EDITORIAL: The proponents for an independent state called ‘Khalistan’ are presently fighting on two fronts. The Sikh diaspora scattered the world over, particularly in North America and former British colonies, wants the international community to help it in achieving its cause for an independent homeland.
Striving for its cause under the banner of ‘Sikhs For Justice (SFJ)’, it has held referendums in a number of western countries where large majorities of resident Sikhs have participated. And the host governments have lent their support to SFJ by ignoring New Delhi’s protestations against this exercise, as was the case in Australia last week.
In Brisbane, more than 11,000 Sikhs took part in the second phase of the Khalistan Referendum amid cyberattacks orchestrated by Indian embassy on the electronic voting machines.
At the first phase of voting in Melbourne, the number of Sikhs who cast their votes was 50,000. The third and final phase of SJF voting would be held in Sydney in June this year. According to an SFJ leader, given denial of basic human rights to Sikhs in India by the Hindutva state, the Sikhs living outside of India are expressing themselves defiantly, seeking freedom of Punjab state from India’s occupation.
Prior to Brisbane ballot, the pro-Khalistan Sikhs forced closure of India’s honorary consulate. As to Indian protest the Australian government asked its nationals not to travel to India. Similar protests by the Modi-led government to the Canadian government and European states where the SFJ held referendums were also largely ignored. “The global Khalistan Referendums voting is setting the countdown for the final battle for the liberation of Punjab from Indian occupation,” says SFJ’s General Counsel and New York-based attorney Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
On the home front, the battle for Khalistan is led by Amritpal Singh, who calls himself a disciple of Sikh freedom fighter Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwala, who was killed in 1984 in Operation Blue Star. His is a militant posture and he is committed to fighting Indian forces, come what may. He has threatened Home Minister Amit Shah that his fate wouldn’t be different from Indira Gandhi’s. She was killed by her two Sikh bodyguards in 1984, triggering a series of organised pogroms against Sikhs.
Amritpal Singh’s raid on a police station in the outskirts of Amritsar has revived the memory of a 1980s insurgency. A manhunt was launched against Amritpal and his fighters throughout the Punjab state. A total of his 112 persons have been detained, but he is not thought to be among them. In line with its cruelty-laden methodology in Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir New Delhi shut mobile internet in the whole of Punjab.
It is important to note that the raid of Amritpal on the police station in India has coincided with an act of vandalism inside India’s High Commission in London committed by his supporters.
Though the British government has regretted the attack on India’s High Commission, it hasn’t agreed to New Delhi’s demand for the arrest of attackers. The question how the latest wave for Sikh nationalism will play out has no easy answer, to say the least. But what is increasingly clear and obvious is that their struggle is not going to die down in the foreseeable future.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023