranwale as his successor. His son, Amrik Singh, would become a close companion of Jarnail Singh.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale was formally elected the 14th jathedar of the Damdami Taksal at a "bhog" ceremony at Mehta Chowk on 25 August 1977. He adopted the name "Bhindranwale" meaning "from [the village of] Bhindran [Kalan]", the location of the Bhindran Taksal branch of the Damdami Taksal, and attained the religious title of "Sant". He concluded most of his family responsibilities to dedicate full time to the Taksal, thus following a long tradition of “sants”, an important part of rural Sikh life. Henceforth his family saw him solely in Sikh religious congregations known as satsangs, though his son Ishar Singh would describe his youth as being "well looked after" and "never in need." As a missionary Sant of the Taksal, he would tour the villages to give dramatic public sermons and reading of scripture. He preached the disaffected young Sikhs, encouraging them to return to the path of the Khalsa by giving up consumerism in family life and abstaining from drugs and alcohol, the two main vices afflicting rural society in Punjab, and as a social reformer, denounced practices like the dowry, and encouraged a return to the simple lifestyle prior to the increased wealth of the state and the reversal of the decline in morals following the Green Revolution. As one observer noted, "The Sant's following grew as he successfully regenerated the good life of purity, dedication and hard work... These basic values of life...had been the first casualty of commercial capitalism." His focus on fighting for the Sikh cause appealed to many young Sikhs. Bhindranwale never learned English but had good grasp of Punjabi language. His speeches were released in the form of audio cassette tapes and circulated in villages. Later on, he became adept with press and gave radio and television interviews as well. His sermons urged the centrality of religious values to life, calling on the members of congregations to be:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: From July 1977 to July 1982, he extensively toured cities and villages of Punjab to preach the Sikh faith. He also visited other states and cities in India, mostly in "gurdwaras", in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. His meetings were attended by rapt "throngs of the faithful – and the curious." He advocated against decreasing religious observance, cultural changes occurring in Punjab, rising substance abuse, and use of alcohol and pornography, encouraging religious initiation by taking amrit (the administration of which had been his primary task during his tours) and fulfilling religious obligations, including wearing the outward religious symbols of the faith, like the turban and beard. He appeared at a time when leaders were not engaged in the community, traveled from city to city instead of being based in an office or "gurdwara" and delegating, solved domestic disputes and showed no interest in a political career, seeing himself foremost as a man of religion. People soon began to seek his intervention in addressing social grievances, and he began to hold court to settle disputes. This reflected the widespread disenchantment among the masses with expensive, time-consuming bureaucratic procedures that often did not ensure justice. Bhindranwale's verdicts were widely respected and helped to gain him enormous popularity, as well as his "remarkable ability" as a preacher and his ability to quote religious texts and evoke the relevance of historical events in the present time.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Khushwant Singh, a critic of Bhindranwale, allowed that “Bhindranwale's "amrit parchar" was a resounding success. Adults in their thousands took oaths in public to abjure liquor, tobacco and drugs and were baptized. Videocassettes showing blue films and cinema houses lost out to the village "gurdwara". Men not only saved money they had earlier squandered in self-indulgence, but now worked longer hours on their lands and raised better crops. They had much to be grateful for to Jarnail Singh who came to be revered by them."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: It is generally believed that in the late 1970s, Indira Gandhi's Congress party attempted to co-opt Bhindranwale in a bid to split Sikh votes and weaken the Akali Dal, its chief rival in Punjab. Congress supported the candidates backed by Bhindranwale in the 1978 SGPC elections. The theory of Congress involvement has been contested on grounds including that Gandhi's imposition of President's rule in 1980 had essentially disbanded all Punjab political powers regardless, with no assistance required to take control, and has been challenged by scholarship. According to the New York Times, Sanjay Gandhi had approached Bhindranwale, then the newly appointed head of the Damdami Taksal, after Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 Indian general election, but after Congress resumed power in 1980, would find out that he could not be controlled or directed. The Congress CM (and later President) Giani Zail Singh, who allegedly financed the initial meetings of the separatist organisation Dal Khalsa, amid attempts to cater to and capitalize on the surge in Sikh religious revivalism in Punjab. The Akali Dal would also attempt to cater to the same electoral trend during the same period following electoral defeats in 1972 and 1980, resulting from a pivot to a secular strategy in the 1960s and the accompanying coalition partnerships necessary to guarantee electoral success, most notably with the Jan Sangh, a party of urban Hindu communalism. This later turned out to be a miscalculation by Congress, as Bhindranwale's political objectives became popular among the agricultural Jat Sikhs in the region, as he would advocate for the state's water rights central to the state's economy, in addition to leading Sikh revivalism.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In 1979, Bhindranwale put up forty candidates against the Akali candidates in the SGPC election for a total of 140 seats, winning four seats. A year later, Bhindranwale used Zail Singh's patronage to put up candidates in three constituencies' during the general elections, winning a significant number of seats from Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Ferozepur districts. Despite this success, he would not personally seek any political office. He had the acumen to play off of both Akali and Congress attempts to capitalize off of him, as association with him garnered Sikh votes while putting other constituencies at risk. According to one analysis,


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale himself addressed rumors of being such an agent, which were spread by Akali leadership during mid-1983, as his expanding support came at the expense of the Akali Dal amid mass leadership defections, seeing them as attempts to reduce his by-then huge support base in Punjab. He would refute this in April 1984 by comparing his actions to the Akalis, referring to the granting of gun licenses to Akalis by the Congress administration while his had been canceled, and that he did not enter the house of any Congress-aligned faction (including congressites, communists, and socialists), Sikhs associated with him being arrested and their homes confiscated, and police destruction on his property, while Akali politicians would have dinners with figures aligned with Congress, like former chief minister Darbara Singh, who Bhindranwale would accuse of atrocities against Sikhs.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale did not respect conventional SGPC or Akali Dal apparatchiks, believing them to have "become mealy-mouthed, corrupt and deviated from the martial tenets of the faith," after they had failed to support the Sikhs during the 1978 Sikh-Nirankari clashes due to pressure from their coalition partners. Described as having "unflinching zeal and firm convictions," Bhindranwale did "not succumb to the pressure of big-wigs in the Akali Party nor could he be manipulated by the authorities to serve their ends." According to Gurdarshan Singh, "Those who tried to mend him or bend him to suit their designs underestimated his tremendous will and ultimately lost their own ground. He never became their tool. People who promoted his cause or helped him to rise to prominence were disillusioned, when he refused to play the second fiddle to them and declined to tread the path laid down for him. Paradoxical though it may seem, they became his unwilling tools. Thousands listened to him with rapt attention at the Manji Sahib gatherings. He had tremendous power to mobilise the masses. His charisma and eloquence overshadowed other leaders."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In order to overcome the hegemony of the Akali Dal, rather than being used, Bhindranwale would exploit the Congress and then the Akali Dal itself. The Akali Dal had begun to neglect Sikh needs in favor of maintaining political alliances necessary to keep power, resulting in their electoral loss in 1972, and the resulting Anandpur Sahib Resolution, meant to win back Sikh support, remained neglected while the party focused on reversing the overcentralization of political power that had taken place during the Emergency. Described as "a rational actor with his own goals," his first concern was to rejuvenate Sikhism as a leader of the community.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Further, the Damdami Taksal already had a history of openly opposing and criticizing Congress government policies before, as Kartar Singh Khalsa Bhindranwale, the leader of the institution prior to Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, had been a severe critic of the excesses of Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule, even in her presence as far back as 1975. Kartar Singh had also gotten a resolution passed by the SGPC on November 18, 1973, condemning the various anti-Sikh activities of the Sant Nirankaris, which were based in Delhi. Both Kartar Singh Bhindranwale and the Damdami Taksal had commanded such a level of respect in Sikh religious life that the Akali ministry had given him a state funeral upon his death on August 20, 1977. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale would also mention the Sikhs facing the government with 37 major protests against Emergency rule under Congress during this era as fighting against tyranny. Emergency rule had initially been utilized to avert criminal charges on Gandhi, who was linked to misuse of government property during the upcoming election, which would have invalidated her campaign, and endowed the central government with powers including preemptive arrests, as well as the arrest of many political opponents.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: On Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale becoming leader of the Damdami Taksal, another of the Taksal students explained, “[Nothing changed] in political terms. It was just the same way. The Indian government thought that maybe although they could not stop Sant Kartar Singh [Bhindranwale], maybe Sant Jarnail Singh [Bhindranwale] would be weaker. That was not the case.”


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: On 13 April 1978, the anniversary of the founding of the Khalsa, a Sant Nirankari convention was organized in Amritsar, with permission from the Akali state government. The practices of the "Sant Nirankaris" subsect of Nirankaris was considered as heretics by the orthodox Sikhism expounded by Bhindranwale, though the conflict between the Sikhs and the Sant Nirankaris preceded Bhindranwale; the Sant Nirankaris had been declared by the priests of the Golden Temple as enemies of the Sikhs in 1973, and the Damdami Taksal had opposed them since the 1960s, during the time of Kartar Singh Khalsa. They had exemplified both the internal and external threats to Sikhism that Bhindranwale spoke of in speeches, as their scriptures made derogatory references to the Guru Granth Sahib, the sect's leader proclaiming himself as a guru in its place, and because of their undermining of the Sikh structure and affiliation with Congress.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: From the Golden Temple premises, Bhindranwale delivered a stirring sermon, where he announced he would not allow the Nirankari convention to take place. According to Tully and Jacob, Bhindranwale declared "We are going to march there and cut them to pieces!" After the speech a large contingent of about two hundred Sikhs led by Bhindranwale and Fauja Singh, the head of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha, left the Golden Temple and proceeded to the Nirankari Convention with the intention of stopping its proceedings. The protest of the Sikhs was shot at by the armed guards of the Nirankari chief, subsequently resulting in an armed clash between the two groups. Fauja Singh allegedly attempted to behead Nirankari chief Gurbachan Singh with his sword but was shot dead by Gurbachan's bodyguard. In the ensuing violence, several people were killed: two of Bhindranwale's followers, eleven members of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha and three members of the Sant Nirankari sect. This event brought Bhindranwale to the limelight in the media, and brought him into the political arena. According to Kirpal Dhillon, former DGP of Punjab, the reported participation of some senior Punjab government officials in the convention also may have emboldened the Sant Nirankaris to attack the protestors.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Sikhs reacted to the clashes by holding massive demonstrations, some violent, in both Punjab and Delhi. A religious letter of authority was released by Akal Takht, the governing Sikh body, which directed Sikhs to use "all appropriate means" to prevent the Sant Nirankaris from growing and flourishing in society, and forbid Sikhs from keeping social ties with the Nirankaris and threatened those who did not do so with religious punishment (left ambiguous, though clarified by the "jathedar" to mean by standard religious teaching).


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: A criminal case was filed against sixty two Nirankaris, by the Akali led government in Punjab. The investigation concluded that the attack on the Sikhs was planned by a number of accused, including Gurbachan Singh. All the accused were taken into custody except Gurbachan Singh, who was arrested later in Delhi, but only after a personal audience with the Prime Minister Morarji Desai. The Sant Nirankaris had firmly supported the Emergency, and developed close links with many Congress politicians and bureaucrats, creating a strong foothold in Delhi political circles, as well as engendering opposition from the Akalis and the Damdami Taksal during the same period.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The case was heard in the neighbouring Haryana state, and all the accused were acquitted on grounds of self-defence on 4 January 1980, two days before the Lok Sabha poll. Though the case failed as authorities in Punjab were unable to ensure that the prosecution witness remained uncompromised by interested parties and police in Karnal, the Punjab government Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal decided not to appeal the decision. The case of the Nirankaris received widespread support in the Hindi media in Punjab and from Congress, which upon returning to central power also dismissed the Akali government in Punjab, where fresh elections were held and a Congress government installed; orthodox Sikhs considered this to be a conspiracy to defame the Sikh religion. Bhindranwale increased his rhetoric against the enemies of Sikhs. The chief proponents of this rhetoric were the Babbar Khalsa founded by the widow, Bibi Amarjit Kaur of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha, whose husband Fauja Singh had been at the head of the march in Amritsar; the Damdami Taksal led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who had also been in Amritsar on the day of the outrage; the Dal Khalsa, formed after the events; and the All India Sikh Students Federation. His "very public" rhetoric of Indira Gandhi's involvement in the trials was one of the initial reasons the central government became concerned with Bhindranwale, as well as the historic martial identity Sikhs were returning to because of him. Under Bhindranwale, the number of people joining the Khalsa increased. The rhetoric that were based on the "perceived 'assault' on Sikh values from the Hindu community", also increased in this period.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In the subsequent years following this event, several murders took place in Punjab and the surrounding areas, regarded to be committed by Bhindranwale's group or the newly founded Babbar Khalsa, which opposed Bhindranwale and was more inclined towards committing sectarian violence and enforcing Sikh personal law The Babbar Khalsa activists took up residence in the Golden Temple, where they would retreat to, after committing "acts of punishment" on people against the orthodox Sikh tenets. On 24 April 1980, The Nirankari head, Gurbachan was murdered. The First Information Report named twenty people for the murder, including several known associates of Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale, who was also charged with conspiracy to murder. Bhindranwale took residence in Golden Temple to allegedly escape arrest when he was accused of the assassination of Nirankari Gurbachan Singh. Bhindranwale remained in hiding until the Home Minister of India, Zail Singh announced to Parliament that Bhindranwale had nothing to do with the murder. Shortly after, Bhindranwale announced that the killer of the Nirankari chief deserved to be honored by the high priest of Akal Takht, and that he would weigh the killers in gold if they came to him. It would turn out that a member of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha, Ranjit Singh, surrendered and admitted to the assassination three years later, and was sentenced to serve thirteen years at the Tihar Jail in Delhi.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale's message was enthusiastically received by an emerging underclass of educated rural Sikhs,


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: whose suffered from the unequal distribution of benefits from the Green Revolution. Punjab had enjoyed the second-highest percentage of children in school after Kerala at the time, along with high college enrollment, at the same time with unemployment rates among college graduates far above the national average. Unemployment was caused by distortions caused by the disparity between agricultural growth and a stunted industrial sector; marginal and poor peasants could not reap the benefits of the land nor find employment in the industrial sector. By the late 1970s the educations of rural Sikhs, many from the Majha area, did not reap financial benefit, many found the urban college environment alienating, and the Akali Dal was engaged in political activities that bore little relation to the demands of educated but unemployed rural Sikhs youth. Bhindranwale's message increasingly appealed to them, and their support grew with police excesses, and as Bhindranwale expressed concern over the many breaches of civil rights, and those killed during and after 1978 in protests. The class dimension was described by "India Today" in 1986 as follows:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The All-India Sikh Students Federation, or AISSF, founded in 1943 to attract educated Sikh youth to the Akali movement, had traditionally followed the direction of the Akali Dal and fought for more political power for the Sikhs, fighting for an independent Sikh state before Partition, and afterwards taking up the Punjabi Suba cause. After the establishment of Punjab state, the AISSF had fallen into disarray by the 1970s, and during this period of increasing economic pressures on the state, student politics were dominated by rural Communist organizations. Amrik Singh was elected president in July 1978, and his organizational skills and Bhindranwale's legitimacy as the head of a respected religious institution restored the Federation as a powerful political force, and the AISSF and Bhindranwale were further united in being anti-Communist. With a well-educated leadership, many with advanced degrees, membership exploded from 10,000 to well over 100,000, and under Amrik Singh, the AISSF's first concern was the Sikh identity.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: AISSF secretary-general Harminder Singh Sandhu ascribed the preceding period of youth politics as resulting from the passivity of the Akali leadership in relation to the central government, seen as betraying Sikh interests, which caused resentment among the AISSF. By 1980 they felt ready to redefine Punjab's relationship with the center, and the revival of the AISSF and the presence of Bhindranwale put enormous pressure on the Akali Dal.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale was suspicious of Sikh elites, describing them as a class possessing the ability for multiple allegiances, and therefore, could not be relied upon by a mass movement based upon religious foundations which justified protest against discrimination and abuses of power and repression. As such he was often opposed particularly by some Sikh members of the class with business and land interests outside of Punjab, and those occupying high administrative positions. As part of a preaching tradition, he saw the lives of such Sikhs, described as sycophants of Indira Gandhi for power, as a departure threatening the distinct identity of the Sikhs. He saw that path as having to be corrected, along with deviationist and Communist trends, of Sikh officers whose loyalty lay with the state over the Sikh "panth" tradition, emphasizing unification of the community and pushing those officers in government service to work for such unity.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In May 1981, the AISSF led a protest against tobacco and other intoxicants in the religious city of Amritsar. The Arya Samaj had also led protests against alcohol and meat in the city, though it would be with Bhindranwale and the Sikhs that the police clashed on 31 May, resulting in a dozen Sikh deaths and adding to tensions.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: On 9 September 1981, Lala Jagat Narain, the founder editor of the newspaper "Punjab Kesari", was murdered. He was viewed as a supporter of the Nirankari sect and had written several editorials that had condemned Bhindranwale. An Arya Samaji known for his staunch communal tendencies reflected in his daily newspaper in Punjab, Lala had urged Hindus of Punjab to reply to government census that Hindi and not Punjabi was their mother tongue and decried the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. His paper played a significant role in "fanning the flames of communal hatred between Hindus and Sikhs," and the Hindi press based in Jalandhar consistently vilified the Sikhs, without making any distinction between one Sikh group or another. Narain had been present at the clash between the Nirankaris and the Akhand Kirtani Jatha and had served as a witness in the court case of the incident.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Punjab Police issued a warrant for Bhindranwale's arrest in the editor's murder, as he had often spoken out against the well-known editor. Bhindranwale, who at the time was on a preaching tour, was camped in Chando Kalan, a village in Hissar district in Haryana, 200 miles from Amritsar. A combined force of Punjab and Haryana Police planned a search operation in an attempt to locate and arrest Bhindranwale on September 14, 1981. According to veteran Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar, the Haryana Chief Minister, Bhajan Lal was instructed by the Home Minister, Zail Singh, to not arrest Bhindranwale. While Bhindranwale had relocated to Mehta Chowk, but the police fired upon his band of disciples, looted their luggage, and burned their religious texts. Bhindranwale and others Sikh religious leaders also relayed that police had behaved illegally with the Sikh inhabitants of the village during the search in which the valuables from homes belonging to Sikhs were reported to have been looted and two buses owned by the Damdami Taksal containing a number of Birs (copies) of the Guru Granth Sahib were set on fire.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: There was violence in Chando Kalan when the Punjab Police team reached the location, between supporters of Bhindranwale and police. The Punjab Police, incensed that the Haryana Police had allowed Bhindranwale to flee, set his vans which had contained written records of sermons of Bhindranwale for posterity on fire. According to the official version: When the Punjab Police arrived to Chando Kalan to arrest Bhindranwale, some followers of his fired upon the police, resulting in exchange of fire and incidents of arson. The clashes with the police resulted in the deaths of at least 11 people. The burning of his sermons had angered Bhindranwale, who secured himself in his fortified Gurdwara Gurdarshan Parkash located at Mehta Chowk. Bhindranwale at this point turned against Zail Singh and other senior congress leaders with whom he was previously associated with.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: As his location became common knowledge, the police surrounded the gurdwara at Mehta Chowk. Darbara Singh insisted on Bhindranwale's arrest, though the central government feared the possibility of clashes as large numbers of Sikhs had gathered at the gurdwara in his support. For negotiating Bhindranwale's surrender, the senior officers went inside the gurdwara. Bhindranwale agreed to surrender for arrest at 1:00 p.m. on September 20, 1981, but added a condition that will do so only after addressing the religious congregation. This condition was accepted by the police. At the agreed time he emerged address a large crowd of his followers who armed with spears, swords and several firearms. Several prominent Akali leaders such as Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Harchand Singh Longowal and the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee's Jathedar Santokh Singh were present. Bhindranwale delivered a sermon proclaiming his innocence and against the state government trying to have him arrested, receiving the support of almost every senior Akali leader, also against the perceived injustices done to the Sikhs and himself. He ended his speech asking the mob not to act violent after his arrest. Bhindranwale then offered himself to the police for arrest on 20 September 1981, and was taken to a circuit house instead of prison. Shortly after Bhindranwale courted arrest, agitated Sikhs clashed with the police and paramilitary forces, resulting in the death of 18 protestors.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: On the day of his arrest, three armed men on motorcycle opened fire using machine guns in a market in Jalandhar in retaliation, killing four people and injured twelve. The next day, in another incident at Tarn Taran one Hindu man was killed and thirteen people were injured. On 25 September, in Amritsar a goods train was derailed. On 29 September, an aeroplane of Indian Airlines was hijacked and taken to Lahore. Several bomb blasts were made in Punjab's Amritsar, Faridkot and Gurdaspur districts.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Several violent incidents happened in Punjab during the next 25 days after the arrest. The Akali Dal leadership was in the process of reestablishing its Sikh credentials after its secular administration during its protests against the Emergency, and under Longowal decided to publicly support Bhindranwale, the most popular Sikh religious leader in Punjab at that point. Bhindranwale also got support from the President of the SGPC, Tohra and the Jathedar of the Akal Takht, Gurdial Singh Ajnoha. India's Home Minister, Giani Zail Singh, then announced in the Parliament that there was no evidence against Bhindranwale in his involvement in Lala Jagat Narain's murder, and on 14 October 1981 Bhindranwale was released by the Punjab Police. After his release he was able to keep the party on a strongly nationalist course, and released a public statement approving the murders of Gurbachan Singh and Lala Jagat Narain and that the killers deserved to be honoured and awarded their weight in gold, according to KPS Gill. In a statement regarding Narain in early 1982 for the publication "India Today", Bhindranwale stated:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale's arrest and subsequent release raised his stature among the Sikh populace and especially the youth, who, comparing him to the ineffectual Akali leadership, flocked to him. He would become increasingly outspoken toward the Congress government, which would attempt to harass and detain him and other senior members of the Taksal several times in 1982.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The Anandpur Sahib Resolution, and the 1978 Ludhiana Resolution based on it, put socio-economic concerns at the core and called for an end to the center's control of Punjab's river waters and its unjust distribution, state control of the headworks, and better procurement prices and subsidies for the state's farmers. These issues were of particular concern to the state's rural Sikh population who supported them, as the Sikhs dominated the agricultural sector and rural areas. Other demands included the maintenance of the ratio of Sikhs in the army, protections of Sikhs outside Punjab, Punjabi as a second language for states with significant Punjabi-speaking populations, amendments to tax and property policies for rural populations, a broadcasting station and a dry port at Amritsar, and a stock exchange at Ludhiana.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: From a set of 45 economic, political, religious, and social policies formulated in September 1981, a list of 15 demands would be prepared in October, of which five were economic. The Dharam Yudh Morcha would champion these preliminary demands. The subsequent inclusion of religious demands were a result of polarization of Akali goals following failed negotiations in November with the Congress government, which would raise the spectre of separatism to exploit the fears of Hindu voters and push the Akalis into a corner. Other factors included attempts to ally with, or outbid, more militant Sikh factions, which gained traction following the lack of progress in talks, and the growing religious revivalism that both the Akalis and Congress would attempt to play to gain influence. According to Atul Kohli,


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: As a result of his rising popularity, Bhindranwale faced opposition from all sides, including the government and rival Sikh factions, both political and militant. One of Bhindranwale's main concerns in his speeches was condemning factionalism and internal disunity among the Sikhs. The Akali Dal leadership had initially opposed Bhindranwale. While Bhindranwale ceded leadership to the Akali Dal and disavowed political ambition, in 1980 the Akali Dal faced a serious challenge from Bhindranwale and his mass support from the AISSF, the Akali youth wing. As Bhindranwale became increasingly influential, the party decided to join forces with him. In August 1982, under the leadership of Harcharan Singh Longowal, the Akali Dal launched the "Dharam Yudh Morcha", or "righteous campaign," in collaboration with Bhindranwale to win more autonomy for Punjab. At the start of the protest movement, in response to long-standing wrongs not addressed by the state's economic and political process, the Akali leaders had, in their Ardas, or prayer, at the Akal Takht, resolved that they would continue the struggle until the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was accepted and implemented by the Government. The Akalis, in their subsequent electoral defeat in 1980, would be forced by the presence of Bhindranwale and his huge base of support in the AISSF to return to its Sikh base, for whom the Anandpur Sahib Resolution had originally been written to regain the declining support of, before it had fallen by the wayside.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Later, noting Indira Gandhi's intransigence, it appeared that the Akali leaders were willing to water down their demands. Bhindranwale reminded his audiences that it had been Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Surjit Singh Barnala, Balwant Singh and other leaders who had been were signatories to the Anandpur Sahib Resolution and that he was not present when the Resolution was adopted. He insisted, however, that having said the Ardas at the Akal Takht, no Sikh could go back on his solemn word. Longowal's core political base began to wither; about a third of his SGPC members and district Akali presidents reportedly defected to Bhindranwale. Bhindranwale promised the Sikh masses that he would not allow the chief Akali leadership to fail them as during the Punjabi Suba movement.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Despite the Resolution's endorsement of "the principle of State autonomy in keeping with the concept of Federalism," Indira Gandhi and the central government took a hard line, emphasizing the Sikh demands and treating them as tantamount to secession, thus putting moderate Sikh politicians at a competitive disadvantage in an increasingly frustrated and militant political arena. She would be later characterized by prime minister Charan Singh as following "a megalomaniacal policy based on elitist philosophies," and her successor Rajiv Gandhi would later describe the Resolution as "not secessionist but negotiable," recognizing the failures of her autocratic style of governance. Thousands of people joined the movement as they felt that it represented a real solution to their demands, such as a larger share of water for irrigation, and return of Chandigarh to Punjab. By early October, more than 25,000 Akali workers courted arrest in Punjab in support of the agitation.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The basic issues of the Dharam Yudh Morcha were related to the prevention of the digging of the SYL Canal, the redrawing of Punjab's boundaries following the Punjabi Suba movement to include left-out Punjabi-speaking areas, the restoration of Chandigarh to Punjab, the redefining of relations between the central government and the state, and greater autonomy for the state as envisioned in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution and as was constitutionally due. The most important demand was the restoration of the state's river waters as per constitutional, national and international norms based on riparian principles; more than 75% of the state's river water were being drained from the state, to Rajasthan and Haryana, which were non-riparian states, and its accompanying hydropower potential, powered by Punjab's only natural wealth.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Following failed talks, the "Nehr Roko Morcha", or “struggle to stop the canal,” was launched on April 24, 1982, by the Akali Dal at the village of Kapuri, Punjab to prevent the initial digging of the SYL Canal which would have diverted most of the state's water to Haryana, resulting in volunteer arrests. The protest, despite massive support from the Sikh peasantry, was not yielding results as Kapuri, where the Prime Minister had inaugurated the digging of the canal, was a remote border village distant from Akali headquarters, and the Akalis would decide to relocate the agitation to Amritsar in August. Meanwhile, an attempt had been made to arrest Bhindranwale on 20 April 1982 while he was staying in the Singh Sabha Gurdwara in Dadar in Mumbai, though he would successfully reach the safety of his base in Mehta Chowk. However, he would leave his base in Chowk Mehta for the security of the Guru Nanak Niwas in the Golden Temple complex on 20 July and call for a Panthic convention there on 25 July for the release of his men, after Amrik Singh was arrested on 19 July with two other followers; Amrik Singh had offended the appointed Punjab Governor Marri Chenna Reddy by protesting the mass arrest of the Akali volunteers and pleading their case, while Thara Singh, another leading member of the Taksal, was arrested the following day, highly provoking Bhindranwale. He joined his movement for their release to the larger Akali movement, which was then already designated "dharam yudh", for their political, economic, cultural, and religious demands.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Further morchas included the "Rasta Roko", "Kamm Roko", and "Rail Roko" morchas; with the exception of the "Rasta Roko" morcha in which some 20 protesters were killed in police firing, all others had ended peacefully.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The Dharam Yudh Morcha was launched later that year on 4 August, following an Akali Dal meeting in July at Amritsar; Bhindranwale and Jathedar Jagdev Singh Talwandi were persuaded to lead it under the Akali Dal banner and the leadership of Longowal, to whom Bhindranwale swore loyalty. The movement began with Akalis courting arrest with a large number of volunteers.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: During the implementation of various agricultural restrictions under Congress, the Akali Dal had accomplished little in response, and in addition, the possibility of forging an Akali-Congress partnership in Punjab was being privately explored. This caused the decline of support for the Akalis and the concurrent increase of support for Bhindranwale's message among both educated orthodox Sikhs and the rural population, along with what was increasingly seen as the ineffectual Akali approach of protests and inter-party collaboration in producing results for Punjab, leaving open a political space for those who argued that increased militancy was the only means for protecting Sikh interests.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The Akali movement gained momentum in August and September, and the government began to run out of room in jails for the over 25,000 volunteer protesters. Over 100,000 protesters would be arrested over the course of the "morcha". The central government, instead of preempting any Akali agitation in regard to the Punjab by constitutionally referring all the legal issues to the Supreme Court, which the Akali Dal had demanded, played up the threat of extremism and law and order, and appeared disinclined to solve the issues justly or constitutionally. As late as May 1984, the Congress government continued to frame the protest as a religion-based stir, as opposed to a comprehensive movement driven by political, economic, and territorial issues central to the Declaration and in the interests of all residents of Punjab. The considered view of the Governor of West Bengal sent to Punjab, B. D. Pande, that a political problem required a political solution, went unheeded.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In response to demands that the Supreme Court be consulted in regards to concerns that the center was unconstitutionally usurping water from Punjab, the central government found loopholes to circumvent such a demand, instead offering a tribunal, which did not have the authority to override the Punjab Reorganization Act to begin with, and never issued a final decision over an issue critical to agricultural growth and state development.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Later, in May 1984, one day after an Akali procession in Amritsar against a ban on tobacco and meat products in the vicinity of the Golden Temple, the Hindi Suraksha Samiti, which had been formed in response to the Akali protest, organized a counterdemonstration in favor of tobacco.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The Punjab police, due to colonial policing traditions different than those in the rest of the country, which resulted from being from the last region to be annexed by the British (in 1849) and the extremely turbulent early years of British rule, had had much more free reign to act than in other provinces; the influence of those policies persisted after independence. The police would react to incidents by rounding up and illegally detaining suspects in large numbers for prolonged aggressive interrogation, often killing detainees in staged encounters. There was little faith in complaint inquiries from ordinary citizens, due to lawless police activity having tacit approval from the state police leadership.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Under the pretext of maintaining law and order, central state actions in the form of false encounters, tortures and killings in police custody, as well as extrajudicial police invasions and oppressive lockdowns in rural Punjab, increased. It became known that during the period, certain police officials and others had been guilty of excesses or violence. Atrocities committed by named officers were narrated in open meetings by Bhindranwale or the concerned victims, but neither the charges of the victims, reports to the authorities, nor other complaints were responded to by the administration to rectify current complaints or improve future procedures, much less for punishing the offenders. This perceived official apathy and callousness led many began to believe that what was happening was at the behest of the administration, and that state violence was being practiced to defame Sikhs to turn public opinion in order to sidetrack the real issues of state resources and constitutional procedure, as neither issues nor reported rights violations were being addressed. Bhindranwale spoke of staged crimes, in which Sikhs were accused of theft or violence, with the intention of linking the falsely accused to Bhindranwale, with any declared act being said to be on his orders, and that many of the Sikhs arrested on false accusations were tortured and killed. Accusations of violent force on the Sikhs also included the earlier burning of buses belonging to the Damdami Taksal containing Sikh scriptures, and Sikh train passengers being singled out and beaten on false pretenses.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Out of 220 deaths during the first 19 months of the Dharam Yudh Morcha, 190 had been Sikhs, with over 160 Sikhs killed during the first 16 months, with the Akalis alleging that reactive killings were being done by agent provocateurs, and reports appearing that such communal incidents had been initiated by Congress to inflame Hindu feelings. Despite emphatic demands for a detailed judicial inquiry, the central government was unwilling to initiate any such process. Extrajudicial killings by the police of orthodox Sikh youth in rural areas during the summer and winter of 1982 and early 1983 resulted in retaliatory violence.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale was particularly upset about the police atrocities and the murder of scores of Sikhs in the garb of false and contrived police encounters. He was often heard criticizing the double standards of the Government in treating Hindu and Sikh victims of violence, citing various incidents like the immediate appointment of an inquiry committee to probe Lala Jagat Narain's murder while not for the killing of the Sikhs, including the firing on peaceful Sikh protesters in the successful "Rasta Roko" agitation on 4 April 1983, killing 24, believing that this partisan behavior of the Government was bound to hasten the process of alienation of the Sikhs. He reprimanded the press for suppressing incidences of police atrocities, and of the double standards of dealing with Sikhs.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: A team sponsored by the PUCL, with Justice V. M. Tarkunde as chairman and famed journalist Kuldip Nayar as a member, to assess the police excesses against Sikhs. It reported:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In the words of Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, BBC correspondents, these deadly encounters were justified as a reasonable method of avoiding lengthy court trials:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Though Akali demands were largely for the developmental welfare of the state of Punjab as a whole, with demands only made to the government and not in regards to other communities, police killings, including extrajudicial actions of fatal torture and mutilations of detainees, with some subsequently declared as escapees, as well as unprovoked attacks on innocent individual Sikhs, were carried out by mobs of the Hindi Suraksha Samiti, mobilized by the Arya Samaj. These incidents sparked off retributory attacks against them by Sikh youths. After the launch of the Dharam Yudh Morcha, and subsequent governmental inaction in regards to police brutality, Sikh activists began committing retaliatory acts of political violence. An assassination attempt was made on Chief Minister of Punjab Darbara Singh and two Indian Airlines flights were hijacked.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Following protester deaths, Swaran Singh restarted negotiations on behalf of Gandhi with the Akalis after releasing all arrested Akali volunteers, reaching agreements on Chandigarh, river waters, Centre-State relations, and the Amritsar broadcast, which were approved by a cabinet subcommittee. While Swaran Singh relayed the government's approval of the agreement, Gandhi had changed it significantly before submitting it to Parliament. The talks would collapse after this action, and Longowal would announce in November 1982 the continuation of the protests in Delhi during the 1982 Asian Games. Another round of talks between the Akalis and Congress MP Amrinder Singh was successful, but was sabotaged by Bhajan Lal, the Chief Minister of Haryana, who stated that protests, which were largely stifled, would not be allowed in Haryana during the event, and ensured that Sikhs allowed to pass through, regardless of social position, whether retired military, politician, or ordinary citizen, were subjected to various procedures including invasive friskings and removal of turbans; Sikhs travelling from Punjab to Delhi or back were indiscriminately stopped, searched, and humiliated, and Sikhs understood this humiliation not just individually but as a community; according to journalist Kuldip Nayyar, "from that day their feeling of alienation [had] been increasing." A few months after the Asian Games, anti-Sikh riots in Panipat on 14 February 1983 resulted in many Sikh deaths, damage to property of Sikhs, and extensive damage to gurdwaras, during which the state police remained inactive.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale, then regarded as the "single most important Akali leader," announced that nothing less than full implementation of the Anandpur resolution was acceptable to them. The Sikh volunteers who answered his call on 3 September 1983 were not satisfied with either the methods or the results of Longowal's methods, as a rift emerged between the two leaders, with Bhindranwale referring to Longowal's rooms in the Golden Temple complex as "Gandhi Niwas" ("Gandhi residence"), and Longowal referring to his rooms as a wild "Chambal" region. Bhindranwale would denounce the double standard of Congress-supporting hijackers, who had demanded the release of Indira Gandhi after her post-Emergency arrest, being rewarded with seats in the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly, while demanding punishment for Sikh protesters who had done the same. He would comment in 1982, "If the Pandey brothers in Uttar Pradesh hijack a plane for a woman (Mrs. Gandhi) they are rewarded with political positions. If the Sikhs hijack a plane to Lahore and that too for a cause, they are dubbed traitors. Why two laws for the same crime?" With the release of Amrik Singh in July 1983, Bhindranwale felt confident of the advancement of the movement without the Akali leadership; they would part ways in December, two months after the imposition of President's rule.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale expected misrepresentation from reporters, telling the press, “I know what you are going to print, that you are only working for rupees.” He regarded the media as being puppets for the central government, granting interviews chiefly to reach other Sikhs. Bhindranwale became the focus of press attacks for any violence that took place in Punjab, while police atrocities and torture went unreported. He is said to have once remarked, “Even if a fly is killed in Punjab, it is blamed on me.” He criticized the coverage by journalists who he had held audience with as distorted, denying that he had ever had anyone killed, and emphasizing that every strident statement he had made had always been in response to provocation by other parties; in an interview with Shekhar Gupta in December 1983:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In early 1982, he addressed in a speech at a college in Karnal, Haryana, about his perception on the constant distortions by the press::


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale also referenced the double standards of the media in the failure to register cases against prominent Hindu politicians for making threatening statements against Sikhs, including Swami Adityavesh, an Arya Samaji Congress MLA, who demanded that Sikhs be expelled from Haryana to Punjab, Kewal Krishan, a Congress MLA in Punjab, who threatened to destroy all Sikh organizations, and Harbans Lal Khanna, a BJP MLA in Punjab, who stated publicly in Amritsar on 30 May 1981, ""Dukki tikki khehan nahin deni, sir te pagri rehan nahin deni; kachh, kara, kirpaan; ehnoon bhejo Pakistan."" ('We are not going to let any second or third group exist, we are not going to let a turban remain on any head; the shorts, the iron bangle, the sword, send these to Pakistan’), and had a model of the Golden Temple desecrated by a mob, Baldev Prakash, also a BJP MLA, who had posters of such slogans printed. and extremist president of the Hindi Suraksha Samiti in Patiala, Pawan Kumar Sharma, backed by the Arya Samaj press and furtively by the Congress party, with links to Bhajan Lal, who in a raid had been discovered with large stocks of arms, explosives, and hand grenades. Amrik Singh would also allude to the double standard of the government's soft behavior towards Dhirendra Brahmachari, who had smuggled 500 guns through Jammu from Spain, in contrast with the government's concern with the Sikhs; Amrik Singh would also state that "Delhi likes Sikhs like Zail Singh and Buta Singh who pay court to the Government. All other Sikhs are called extremists. We don't want secession but seek status of first-class citizens."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Regarding incidents of bus passengers shooting in the state in October 1983 and other crimes, the discovery of discarded turbans, pistols, and cartridges found at certain crime scenes prompted open Akali allegations that killings were being done by professionals under the orders of the Third Agency, an intelligence wing formed by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, looking for a pretext to impose President's rule in Punjab, which she did on 6 October. Longowal himself repeatedly challenged the Government that he would prove that the Dhilwan shootings were not done by any Sikh or Akali if a judicial enquiry was conducted.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: According to former Punjab DGP Kirpal Dhillon, the incident was characterized by several unusual circumstances: the perpetrators had never been seriously tracked, the bus had not been a scheduled service and had deviated from its usual route, and the victims did not belong to sects and castes typical of the area, noting the possibility of it being authorized by Congress ministers and managed through the police and central agency. Darbara Singh was finally dismissed by Zail Singh after the incident, the first of its kind. The entire spectrum of Sikh groups condemned the incident "in the strongest possible terms," though a section of the Jalandhar media nevertheless persisted in insinuating Sikh militant involvement.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale, as well as all militant groups, would "squarely and unequivocally" condemn the bus shootings, the 20 October train derailment, and all fatal incidents, demanding a judicial inquiry into the spate of events during the month. Even radical Sikh groups, which normally did not shy away from claiming responsibility for violence, denied any role in bus killings or desecrations and condemned them, with the Babbar Khalsa denouncing the "killing of any Hindus, robberies, or any religiously provocative acts." According to them, their targets were only either Sant Nirankaris involved in 1978, or police officers who were deemed guilty of "torturing and humiliating" detained Sikh youth and harassing their family members. Nevertheless, he was often held responsible for the events. Bhindranwale would state, "It suits the government to publicize me as an extremist, thus making an excuse to frustrate the just cause and the legitimate demands of the entire Sikh community and Punjab state."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In addition, many such killings that took place between December 1983 and June 1984 were rather the result of personal vendettas, and fundamentalist groups not affiliated, and often opposed, to Bhindranwale, including the Dal Khalsa and Babbar Khalsa, who claimed responsibility for most crimes blamed on Bhindranwale, who denied responsibility for all such acts. Meanwhile, hundreds of individual Sikhs, even many who were not politically involved, had been harassed, beaten and killed in communal mob incidents, and tortured, imprisoned, and killed by police forces for the previous two years during the Dharam Yudh Morcha, amidst lack of government action. A report by S. M. Sathananthan et al. characterized the actions of extremists opposing constitutional Sikh demands as fueled by "one-sided anti-Sikh misinformation from various news agencies.".Bhindranwale had commented in 1983:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: B.D. Pande, who was appointed Governor of Punjab from 10 October 1983 to 27 June 1984 during President's rule, criticized the methods of the central leadership, especially that of Indira Gandhi, who he characterized as having "introduced what was called the amoral theory in Indian politics," as well as "Hindu hardliners and vernacular press for contributing to the false narrative." He also blamed the rivalry between Congress officials President Zail Singh and Punjab CM Darbara Singh for the course of events.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: B. G. Verghese and K. C. Kulish, senior journalists deputed by the Editors Guild of India, filed a report after visiting Punjab in February 1984 denouncing the tendency to reflexively attribute any uptick in even normal crime to whichever special category of outlaws operated at the time, writing, "Objection is taken in Punjab to the tendency to ascribe all crime to Sikh extremists. The press must be wary of such stereotypes. Many crimes, robberies and murders have little to do with the current political scene."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: There would be significant government interference in information released to the media itself. According to Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, "The clearly distorted account of the event released to the media does not speak well for India's vaunted freedom of press. Stories of prostitutes and drugs at the Akal Takht were printed on front pages one week, that recanted in back pages the next. A story suggesting that Bhindranwale had committed suicide was followed by one describing his body as riddled with bullets from head to toe. There is no doubt that an entire apparatus of fear dissemination worked to convince India that the Sikhs were to be distrusted. And by and large, it succeeded," adding that "Compromises with press freedom were accompanied by draconian legislation that was a target of criticism from human rights communities around the world."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: According to a journalist traveling with Bhindranwale during 1982, the Central intelligence department, or CID, which had taped every public speech listening for "seditious" remarks, had heard none by April 1982, and Darbara Singh, despite being ready to "act" against Bhindranwale, had found no grounds to do so. A senior officer in Chandigarh in December 1983 confessed, "It's really shocking that we have so little against him while we keep blaming him for all sorts of things. You certainly cannot assault the temple on the basis of just these charges, get hundreds of people killed and get away with it."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: When the insurgency against the central government began, it was against the main backdrop of unresolved Anandpur Sahib Resolution claims and an increased sense of disillusionment with the democratic process, which when it worked seemed to end up with Sikhs’ not achieving satisfactory representation, and when it did not, ended up with the dictatorship of Emergency rule, as well as the backdrop of communal conflict on the subcontinent which gave Sikhs a historical justification to fear for the future of their religion in a Hindi-dominated state. The failure of the central government to address political, social, and economic problems of the Sikhs facilitated the rise of militancy. Sikh demands had been fundamentally political rather than religious, while prolonged intransigence by the central government on water, state border, and devolutionary issues, in addition to centralization, led to alienation and militancy. Bhindranwale accused Indira Gandhi of sending Darbara Singh, former Congress chief minister of Punjab, to "wreak atrocities on the Sikh nation."