Sikhism is a religion, but Sikhs are a people and a nation. Sikhism is perhaps the youngest religion of the world. Its formal aspects begin only since A.D. 1699 when Sikhs were transformed into the order of Khalsa by the Tenth Guru of Sikhs. Those who embraced the new faith came from the pre-existing Muslim and Hindu communities of north Western India.
The Sikh Khalsa later on succeeded in establishing a sovereign Kingdom in the Punjab. The Sikh kingdom was one of the most powerful kingdoms of the world in the 19th Century. Sikhs were sovereign rulers and an independent nation for more than a Century, mid-eighteenth Century to mid-nineteenth. The Sikh Kingdom was annexed by the British expansion in Asia, in 1849, but not before the two Anglo-Sikh wars in which Sikhs had an unequal fight in that they were leaderless. To conquer the Sikh Kingdom, even so, it took no lesser English strategists than those who had fought and defeated Napoleon a few years earlier. To Wellington and Hardinge, actually, the Anglo-Sikh war was fraught possibly with far graver danger and concern than Waterloo. It could have vanquished the British Empire in India. A different result of these Sikh wars could have changed the history of the British much the same as the history of France was changed by the defeat of the French at Quebec in Canada.
Sikhs surrendered their freedom in 1849 for the first time. But they lost their chance in 1947 to regain that lost freedom. In 1947 the British transferred power to India and quit. Sikhs left their political interests at that time in the care of the Congress party of India ruled by Hindu leaders. Sikhs have regretted their own naivete ever since.
In the eighties however, Sikhs are awakening to their political loss. They are ready with their case for an independent state, KHALISTAN. They are asking the international community for an understanding and support of their cause. As an agrarian community, by and large, Sikhs do not have the training and influence that some other minority people happily have enjoyed and which enabled them to win the world lobby in support of a sovereign state after the second world war. But the qualities of Sikhs could not be lost upon all those nations who have had dealings with Sikhs in recent world history, especially in the British and the French. Further, Sikhs are now coming up in trade, commerce and technology.
The new rulers of India make it impossible for native Sikhs to effectively organize and propagate the establishment of Khalistan. The secession of the Punjab area from the Indian Sub- continent is a specter that pre-occupies the policies and programmes of the Indian government throughout the whole system. There are numerous repressive laws and ordinances directed against this movement. Sikhs are regularly rounded up and put in jail. So far is the policy extended that even the industrialization of the Indian Punjab state is cautiously curbed. Due to the persistent agitation, since the Indian Independence in 1947, for a ‘Sikh Homeland’, the Hindu leadership after several ‘Inquiry Commissions’ that faithfully reported against the Sikhs, agreed finally to legislate a “re-organization’ ’of the Punjab state. The re-organization Act of 1966 enacted in the Indian parliament created a new Punjab state wherein “linguistically” Punjabi- speaking people were in majority numbers. Punjabi is the mother tongue of some 61 million people in the world, and is not restricted to Sikhs alone. This of course includes the Punjab native Hindus, but they always declared in all census returns that “Punjabi” was not their mother tongue, but “Hindi” instead was. Consequently, the creation of a “Punjabi linguistic Punjab”, commonly called “the Punjabi-Suba”’, was a partial response to the Sikh agitation for a Sikh Homeland’, in that, all Sikhs were counted as Punjabi- speaking people and found in majority numbers in the truncated Punjab state that was re-named ‘Punjab’ while areas that belonged to the original Indian Punjab , were taken out and used to form new units such as the ‘Haryana’ State wherein Hindus (having declared ‘Hindi’ as their language) were in majority.
Similarly, several counties or Tehsils of the former Indian Punjab were cut off from the State and attached to the neighboring States, viz., the Himachal Pradesh state, which covers the mountainous areas of the original East Punjab state.
In the Performance of this political surgery upon the Sikhs the Indian Government made sure of course that vital industry that was formerly located in the Punjab, went out of it. This included the Bhakra Dam and the Hydro-electric works complex which were situated in the sub-division of a District of Punjab, (Hoshiarpur), that, due to the “re- organization’ were stripped from the Hoshiarpur district and turned over to the adjoining Himachel Pradesh state where Hindus were in majority. Similarly, fertilizer factory complex, formerly in the Punjab, was removed out of it. The State capital, Chandigarh, was not to be under the Punjab jurisdiction either; it would remain under New Delhi.
It was thus clear that in 1966 the Sikhs were duped a second time by the Hindu politicians. The first time they had lost out was of course in 1947, when the Radcliffe boundary award was “‘consented to” by the Sikhs upon the vows and promises of the Hindu Trilogy, Gandhi, Nehru and Patel, who could hardly wait to see power transferred to them though it involved the vivisection of the Punjab-the vital homeland of the Sikhs. The original “Punjab” was thus due to the partition of 1947 devoured by Pakistan and India and disappeared. Sikhs, in addition, had to migrate by the millions, from the Pakistan- Punjab to the Indian-Punjab, and some two millions of them were killed in the transfer. Sikhs lost all their rich farm lands in the Bar colonies of the Western Punjab, which now went to Pakistan. In India, they were moving into a hostile and culturally antagonistic climate dominated by the time old Hindu culture. For a while, they suffered in refugee camps in India following this “independence” of 1947. Then gradually they used their industry and will and began to settle in whatever they could find to settle on; some spilling-over to the adjoining Uttar Pradesh province was inevitable. There they drained the bottom-land marshes, cut forests, and brought under plough the hitherto wild lands of that state, only to be mistreated by the majority Hindu Governments of that state in the years to come, owing to their different religion, appearance and social structure.
“The Independence” belonged to the majority community of Hindus who were now the rulers of India since 1947. Sikhs were still to remain what they were, without “independence”.
Yet, it had been the Sikhs who, having lost their kingdom to the British in 1849, (and a Kingdom that was by far the largest than any ‘Punjab’ known to history), were in the forefront in the Indian struggle for freedom. Though less than two percent of the Indian population, Sikhs was 95% of all those Indian freedom fighters who were hanged by the British for political activity. The “Ghaddar Party” was the contribution of North American Sikhs to the freedom of India. The famous “Koma-Gata-Maru” event in the history of Vancouver, and that of Canada, in 1916, was part of that struggle of Sikhs to seek that elusive “freedom”.
Thus although the Indian Sikhs are currently at a dis-advantage in their struggle for freedom or “Azadi”, the international community of Sikhs is certainly under no such restriction. It had been the North American Sikhs indeed who supplied the spearhead for the movement for independence in India’s struggle against British rule. Then why cannot the Sikh international forces carry forward their own cause for their “Azadi” now?
An international lobby is essential to the Sikh cause and for Khalistan. Sikhs can mobilize their organization for the freedom of Sikhs in India. All freedom loving nations can help save Sikh religion and culture from a sure oblivion (if we do not project the required effort to safeguard ourselves.) The situation of Kurds, in Iraq and Iran, is a compelling example. Sikhs can learn a lesson from it. Contemporary Sikh history writers have ended on a pessimistic note about the future of Sikhs. The reasons are obvious. It is for Sikhs to take heed.
This booklet does not profess to carry the extent of research that would seem requisite for a proper exposition of Khalistan state. Suffice to say that it is perhaps a timely effort to record the pertinent causes and events in perspective for the vital need for Khalistan. It might intimate of the Sikh plan that craves realization in the climate of Khalistan. It is a reminder to guard our national-health.
KHALISTAN will not be a theocracy. The opponents of a Sikh sovereign state, both Sikh and non—Sikh, might well be under a mis- apprehension on this point 2.
Nor will Khalistan jeopardize the interests, economic or material, of those Sikhs who are in other parts of India. Take the example of 60 million Muslims still left, and kicking, in India notwithstanding the creation of a separate national state, Pakistan, in 1947.
Sikhs can justly claim an abundance of talent for all departments of the government of a new state. Sikhs are one of the most adaptable
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- However, the reported provision of Rupees Two crores (20 million) earmarked in the Indian budget to combat the Khalistan movement should not be discounted. The Anti- Khalistan campaign includes the infiltrations into Sikh organizations overseas. A deputy Inspector General of police, Investigation, was reported coming to U.S.A. currently. Decoys were being sent abroad especially Canada for subversion of Sikh activity. All this was the familiar pattern experienced by the U. K. Sikhs who struggled long to rid themselves of the agents of the New Delhi Government, especially in Sikh temples.
- See “The State under Ranjit Singh, A harmonious combination of Sikh nationalism and Secularism”, by Dr. Fauja Singh, Sikh Review, September, 1980,
