Khalistan Movement

The Sikh separatist agitation for a sovereign homeland in Punjab, India, found its ultimate expression in the Khalistan movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The Sikhs, a religious minority constituting approximately 2% of Indian society but a majority in the border state of Punjab in the northwest, nursed grievances centering on religious identity, economic and political discrimination, and social and cultural harassment. A Sikh diasporan community in North America, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia played an increasingly significant role as the ideology of Sikh self-determination, calls for assertion of human rights, and underground support for the violent Khalistani insurgency developed. Indeed, even as Punjab itself quieted by the turn of the millennium, the global Sikh community continued to uphold sovereigntist claims.

The year 1984 was a pivotal date for the Khalistan movement. After nonviolent protests for years over the array of grievances the Sikhs had with the central government of India, a small minority had stepped up their campaign to include violent action. In June 1984, the Indian Army assaulted the Golden Temple Complex at Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest site, in ostensible response to an array of crimes committed by the militants who had taken refuge there. In the assault, occurring on a major holiday, “Sant” Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a prominent Sikh preacher and leader of the Khalistan movement, was “martyred” at the [Page 660]Golden Temple, along with at least hundreds (by government account) and probably thousands (by human rights accounts) of entirely innocent visitors. Many of the sacred buildings were defaced or destroyed. Later in the year, after two Sikhs assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in retaliation, thousands of Sikhs were brutally murdered in pogroms coordinated by Indian political workers across several Indian cities. Suddenly, the sympathies of all Sikhs were turned toward the separatist agitators and away from India. A declaration of independence was signed in April 1986, and guerilla forces were organized.

The decade from 1984 to 1994 can be considered the height of the Khalistan movement. Villagers and townspeople across Punjab dared not go out at night for fear of their lives. Police organized “Village Defense Forces,” a sort of civilian vigilante scheme, arming people to fight against the increasingly well-armed Khalistani insurgents. It was suspected that the Khalistani guerillas were receiving weapons and training from within Pakistan, although the Pakistani government has always denied this. They were divided into several main organizations, such as the Khalistan Liberation Force, the Khalistan Commando Force, the Babbar Khalsa, the Bhindranwale Tiger Force, and the Sikh Students Federation. A Panthic Committee unified the whole of the movement, and it maintained liaisons in the diasporan communities—always central to the effort, particularly as human rights abuses increased and refugees swelled the ranks of British, Canadian, and U.S. Sikh populations.

The last major violent event of the Khalistan movement was the 1995 assassination, by a suicide car bomb, of Punjab's chief minister in Chandigarh. Since then, the claim has been that Punjab has been “normalized,” though tensions continue and Khalistani sympathies remain high in the diaspora. The grievances that sparked the movement have not been resolved. It should also be noted that the Khalistan movement played a key role in sparking the Kashmiri independence movement starting in 1989 and also other minority autonomy movements now current in India.

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