Bhindranwale still in vogue, finds Chinese connection

CHANDIGARH - Twenty-five years after he was killed in the Golden Temple, Sikh hardliner Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale is back — with a Made in China tag.

T-shirts, calendars, stickers, mugs and key chains with Bhindranwale’s face are doing brisk business across the state. Most shopkeepers say they get the accessories from Delhi traders who get supplies from China.

Here we cannot manufacture them due to high input costs. From Chinese traders we procure them at almost half prices. The response from customers is simply awesome, Amritsar trader Jasbir Singh told IANS.

A Bhindranwale poster, showing him with an AK-47 rifle, is apparently the most popular among youngsters.

Tejinderpal Singh, a shopkeeper in Jalandhar, said: We see a fascination for this man among youths. Some of us import plain T-shirts from China and get Bhindranwale photographs printed on them.”

Bhindranwale is widely seen as the spearhead of a Sikh separatist campaign that raged in Punjab for a decade and claimed some 25,000 lives before being crushed in 1993.

He himself was killed when Indian troops stormed the heavily fortified Golden Temple in June 1984.

Even radical Sikh leaders of Punjab are amazed with the seeming popularity of Bhindranwale.

Even those who were not born during that time are crazy about these accessories, Kanwarpal Singh, secretary of Dal Khalsa, told IANS.

Punjab Police chief P.S. Gill has said that the government was aware of the business in Bhindranwale accessories in the state and police were watching the situation.