India Insights: The Khalistan Movement and the Narrative of “Western Plots”
Chris Helgren - Reuters
About 3-4 weeks ago, the Canadian government charged three Indians for the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Khalistan separatist leader whom the Indian government accuses of being part of the banned Khalistan Tiger Force and declared him a terrorist in 2020. Nijjar was killed in June 2023, and the Canadians accuse the Indian government of being behind it. These charges come as the US government announced that it foiled an assassination attempt on Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual Canadian-American citizen of Indian heritage. However, as expected, the Indian government rejected these claims. In speaking to a report by The Washington Post which details how Vikram Yadav, a RAW agent, was alleged to have been ordered to assassinate Pannun, Randhir Jaiswal – the MEA’s spokesperson said: “The report in question makes unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations on a serious matter.” Likewise, in reference to the killing of Nijjar, New Delhi continues to reject that it had any role and calls Trudeau’s allegations “baseless” and “motivated.” Regarding this incident, much has been emphasized on how this indicates India has become more “autocratic.” However, India’s attitudes against the Khalistan movement are not unique to the BJP government and more broadly, highlight the dilemma many non-western countries have of supporting movements of self-determination but also preventing territorial breakup.
The Khalistan Movement centers around the belief that Sikhs should have their own state. (Khalistan meaning land of Khalsa, or pure). During the 1940s, some Sikhs wanted their own country, however, their population was very small and accounted for only 15% of the entire population. Prior to partition, many Sikhs lived in the Punjab of Pakistan and India, and after partition, most Sikhs (and Hindus) fled to Punjab India. The movement gained traction during the 1980s and in 1984, tensions escalated when the Indian army raided the Golden Temple (one of the most sacred places for Sikhs) to root out the separatists. Five months later, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards – who happened to be Sikh. Later, in 1985, Khalistan insurgents bombed an Air India flight headed to Delhi, killing all 329 passengers. After this, many riots occurred in India, in which Sikhs bore the brunt of the violence, and many of them fled to other countries, especially Canada. However, it is crucial to emphasize that the Khalistan movement does not represent Sikhs and shouldn’t be conflated. Sikhs are very well integrated into Indian society and play a very important role in the country’s politics, culture, and economy. Additionally, a large number of Sikhs serve in the Indian army, and based on a survey 95% of Sikhs were happy to be Indian.
Amid this, many political actors in India have asserted that the Khalistan movement is not backed by Sikhs, but rather “outside powers.” During the violence in the 1980s, the RSS was the first to propagate this narrative, by insisting on Sikh-Hindu unity and saying:
“In view of the asylum extended by countries like Pakistan, England, America, Canada to extremist elements, existence of an international plot also cannot be ruled out. The indirect support to Khalistan extremists by certain political leaders for achieving their immediate political ends is most unfortunate.”
Likewise, on February 2023, Punjab’s Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann (affiliated with the Congress Party), said that Khalistan support was getting funded from Pakistan and “won’t allow Pak Handlers to succeed.”
Amid the ongoing tensions with the US and Canada, in early May, the Indian MEA accused Washington of interfering in India’s elections after the US Commission on International Religious Freedom classified India as a “country of particular concern” for the fifth consecutive year regarding religious freedom. In speaking about the report, the MEA’s spokesman Jaiswal said
“The US Commission on International Religious Freedom is known as a biased organization with a political agenda. They continue to publish their propaganda in India masquerading as part of an annual report. We really have no expectation that USCIRF will even seek to understand India’s diverse, pluralistic, and democratic ethos. Their efforts to interfere in the largest electoral exercise of the world will never succeed.”
Additionally, the Russians have added to this narrative by accusing the US of election interference. Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said that the Americans don’t understand India’s history and continue to make “unfounded accusations” about the decline of religious freedom in India. Zakharova added that “The reason [behind the US accusations] is to unbalance the internal political situation in India and complicate the general elections.” In response, the State Department’s spokesman Matthew Miller said that
“No, of course, we (the U.S) don't involve ourselves in elections in India as we don't involve ourselves in elections anywhere in the world. Those are decisions for the people of India to make.”
While Russia’s claims are quite hypocritical, considering its role in election interference throughout the world, it is politically beneficial for Moscow to discredit Washington’s foreign policy.
More broadly, the Indian government’s narrative that the Khalistan movement is “foreign-backed” highlights the systemic narrative held by many insisting that these problems are a result of colonialism. For example, an article in The Washington Post titled “European powers forced artificial borders on more places than the Middle East” pushes this narrative. The article references a quote from President Biden who said that the problem in the Middle East is because of “artificial lines, creating artificial states, made up from totally distinct ethnic, religious, cultural groups.” Likewise, an article by Indian lawmaker Shashi Tharoor for Aljazeera, titled “The Partition: The British game of ‘divide and rule,” argued that the British made sure that a united India wouldn’t be possible and insisted that the British intentionally propped up the Muslim League.
DW
Consequently, this narrative has led to many governments denying genuine grassroots demands by ethnic minorities as a “foreign plot.” For example, the Turkish government has long viewed the PKK as a legacy of Western powers attempting to divide up Türkiye, known as the “Sevres syndrome.” Likewise, the Iranian government (under the Shah’s regime and the Islamic Republic) has long opposed any ethnic separatism and sees it as part of an “outside plot” to undermine Iran’s territorial integrity.
The Chinese government has long rejected the Western claim that it is committing genocide against the Uyghur people and the foreign ministry’s official position is that the issue:
“has become a means for them to achieve their strategic objective of using Xinjiang as a pretext to contain China. Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army Colonel and chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said publicly in August 2018 that one of the three-fold purpose of the US military’s presence in Afghanistan is the containment of China — “If the CIA would want to destabilize China, that would be the best way to do it – to form an unrest, and join with those Uyghurs in pushing ... Beijing from internal places rather than external.”
Similarly, regarding Tibet, a statement from China’s embassy in the U.S. stresses that it rejects any country using Tibet as a pretext to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
More broadly, India’s issues with the Khalistan movement indicate how values such as self-determination, human rights, and state sovereignty have been politicized to advance the interests of all these governments.
