Given how the RSS members, Hindu mobs, and zealots often take things too far, the countercurrents from the other religious minority groups are not unnatural. Sikhs, like other minority groups in India, are getting increasingly apprehensive of the growing power of Hindu nationalist forces in the country, writes Simon Mohsin

ON SEPTEMBER 19, 2022, over 100,000 Canadian Sikhs voted for the Khalistan Referendum, which was organised by the Khalistani group Sikhs for Justice. The Khalistan referendum is a demand for carving out a separate country for the Sikhs. The future plan is to establish before the UN that Punjabi people demand independence from India. In 2018, Indian embassy officials in North America and Europe were banned by Sikh religious organisations from visiting gurdwaras. There are a number of gurdwaras in Europe and North America that continue to support and propagate separatist ideology by highlighting the issues of injustice and human rights abuse by India in the 1980s and 1990s at various public and private forums. These efforts and the simmering undercurrents of the Khalistan Movement have given rise to leaders like Ampritpal Singh, who is just a symptom of the detriments of the paradigm shift that has taken place in India in the last several years.

Amritpal Singh, who leads a separatist group called Waris Punjab De, or ‘Heirs of Punjab,’ has been a prominent separatist since 2022 and went on the run several weeks ago after his followers stormed a police station armed with clubs and knives. He was arrested recently in northern Punjab after being on the run for weeks. His arrest has changed the dynamics of the Khalistan Movement 2.0, as it is dubbed by many. Punjab has been the scene of Sikh separatist violence since the early 1980s, when insurgents loyal to the Khalistan Movement, whose followers seek a state of the same name, launched a campaign against government forces.

For a brief history recap, as a minority group in India, Sikhs comprise less than 2% of the country’s 1.3 billion people, but they form a majority in Punjab. The origins of the Khalistan movement trace back to India’s independence in 1947, when some Sikhs demanded a nation be carved in the state of Punjab for the followers of the Sikh faith. The Partition during independence left up to an estimated one million dead and uprooted nine million Muslims and five million Hindus and Sikhs. The Punjab saw some of the worst violence as it was sliced into two parts. Around this time, Sikhs began a greater struggle for political and cultural autonomy, and the Khalistan movement gained prominence. Over the years, the movement has claimed many lives in violent clashes between followers of the movement and the Indian government.

During the height of the insurgency in the early 1980s, some Sikh separatists in Punjab and Indian security forces committed a series of human rights abuses, including the massacre of civilians, indiscriminate bombings, and attacks on minority Hindus and thousands of Sikhs, according to human rights organisations. The storming of the Golden Temple in 1984 by the Indian army roiled the Sikh community both in India and overseas, and the consequent assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards — all of it remains a festering source of tension to this day. The Khalistan movement is banned in India, where officials see it as a national security threat. The movement has waned over the years but still has some support in Punjab and beyond, including in countries like Canada, the US and the UK, which are home to a sizeable Sikh diaspora. A sizable and influential number of those Sikhs support the idea of Khalistan, with referendums periodically held to reach a consensus to establish a separate homeland within India. The latest was in September 2022, in which thousands of Canadian Sikhs took part. The incident created some diplomatic tensions between India and Canada.

The Khalistan Movement 2.0 is mostly led by Waris Punjab De, which is part of a massive campaign to mobilise farmers against proposed agriculture reforms by the Modi government. The Modi government withdrew the legislation in November 2021 after a year of protest that began in 2020 as farmers, most of them Sikhs from Punjab state, camped on the outskirts of New Delhi through a harsh winter and devastating coronavirus surge. According to some political scientists in India, there had been a call during the independence from the Sikh community for better representation in politics. The basic idea was that the Sikh people should have their own territorial homeland — a Sikh majority state. Since the rise of Hindutva and the Modi government’s efforts to implement agricultural reforms, the need for stronger political representation seems to resonate with the Sikh community, thus allowing for the Khalistan Movement to regain support and popularity among the Sikh community.

Amritpal Singh and the Waris Punjab De movement have focused on the key social problems in Punjab that have resonated with people there. Punjab has suffered from a widespread drug abuse problem coupled with high unemployment. Both drugs and unemployment have consistently ranked high as issues in political polls, but politicians have yet to deliver any positive reforms or changes to resolve them. Singh took on the drug issue head-on and began leading processions and giving speeches promoting the idea of Khalistan and threatening officials from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Thus, Modi patrons, BJP supporters, and RSS members all further reinforce the Khalistan ideology as anti-national. They claim that the Khalistan movement has close ties with the Jihadi terrorist groups in operational and strategic matters. They categorically state that the Khalistan movement is a Pakistani ISI-sponsored sabotage mission, and the movement is aligned with ISI’s terrorist proxies like Jaish-e-Muhammad. The idea that it is just BJP propaganda and has no substance to it would be naive, at best. However, there are other issues and influences that are provoking and coaxing this movement into popularity and acceptance.

After Hindutva forces came to power in India, militancy found fertile ground to re-emerge. The extreme right-wing propagating Hindutva ideologies and enforcing Hindu identity across India has allowed for militancy of all forms to justify its re-emergence. Given how the RSS members, Hindu mobs, and zealots often take things too far, the countercurrents from the other religious minority groups are not unnatural. Sikhs, like other minority groups in India, are getting increasingly apprehensive of the growing power of Hindu nationalist forces in the country. More than eight million Sikhs, out of a total population of 30 million, live outside India. As the Sikh diaspora constitutes about 25 per cent of the total Sikh population, it has significant influence over the community’s politics in India. A significant portion of this diaspora is raising hopes for Khalistan. Internet radio stations and social media outlets catering to the Sikh diaspora are openly claiming the resurgence of the Khalistan movement.

The Sikh diaspora is also active in the politics of many host countries. Growing numbers and economic success have helped Sikhs to join active politics in many Western countries. The Sikh diaspora is increasingly lobbying in the US Congress to declare the 1984 anti-Sikh riot as ‘genocide,’ which would mar the Indian Congress and Gandhi image across the globe but also open avenues for issues to be considered for the same, where the Hindutva proponents’ activities would become open to such a declaration going forward. There is also a growing campaign by the Sikh diaspora to amend Article 25(2) (b) of the Indian Constitution, which declares Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists as part of Hinduism.

Since PM Modi’s gaining power, the Hindu diaspora abroad has become overtly vocal about its backing for Hindutva ideology. Hindu revivalism abroad has been gathering strength and assuming a powerful political shape, raising insecurity among other Indian communities living abroad. Hindu revivalism abroad has instigated the Sikh diaspora to mobilise again to promote a separate Sikh identity and demand a separate homeland.

At the same time, the BJP’s political strategy is prone to provoke such separatist and militant ideologies. The BJP uses external and internal national security issues as a recurring electoral campaign theme. The Hindu neo-nationalist BJP leaders are able to justify anything that goes against the BJP as anti-national using the religious rhetoric supported by the RSS and Hindutva ideology. As this perception is also intrinsically linked to Modi’s strongman image, it garners more support among the BJP’s political elites. Border skirmishes with China and Pakistan and a perceived proxy war with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir were quite effective until recently. There is a stark absence of Muslim terrorism inside India. Jammu and Kashmir continues to have this concern, but that is also quite under the control of the Indian security apparatus. Moreover, claims that Muslims and Christians are a threat to Hinduism are hardly credible.

Similarly, Sikhs pose no threat to Hinduism. But an extreme right-wing ideology is bound to look for and, if necessary, invent enemies either in the country or abroad to justify its propagation. As we see Maoist attacks taking place in Chhattisgarh and Sikhs promoting the Khalistan Movement, Hindutva and the BJP political machinery are creating space and justification among the ‘other’ communities to take a more hardline approach to establish and maintain their cultural, religious, political, and ethnic identity.

With the political agenda of the BJP and Hindutva nationalistic forces that want to establish a framework of ‘one nation, one religion, and one leader’ through propagating populist, neo-nationalist, and Hindutva ideology, the other communities are increasingly concerned that they may lose their identity in India, a country that has been so far extolled for its pluralistic nature.

Simon Mohsin is a Dhaka based political analyst.