POLITICS
Of Indira Gandhi
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After Mrs. Gandhi returned to power, her government was confronted with serious challenges to its ability to maintain law and order as conflicts between religious and ethnic groups broke out in different parts of the country. In Assam, long-standing hostility between local political parties and the Congress-I Party merged with the antagonism the Assamese felt toward illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and settlers who had come from West Bengal. When Mrs. Gandhi insisted that the Bengalis be allowed to vote in elections, there was widespread violence, culminating in a massacre in which hundreds were killed. An even more severe threat to national unity came from the violent protests of members of the Sikh community in the Punjab against Mrs. Gandhi and her government. After the army had invaded the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the chief shrine of the Sikhs, which had been held as an armed camp by a group of militant Sikhs, she became the target for Sikh anger, and on 31 October 1984 she was assassinated by Sikh members of her own bodyguard. Her son Rajiv was chosen by her party to succeed her.
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