Amid the ongoing discussion about Khalistan in India, on Thursday we bring you the answers to questions like what is Khalistan and how its objectives are dangerous for India’s national unity and integrity. Let us tell the history and current situation of Khalistan and also how the idea of Sikhistan took the form of Khalistan.
We want you to share this analysis on social media platforms because there is only one way to defeat hate and that is through the right information and correct history. Let us start by telling the viewers of DNA and readers of Zee News the meaning of Khalistan.
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Khalistan means ‘The Land of Khalsa’ i.e. a separate nation for the Khalsa or a separate nation for the Sikhs. Khalsa was founded in the year 1699 by Gobind Singh, the 10th Guru of the Sikhs. Khalsa means pure but over time, the idea was changed and it got politicised.
To understand this, today we will reverse some pages of history and for this, you will have to go back 100 years with us. This is in the year 1920 when India was fighting for independence from the British. During this time a movement was started and its name was Gurdwara Reform Movement. This was a very influential movement and its aim was to free the Gurdwaras of India from the Udasi Sikh Mahants, who were considered as Akali Hindu Mahants of that time. However, the Udasi Sikh sect was founded by Sri Chand, the elder son of Guru Nanak Dev himself.
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Under this movement, more than 30,000 Sikhs were imprisoned during the struggle between 1920 and 1925. 400 Sikhs were killed and about 2,000 Sikhs were injured. At the same time, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee was formed in 1920 after a meeting of 10,000 Sikhs and today, this committee has the management of Gurdwaras in India.
This movement lasted for five years and at that time hundreds of gurdwaras–including the Golden Temple in Amritsar and the Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in Pakistan, had gone from Udasi Sikh mahants to the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee. By 1925, the British accepted most of the demands of the struggling Sikhs, after which the movement ended.
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However, an important thing associated with this movement is that while this struggle was going on, the Sikhs had divided into three parts. First, there were those who wanted to free the gurudwaras from Udasi Sikh mahants. Others were those who, even after the end of this movement, continued to fight for India’s independence. The third were those who made it the political platform of Sikh communalism. The people who did this started an effort to show Sikhs separately from Hindus and Muslims, and from here the demand for a separate Sikh country was born and for this, the word Sikhistan was used.
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There were two major reasons behind the feeling of alienation in the minds of Sikhs for Hindus. The first was that the Hindu community was more influential in society and the second reason was the weak position of Sikhs in government jobs and politics.
In the Lahore session of the Congress in 1929, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru first demanded full Swaraj and pledged to liberate India from the British. But the Lahore session of the Congress was also opposed and there were three groups doing so. The first group belonged to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who believed that there should be a separate country for Muslims. The second group belonged to Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar, the architect of the Constitution of India, who was fighting for the rights of Dalits.
The third group belonged to Master Tara Chand, who said if separate seats were reserved for Muslims in India, the seats should be reserved for Sikh minorities on this basis. He was a founding member of the same Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, which was formed to liberate the gurdwaras. He opposed the Lahore session on two big issues. The first point was that he wanted the Congress not to ignore the Sikhs and secondly, he was afraid that the role of Sikhs in political participation would be very limited because the population of Sikhs was very less against Hindus and Muslims even at that time. For these reasons later demand for a separate country for Sikhs arose and it is said that the idea of Khalistan came into existence from here. However, the word Sikhistan was used instead of Khalistan.
During the movement for India’s independence, the demand for a separate Sikh country arose many times but when India became independent in 1947, it had two parts. The first was India and the second was Pakistan. During partition, in the united Punjab where Sikhs had a large population, its western part moved to Pakistan and East Punjab became part of India and this broke some Sikhs’ dream of a separate country.
Angry Akali leaders made communal principles, the centre of Sikh politics. Akali leaders said right from the beginning that it is not possible to separate religion and politics from Sikh ideology. These people then also said that only they can express the rights of the Sikh community and not only this, they constantly talked about discrimination against Sikhs in independent India, which was wrong.
However, the result was that in 1953 Master Tara Chand, who was then the face of the Akali Dal and the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, told the Sikhs that the British have left but we have not got independence. For us, freedom means only that our rulers have turned black from the whites. Sikhism and our freedom are being crushed under the guise of democracy and secularism.
Another important point is that after independence, a part of India which was called PEPSU i.e.Patiala and East Punjab States Union was incorporated in Punjab in 1956. At the time when all this was happening, Sant Fateh Singh started a movement called Punjab Suba. Its purpose was to create a separate state of Punjabi speaking people. But at that time the government did not accept this demand because at that time it felt that a separate Sikh state was being dreamed under the cover of the demand of this state and the Constitution of India does not allow it on the basis of religion.
However, it was only after 10 years that the government changed its attitude and former prime minister late Indira Gandhi divided Punjab into three parts in the year 1966. The first part is what today is called Punjab. The second part was Haryana and the third part was the hilly areas, which were handed over to Himachal Pradesh. Apart from this, Chandigarh was made a union territory and the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana.
It was only after this partition of Punjab that a new twist took place in the politics of Khalistan. This was the period when the word Khalistan began to be used more. After the partition of Punjab, the Akali Dal put many demands before the government. Even at that time, there was a government of Indira Gandhi in the country. In 1973, the Shiromani Akali Dal formed a committee of 12 people, who passed Anandpur Sahib Resolution. There were three big demands for this resolution. The first demand was that the rivers of Punjab–Sutlej and Beas water be divided again. The second demand was to completely hand over Chandigarh to Punjab. The third demand was those districts of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, where Sikhs have a high population, they should be included in Punjab. These districts are–Dalhousie, Pinjore, Kalka, Ambala, Una, Karnal, Sirsa, Tohana, Hisar, Ganganagar.
When the Anandpur Sahib Resolution passed, the Shiromani Akali Dal’s political situation in Punjab had weakened considerably. In such a situation, the leaders of the Akali Dal could not put much pressure on the government of Indira Gandhi. The most important thing is that the Akali Dal used to claim representation of all Sikhs but in the elections held between 1952 and 1980, the Akali Dal did not even get an average of 50 per cent votes in Punjab. It was due to this political failure that the separatist ideology started strengthening in Punjab. The demand for creating a separate country named Khalistan for the Sikhs gained momentum. This was the same period when terrorism started in Punjab and Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale became its poster boy.
It is to be noted that both Indira Gandhi and Punjab Congress president Giani Zail Singh in the early days supported Bhindranwale because, through Bhinderwala, Indira Gandhi wanted to further weaken the Akali Dal in Punjab. But this step of Indira Gandhi proved to be the biggest mistake for her.
Between 1980 and 1984, hundreds of innocent people were killed in Punjab in broad daylight and there was an attempt to create conflict between Hindus and Sikhs. Bhindranwale initially targeted the Nirankaris and those opposing Khalistan and after this, journalists, leaders, police and people of the Hindu community also came under attack.
By July 1982, Bhindranwale had become so strong that it had strengthened its roots in the Golden Temple of Amritsar and by June 1984, the situation had become so bad that Indira Gandhi had no choice but to leave the Golden Temple free from Khalistani separatists. Such was the first use of the Army on such a large scale in the internal matter of the country.
On June 5, 1984, the Indian Army had to entre the Golden Temple and it was called Operation Blue Star. The operation ended on June 10 afternoon, in which 83 soldiers were martyred, 249 jawans wounded and 493 Khalistani terrorists killed, including Bhindranwale.
There was anger among Sikhs against Indira Gandhi after Bhindranwale was killed and she was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards on the morning of October 31, 1984. After this, there were large-scale riots against the Sikhs in the country, and big leaders of the Congress were also accused of being involved in these riots. After these riots, gradually the demand for Khalistan in India started to weaken.
In August 1985, by signing an agreement with the then prime minister late Rajiv Gandhi, Shiromani Akali Dal leader Harchand Singh people agreed to join electoral politics. Despite this, however, terrorist attacks continued in Punjab. On June 23, 1985, Air India’s Kanishka aircraft was blown up by terrorists during an air flight, killing 329 people.
On August 10, 1986, the 13th Army Chief of India, General Arun Sridhar Vaidya was assassinated. Because he was the Army Chief of India during Operation Blue Star and on August 31, 1995, former Punjab CM Beant Singh was killed in a car bomb blast.
However, it is to be understood that in view of the violence and terror in Punjab, President’s rule was imposed in 1987 and after this, in the year 1992, Vidhan Sabha elections were held in Punjab. The important thing is that despite the 1984 Sikh riots and subsequent terrorist incidents, Congress was successful in forming the government in Punjab. Beant Singh became the chief minister but on August 31, 1995, he was also killed in a car bomb blast.
Today, many Sikhs have rejected the idea of Khalistan in India. But Khalistani organizations sitting abroad still plot to break India into pieces. These organizations also get open support from Pakistan and Canada has become a safe land for them. This is the reason why the movement in India is against agricultural laws, but Khalistan is being discussed more as Khalistan is at its root.
However, Sikhs have a glorious history in defence of India. This thing is bad for our enemies and they create a lot of conspiracy to defame and mislead Sikhs in India. We think you have to identify this conspiracy today. We sincerely hope that by reading this analysis, you must have understood Khalistan and its demand and also why Khalistan is an anti-India idea.
