Sant Harchand Singh Longowal arrived at the Kamowal temple in the Punjabi village of Sherpur in high spirits. The soft-spoken president of the Akali Dal, the Sikh political party, had just come from Chandigarh, where he had persuaded two leading Sikhs to withdraw their opposition to an agreement that he and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had signed on July 24, ending three years of Sikh confrontation with the government in New Delhi. Earlier in the day, Longowal had announced that the party would contest all seats in the Sept. 22 elections for the state assembly and 13 seats in Parliament.
That...