Punjab

What is the Khalistani movement? Why now?

Sikhism emerged in North Western India in the 15th century. The rise of this religion was not liked by the Mughals which was just beginning to establish itself. The Mughals tried quelling it, time and time again by beheading Sikh gurus. It was not until the 18th century that the religion found firm entrenchment in the region known as Punjab both in India and Pakistan.

At the dawn of the 19th century in 1799, the Sikh empire entered into a much more stable phase. The empire extended from what is now the state of Kashmir right into Rajasthan including the entire India-Pakistani border.

Source: Wikipedia

It was thanks to Maharaja Ranjit Singh who ascended to the throne in 1801 that the Sikh Empire grew and prospered. The British also left the Maharaja alone because they saw the empire as a protection against a Russian invasion. At the time, Napoleon was scheming with the Russians to take India to cut the British source of wealth.

Upon the demise of Ranjit Singh, the machinations of his sons ensured that almost every son who could have ruled the state ended up dead. One died of poisoning, another died in sleep, and another died when a pillar accidentally fell on his head. You get the idea. Eventually, only one son was left alive and he was 5 years old.

In India, it was normal for young kings or queens to ascend to the throne and have a parent or guardian be placed as regent. This was done in the Kingdom of Travancore but not allowed in Punjab.

Spotting an opportunity, the British moved in and placed the 5-year-old Duleep Singh on the throne and separated him from his mother Jind Kaur, who was seen as shrewd and cunning. She was sent to a fort in Kashmir.

The 5-year-old was asked to “gift” the Kohinoor to Queen Victoria so that Her Majesty would protect the Sikh empire. After this “gift” was handed over, the King was placed in foster care in Mussourie, kicked around like a football from one location to another until his unfortunate death in a hotel in Paris still trying to get back to his throne.

In the meantime, the British annexed the territories following the Anglo-Sikh Wars in 1849 just before the Uprising of 1857. Finding that the population was mostly rural and gifted with incredibly fertile lands to farm on, the British turned the region into a great source of revenue for themselves.

The Sikhs were also seen as great fighters and the Sikh Regiment was instituted at this time. Since the concept of India did not exist at the time and the main centre of British wealth and power was in Bengal, the Sikh regiment joined the Bengal Army.

Punjab made the British very rich! Not only taxes, there was immense exploitation of the human capital which was shipped across the world to build and to fight wars. There were just as many brown people at the European battlefronts during the Second World War as there were white.

At the time of the Indian independence, the British drew a line right through the centre of the state and divided it in two. One part going to Pakistan and the other going to India.

India at the time of independence was not organised as it is today. The new government had the unenviable job of consolidating over 500 princely states in addition to the states administered by the British.

The State

At the time of Independence, they took a smattering of princely states and combined them to form the state of PEPSU. Patiala and Eastern Punjab States Union. This state consisted of parts of what is Himachal Pradesh and Haryana today.

In 1956, under the States Reorganisation Act, the state of Punjab was created. It was in 1966, based on the demands of the Hindus and Sikh Punjabis that the states were further bifurcated into three creating Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.

Nehru created the new city of Chandigarh to serve as the Capital of Punjab. When it underwent bifurcation into Punjab and Haryana, it left Chandigarh serving as the capital for both states. Punjab claimed it as its own but an agreement could not be reached with the neighbouring state of Haryana. This caused further tensions in Punjab.

There was already a simmering tension between these states right from the outset due to the Inter-States Water Disputes Act which gave Punjab the rights to only 24% of the water from the rivers Beas, Sutlej and Ravi.

Post-Independence the Indian National Congress had been the de-facto choice for all voters because of its role in securing Indian Independence. That strength began to slip. The water dispute became a political issue that led to the rise of the Akali Dal as a party in Punjab that was able to go head-to-head with the Indian National Congress.

Bhindrawale

In the 1970s Indira Gandhi saw an opening to break the vote share in Punjab by introducing another player in the form of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. While Congress initially propped him up, his actions turned against Congress very quickly. He also managed to base himself out of the Golden Temple which gave him added legitimacy. He formed a close group around him who started attacking state infrastructure.

The Khalistani movement which was originally founded in the 1930s and 40s demanded an ethno-religious sovereign state. This was in response to the demand made by the Muslim League to hand over Lahore as a part of the Muslim territory. Lahore had served as the capital of the Punjab state and the empire since the times of Ranjit Singh.

In the 1970s, India suffered from huge unemployment, which gave rise to the Angry Young Man movies that voiced the frustration of the youth who could not secure good jobs for themselves. While Punjab was a relatively rich state with farming as its mainstay, that income was controlled by few and a large number of youngsters found it difficult to find a job. Their increased desperation caused them to look overseas and explore lives in Britain and Canada where they often immigrated illegally. The subject of the recently released movie Dunki.

The British had used the Sikh regiments during the Second World War and they were no strangers to Europe or England. They had also been recruited by the British in Canada to build their railway lines since they were seen as hard workers who came rather cheap. This gave the youngsters a beachhead when they arrived in these countries.

The water dispute, the high unemployment rate as well as the rising star of Bhindranwale stirred the demand for a separate state again.

The activities against the government establishments got to a point where Indira Gandhi had to respond. She launched Operation Blue Star. The military was called in and sent into the Golden Temple. The fight that ensued ended with the death of Bhindranwale but sentiments had been hurt. The Golden Temple is the most revered shrine in all of Sikhism and sending in military and desecrating the place with tanks stirred up great anger.

In late October 1984, the Home Minister informed Indira Gandhi that he planned to change her security guards who were both Sikhs. She rebuked him saying “The last I checked we were still a secular nation”.

On 31st October 1984, the Sikh bodyguard who was assigned to Indira Gandhi shot her and killed her as retribution for the attack on the temple.

In the ensuing melee, her son who was a pilot for Air India was brought kicking and screaming into politics. Rajiv Gandhi became the next Prime Minister.

After her death, in 1985, Rajiv Gandhi seeking to put an end to the Punjab problem, entered into the Rajiv-Longowal Accord. This accord was to settle the question of Chandigarh awarding it to Punjab and also come up with a new water-sharing agreement. The accord still had to be ratified by the parliament and the appropriate acts passed to finalise the change.

The separatist faction derided this agreement and almost immediately thereafter bombed an Air India flight 182 which was bound for Canada killing over 300 people.

To this day, Chandigarh is the capital of Punjab and Haryana.

Agriculture

The shape of agriculture and the distance between the rich and poor was widening thanks to the work of a Nobel Prize winner in Mexico. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Norman Borlaug had created a high-yielding variety of seeds in Sonoma, Mexico. These seeds had been shipped to India for testing in 1971.

The seeds incidentally arrived at the Karachi port in November. Pakistan was unwilling to let them pass to India because India was on the verge of war with Pakistan.

The Rockefellers pressured the White House, which in turn pressured the Pakistan government and the seeds found their way to Bombay.

In December, Pakistan lost the war to India; they lost East Pakistan which became Bangladesh; the seeds unleashed the Green Revolution in India.

While large farmholders benefitted immensely from this and India was able to overcome food shortage and avert famine, the gap between the rich and the poor rose.

Militant Decade

The Air India bombing was just the start.

Militancy rose in Punjab through the late 1980s right up until the mid-1990s. There were regular insurgent activities. Buses carrying Hindus were set on fire in 1987, and trains were set on fire killing passengers. The police were tasked with overcoming the insurgents and into this mix stepped Kanwar Pal Singh Gill.

From 1984-1995 K.P.S. Gill was the Director General of Police. Known as “SuperCop”, he engaged in extra-judicial killings known euphemistically in India as “Encounters”. His actions drew the attention of several human rights groups who accused him of taking the law into his own hands. He is accused of thousands of staged shootouts and disposal of bodies without even proper identification.

But it worked!

By the late 1990s there was a decline in militancy in Punjab and liberalisation also brought many more opportunities to industrial towns like Ludhiana which saw job creation at last.

Today

While there have been sporadic violent incidents in Punjab like the Tarn Taran blast in the 2010s, separatism is no longer a mainstream agenda. Small groups still hoping to pursue the separatist agenda exist. Their activities have been few and far between.

The separatists who departed the country in the 1970s and 80s are perhaps more enamoured by the idea of Khalistan than the people of Punjab themselves. There are still a small number of Khalistani sympathisers in Punjab today but not as widespread to cause distress to the central government.

In this context, the government’s pursuit of separatists sitting 10s of thousands of miles away makes no sense to me.

A small percentage of Sikhs sitting in the US and Canada who have been naturalised there have no bone in this fight.

This would be a little like one Mr Alonso, living in New York, whose father left for the US in 1950 making demands for the Catalan separatist state in Spain. (Though the Catalan issue is far more pressing by comparison)

I don’t even know if India has meddled in the US and Canada. It is certainly not an imminent or pressing issue in India. It has no bearing on the elections. In fact, by pursuing these individuals who had not even been heard of in most of India, they are being given press and screen time. Something that is entirely avoidable and unnecessary.

They say, there isn’t smoke without fire. Something is afoot.

But why? I don’t have the faintest idea.