The Khalistan

|THE DEN|

Khalistan - the call for a separate homeland for the Sikh community, began after the fall of the British Empire in the 1940s but it gained ground in the 1970s and 1980s. Sikhs wanted a separate country that consists of north India, parts of Western India, and the Punjab province of Pakistan.

It all started in the year 1929 when Moti Lal Nehru presented the Purna Swaraj at the Lahore session of Congress. There were three groups of people who opposed it, one of them was Master Tara Singh of the Shiromani Akali Dal.

By 1947 the demand turned into a movement and the Punjabi Suba Movement was started under Akali Dal's leadership for the creation of a new state for Punjabis. But the States Reorganization Commission had rejected their demand.

Later the movement lasted for 19 long years till 1966. That's when the Indira Gandhi government had to relent and they divided Punjab into three parts namely, a Sikh majority state called Punjab, a Hindu majority state called Haryana, and the third part was Chandigarh - union territory and shared capital of Punjab & Haryana. The trifurcation did not really solve the problem though.

In 1973 Sikhs demanded autonomy for the state of Punjab. By the 1980s, the movement became violent and the chorus for a separate nation started growing rapidly. The movement attracted a lot of supporters and Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was the biggest one.

Bhindranwale became a dangerous cult figure since he resorted to extremism and to escape arrest he took up residence inside the Golden Temple. For two long years, the Government of India did not act. Then finally, in June 1984, Delhi intervened with operation Blue Star to flush out all terrorists from the Golden Temple. Bhindranwale along with his accomplice was neutralized and the Indian Army took control of the shrine.

Four months later, on October 31, 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards. After Gandhi’s killing, over 8,000 Sikhs were massacred in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots across the country.

Later, In 1985, Sikh extremists based in Canada attacked an Air India plane, killing 329 people. In 1986, two bike-borne terrorists assassinated former Army Chief General AS Vaidya in Pune. He had led Operation Bluestar. In 1995, Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh was killed in a suicide bomber attack inside the secretariat in Chandigarh. All of these attacks were claimed by Khalistanis. However, the Khalistan Movement lost the support of the Indian Punjab community a very long time ago after 1995. But the few instances still get to be seen by Khalistanis in India.