The Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh has recently brought out a book, Punjab Crisis— Context and Trends. The book is very timely, and it attempts to investigate one of the most crucial areas where our experiments with nation building are now being put to test. I do believe that when a history of independent India's efforts at evolving into a nation gets to be written, Assam and the North-East, and Punjab will figure as the most crucial challenges that we faced.

The book endeavours to help focus our attention on issues underlying these developments. Indeed the tone of enquiry is set by a very moving foreword, to another book brought out by CRRID on the North-East, by P N Haksar, its chairman. He puts it thus: 'Undoubtedly, we did achieve a remarkable sense of unity and solidarity, even in the midst of I our palpable diversities, during the entire period of our struggle for freedom. This achievement also created an illusion—an illusion that we could rest on our oars. The happenings in Assam, and now in Punjab and Haryana mock at our illusion. We have spoken so often on the theme of 'unity in diversity' and repeated it with such deadening reiteration that its meaning and its implications are lost. He goes on, 'Sanguinary events overtook us and yet the problems remain. Assam today is divided and distracted. The calm prevailing there is uneasy. Reconciliation on the basis of reason, justice and law is still necessary. And what of Punjab; our North? I am struck by the thought that if 1983 is now remembered as the year of Assam, then 1984 might well be recounted as that of Punjab. In Punjab the worst has come to the worst.

At the time of writing, the very logic inherent in the employment of troops in Punjab has been carried to its inevitable conclusion. The precincts of the Golden Temple have been entered into. There has been fighting between Indians, resulting in a heavy loss of life, of which about 70 are servicemen; 'the body', of the main perpetrator of a cult of violence, as official spokesmen inform us, 'has been found'; in his own utterances were the seeds of such a denouement. Reports of mutinous conduct by Sikh troops in some parts of the country have been received. A number of innocents have also lost their lives, as indeed they have been doing in the past three years of escalating, mindless, terrorism.

Saddest of all, damage has been caused to the holy precincts and to Akal Takht. This damage is not just physical; an essential moral and spiritual damage was caused the day these precincts became a sanctuary for the unholy and the lawless. Sizeable amounts of unauthorised arms, of various categories, have been found. There is total blackout of all other kinds of news, but that of limited official, handouts. Punjab continues to be bound by a statewide curfew. It has received a body blow. Or is it Punjab alone that has been visited upon by such a staggering infliction? Is it not the whole of the country?