Chandigarh, Dec. 1: The man who led a violent struggle for a separate Sikh nation is stirring passions in Punjab again more than twenty years after his “martyrdom” — this time through his portrait.

Sikh religious body SGPC’s decision to install a portrait of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in a museum on Amritsar’s Golden Temple complex has sparked a political storm, with the Opposition Congress seeing a “sinister” motive behind the move.

“We want the ruling Akali Dal government to explain the decision to install Bhindranwale’s portrait in the museum. The SGPC is run by the Akali Dal and we believe the party is behind the sinister move to revive terrorism in the state,” Punjab Congress president Rajinder Kaur Bhattal said here today.

The former chief minister said portraits of many others, like religious leader H.S. Longowal who was killed by militants for signing a peace accord with Rajiv Gandhi, “should be installed” in the museum. “Why choose a person who is responsible for over a decade of bloodshed in Punjab and murder of thousands of innocent people?”

The portrait was installed on Thursday at a ceremony attended by SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar with several radical Sikh leaders, some of them from the hardline Damdami Taksal sect that Bhindranwale once headed.

The controversy is not so much over the installation of the portrait as many exist in various gurdwaras in the state and even in Delhi. It is the citation that has triggered outrage.

The citation describes “Sant Giani Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale” as the “great Sikh general” who “attained martyrdom” in June 1984, fighting against Indian armed forces for the “honour and prestige” of the Golden Temple and the Akal Takht, Sikhism’s highest temporal authority.