Presented by Peter Sissons ITN. Jane Cordin reporting in New Delhi. Interview with Khushwant Singh.

“As final preparations are made for Mrs Gandhi’s funeral tomorrow, the death toll from the riots so far, is estimated to be about 500. The country’s new Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, who was today elected leader of the ruling Congress Party, went on television to tell his nation that the anti-Sikh violence will destroy everything India stands for. He warned, I cannot and will not allow this. Delhi, the capital is reported to be tense but quiet tonight after the trouble of the last three days.

The worst scenes of violence have been on trains bound to a Delhi where Hindu mobs boarded coaches and dragged at least 28 Sikhs to their deaths. Other trouble spots have been in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Peter Sissons, ITN

In Delhi throughout the day, many thousands of mourners have been queuing for hours to file past the body of Mrs Gandhi. They ranged from diplomats and internationally known political figures to blind peasants from India’s rural provinces. The flower bedecked body of Mrs Gandhi will be taken on a four-hour procession through the streets tomorrow to a site on the outskirts of the city. There, on a funeral pyre of scented sandalwood, she’ll be cremated. An army of workmen have been labouring since first light today to prepare the site. Tens of thousands of mourners, including scores of world statesmen, have been arriving in Delhi for the funeral.

A huge security operation has been mounted in Delhi for that funeral tomorrow. Britain’s representatives will include Mrs Thatcher, Neil Kinnock and Princess Anne. America is sending Secretary of State George Schultz. And the Soviet mourners will be led by Prime Minister Nikolai Tikhonov. When she left Heathrow today, Mrs Thatcher said she realised the security risks involved and she condemned the Sikhs in Britain who’d gloated over Mrs Gandhi’s death. The Prime Minister was accompanied on the plane by armed Special Branch men. Charles Hudson looks at the security problems surrounding tomorrow’s funeral. As the Prime Minister left London this morning, she appeared not to be letting recent events in Brighton and Delhi worry her.

One is no longer concerned about one’s own security, Prime Minister.

It must have crossed your mind though, surely?

Oh, yes. It’s just something one lives with.

It is going to be a massive security problem in Delhi, having all the world leaders, people like you.

It will be. But we go to mourn the loss of Indira Gandhi and we believe that the Indian government will do everything it can for security, both for the sake of its own people and for those leaders who are going.

Do you know, it still go? We must still go.

Mrs Gandhi’s body will leave the building where she’s been lying in state, late tomorrow morning and pass through heavily populated quarters of the city and shopping areas to Connaught Place, where huge crowds are expected to gather. The the cortege will make for the Yamuna River and the cremation site itself. Troops will line the streets and for security reasons, foreign dignitaries who’ve already been gathering in Delhi will follow a different, as yet unconfirmed route. They’ll travel in closed cars and will probably pass through the south of the city, where smaller crowds are expected. As for Mrs Thatcher, she’ll have to abandon the business like, informality and relatively light security of her last visit to Delhi a year ago.

In most security operations, you have two circles. You have an inner circle where if there was any threat to the VIP, the inner circle would close in on the VIP and they would literally, with their own bodies, shield them from attack. I think you may have seen this in pictures of the Secret Service operating with Ronald Reagan, for example. There’s also a second circle that’s in the crowd. This is a circle of security officers in the crowd who’ll be looking for anything suspicious, any fast movement, anyone reaching into their jacket suddenly, anything that could potentially be somebody going for a weapon who might run out of the crowd.

What about the kind of weapon that might be favoured by an assassin who might take advantage of the kind of situation that there will be in Delhi tomorrow? This is the weapon, that the sort of weapon that a potential assassin might choose if he was trying to go in at close range. A semiautomatic pistol with a magazine capacity of 13 rounds. In this case, other or semi automatic pistols have a greater magazine capacity. With the right sort of bullets, it can actually defeat soft body armour. He take the weapon, it’s fairly easy to conceal it, he could come out of the crowd, he’d bring it out. And he’d start firing as fast as he could until he was actually overcome himself.

So how serious a risk is it for Mrs Thatcher? Is she literally taking her life in her hands in going to Delhi now. She has an enormous advantage because her people will be alert, because they realise there is a threat. And generally it’s when people don’t think that there’s a threat that things happen.

But even after the funeral is over, there are fears that the rift which has opened up between the Hindu and Sikh communities will take years to heal. Some Sikh leaders are predicting mass migrations between different parts of the country on a scale not seen since 1947, when India and Pakistan were partitioned.

This, from Jane Corbin in Delhi.

The army’s been called in to protect Delhi’s terrified Sikh community, the largest outside the Punjab. Sikh houses and temples have been torn down and set on fire. There have been reports of Sikhs being burnt alive and Hindu mobs, 100 strong, attacking women and children. The families who’ve not been able to flee the city are in hiding, barricaded in their homes.

Jane Corbin, ITN

For many months, the Sikhs have been demanding, often violently, a bigger say in their own affairs. Now the Hindus are fighting back, but many claim to be ashamed of the attacks by their community on the Sikhs since the assassination of Indira Gandhi. They claim most Hindus want to live in peace with their neighbours. I think it’s only because of the antisocial elements in the city and they took advantage of the situation. But it’s not a religious fight between the Hindus and the Sikhs.

But the Sikhs are not reassured. They say their Hindu neighbours turned a deaf ear to their cries. Some Sikhs claim to have telephoned police stations for help again and again but received no response.

MP Khushwant Singh is a prominent member of the Sikh community. Last night he fled from a mob gathered outside his house.

But the situation is extremely grim for the act of three Sikhs in killing Mrs. Gandhi it would seem that a community over 13 million Sikhs are being held to ransom. They’ve been acts of violence against Sikhs and their property in practically every part of this country without exception and I have yet to hear of any instances where the Hindu neighbours have come to their help. Sikhs are beginning to feel totally alienated and have faced a very grim prospect of having to decide whether they’re going to live in this country or get out.

Khushwant Singh, author

The three Sikhs who killed Mrs. Gandhi and sparked off the violence were almost certainly not acting alone. Details of a conspiracy have begun to emerge. One of the Sikh security guards who shot Indira Gandhi has revealed that he and his two accomplices took a vow at a Sikh temple to kill her. And he says that another Sikh guard, one of the Prime Minister’s security force also swore to kill Rajiv Gandhi. The whole operation according to this man who survived he says was masterminded by a major general in the Indian army. The man who’s revealed all this is now under armed guard in the Lohai hospital around him lie hundreds of badly injured Sikhs, victims of Hindu fury.

Earlier today when we tried to film these Sikhs, an enraged Hindu mob attacked us and seized our pictures. The Sikhs have abandoned their burnt and looted stores in the old city. They’ve always been a prosperous business community living in relative harmony with their neighbours. In the past it’s always been Muslims who clashed with Hindus, inter communal violence, spread of religious intolerance.

Doesn’t make any sense. The Muslim was always outside the mainstream of Hinduism. Hindus and Sikhs are related to each other. They intermarry in the in the cities. My own daughter is married to a Hindu. It just doesn’t add up what has happened here. And the only way I can explain it is that a pent up sense of envy is turned into a sense of hatred because the Sikhs were doing better than the other communities and it hurts the people’s eyes. And therefore what they’ve done in most cases apart from burning Sikh temples is to loot Sikh property.

Khushwant Singh, author

What do you think will happen now.

Unless the government is able to contain this violence against the Sikhs and somehow assuage their feelings enter into some kind of agreement with their leaders there will be an inevitable exchange of populations. The Sikhs feel insecure here. They’ll be driven out of the country into the Punjab and in turn the Hindus will be driven out from the Punjab. We are repeating a scene that took place in ’46/47 when Pakistan was formed so I hope it doesn’t happen because the country has already paid a very heavy price for what happened in ’46 and ’47 and we can’t really afford to go on breaking up this country.

Tonight, the new Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, appeared on Indian television to condemn the violence.

Communal madness will destroy us. It will destroy everything India stands for. As Prime Minister of India I cannot and will not allow this.

Hindus have died in the violence too and this morning the funerals began. The fear in Delhi is that tomorrow’s state funeral for Mrs. Gandhi could incite more inter communal clashes as the Hindu majority remembers their Prime Minister was gunned down by Sikh assassins. Jane Corbin, ITN Delhi.

Hopes arising that England’s cricketers stranded in their hotel in Delhi since Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination will be able to go ahead with their tour of India. The first two matches of the tour have already been cancelled but the Indian Cricket Board is considering proposals that would allow the first test to take place once the official period of mourning is over. The team spent today practising watched by security men.”

ITN interview with author, Khushwant Singh