Khalistan, the homeland of the Sikh people was declared independent from India in 1987. Although Khalistan has yet to be internationally recognized, Sikhs believe that recognition is only a Matter of time as the justice of their Cause, and the extent of Indian Oppression against the Sikh people become more generally known.

Khalistan is centered geographically on the Punjab which is situated on the border between India and Pakistan. The Punjab takes its name from the five rivers flowing through it. These rivers comprise Khalistan’s economic lifeblood.

The Punjab comprises an area of 50,357 sq. kilometers. In it live approximately 14 million Sikhs numbering 70 percent of the population. The Punjab may be compared in size and population to the Netherlands where there are 14, 500,000 inhabitants in an area of 40,000 sq. kilometers. Like Khalistan, the Netherlands is a land dependent on its rivers. However, the two countries make vastly different use of them. In Khalistan rivers are used from irrigation and to produce hydroelectric power. In the Netherlands, they serve as conduits for that country’s major industry, world trade.

Because of its geographic similarities, the Netherlands can serve to illustrate the success potential of the newly founded state of Khalistan, Perhaps the most striking similarity between the two countries is the hardworking character of their people. More then perhaps any other factor, it is the human resources of both countries which make the comparison meaningful. As economists Pritham Singh observes in “Emerging Patterns in Punjab,” “Punjab possesses excellent human material. Its climate is salubrious, the people are well fed. Expectation of life at birth is also the highest.”

R:S. Johar, the head of the economics department at the University of Punjab, compares the Punjab’s labor force to Japan’s for its “enterprise, innovation and skills.”

A major economic difference between the two lands however is industrialization. The Netherlands, an early beneficiary of the Industrial Revolution, now maintains a thriving industrial sector. The Punjab by contrast has suffered from rulers who retarded industrialization for their own purposes. This is no more true than now. The Indian government has reduced industrial investment in the region to a trickle, The reason is apparent to Sikhs who understand that New Delhi fears anything of the Punjab economy. As a result, is primarily an agricultural power today, the name of the so-called Green Revolution. Nevertheless, industrialization is biding its time. As a prominent economist has noted: “The cheap and easy availability of power is so potent a factor that it can itself unleash the forces of industrial development.” All that is needed is available financing, a condition which would be met once Khalistan is internationally recognized as an independent country.

Not content with sabotaging the Punjabi’s industrial development, the Indian government is also working to destroy even its agricultural base. This is being accomplished through a diversion of the fiver waters which provide the water needed for irrigation in this region of scant rainfall. The Indian government has already diverted 75 percent of the Punjab’s needed. water supplies to neighboring Hindu states and is digging a canal called the Satluj Jamna Link to take away yet more water. Within ten years the 9 million acres presently under irrigation will be reduced to merely 3 million acres. This means an economic loss of about $2 billion to Sikh farmers, a vast sum by regional standards which will result in the economic destruction of the Sikh nation. At present, the Punjab produces 73 percent of the total Indian wheat reserves, 48 percent of its rice and 26 percent of the total G.N.P. of India.

Further evidence of the Indian government’s ill will toward the Punjab, and the nascent nation, it contains is illustrated by an amazing act of ecological terrorism that government carried out last September. Without any prior warning, the Indian government opened the flood gates of the Bhakra dam unleashing a thirty foot wall of water on the Punjab which carried away hundreds of villages and drowned 3,000 people. Three percent of the Punjab’s fertile area was silted over and permanently damaged.

Were Khalistan a recognized nation, the Delhi government would not dare to abuse it like this for fear of producing an international outcry. Asitis, the Punjab remains an occupied province, subject to whatever mistreatment Delhi dispenses,

All indicators point to Khalistan as a nation of great potential on the would be economically and politically a model for other nations in the region. Like the Netherlands its scarcity of natural resources would be overcome by the ingenuity and hustle of its people. Even were the new nation never to be industrialized (which seems an unlikely prospect), its food industries alone would be sufficient to assure its survival, and a good living standard.

A historical precedent unknown to many people exists that further illustrates the success potential of Khalistan. Only 23 years after America itself was founded, an independent Sikh commonwealth was born in the region which grew to be the world’s fourth greatest power. This Sikh nation was lauded by a contemporary British traveler named Osborne as one of the most enlightened states of its time. It was the last state on the Indian subcontinent to fall under British domination.

Conclusion

Today Khalistan is like a seed waiting to blossom on the arid plains of the Punjab waiting for the nourishment which only political recognition can bring it. Khalistan is very viable and can be expected to provide a per capita income many times that of India. Its hydroelectric power the cheapest and safest form of energy, can be used to build an electrified rail network for the efficient transportation of goods vital to a modern state.

Sikh entrepreneurship in science and technology will provide the basis of a flourishing industry in the production of vaccines and other medical products. Recombinant DNA technology will be used to boost production of commercial and cereal crops and reduce dependence on artificial fertilizers which in turn will increase profitability.

But even greater benefits will be reaped in the realm of the spirit. Equality will reign in practice among the population not merely in theory as elsewhere. A free Khalistan will bring peace, prosperity and stability to the Indo Pak sub-Continent by serving as a buffer state between India and Pakistan.

The pace of international recognition of Khalistan must be accelerated to accomplish these goals as well as to stop India’s tyranny and genocide against the Sikh nation.

This article was sent to us by the Council of Khalistan Washington DC.

 

Article extracted from this publication >>  April 14, 1989