The Unhealed Wound: Revisiting the Genesis of the Khalistan Movement from 1947 to 1984 

The Khalistan movement, whose contemporary resonance in the diaspora finds its roots in the traumatic events of 1984, was born from decades of Sikh political alienation following India’s Partition, which scattered the community and was exacerbated by the 1966 trifurcation of Punjab that left them without a clear political majority.

This sense of marginalization was intensified by an ideological battle over Sikh identity, particularly from Hindu nationalist groups like the RSS which sought to absorb Sikhism into the Hindu fold, a project widely rejected by the mainstream Sikh community.

The crisis was catastrophically ignited when the Indian government, having initially propped up the radical preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a political counterweight to Sikh moderates, lost control of its creation, leading to his armed entrenchment in the Golden Temple and the subsequent devastating military assault of Operation Blue Star, which was perceived by many Sikhs as a desecration of their faith.

The assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in retaliation triggered a genocidal pogrom that killed thousands of innocent Sikhs, a trauma compounded by a pervasive lack of justice for the victims, which together forged a lasting legacy of grievance and alienation that continues to fuel separatist sentiment abroad.

The Unhealed Wound: Revisiting the Genesis of the Khalistan Movement from 1947 to 1984 

The Khalistan movement is not a relic of the past; it is a persistent, low-frequency tremor in modern geopolitics, its epicenter located in the traumatic soil of 1984 Punjab. To understand why this separatist sentiment endures in diaspora communities from Canada to the UK, one must journey back to the decades following India’s independence—a period not of Sikh separatism, but of deepening alienation, political miscalculation, and a fatal collision between faith and state that would scar a nation forever. 

The Political Crucible: From Partition’s Promise to a Shrinking Homeland 

In 1947, as the subcontinent was violently cleaved into India and Pakistan, the Sikh community found itself in a uniquely precarious position. Their spiritual and population heartland, Punjab, was itself partitioned, triggering one of history’s most brutal population exchanges. Sikhs, who had once been courted with proposals for a distinct homeland within the new Pakistan, were instead scattered, becoming refugees in their own country. 

The Shiromani Akali Dal, the primary Sikh political entity born from the Gurdwara Reform Movement of 1920, entered the post-colonial era as the guardian of Sikh political and religious rights. Initially, Sikhs held significant territory, but the state was progressively carved up. The most significant blow came in 1966 with the trifurcation of Punjab into Punjabi-speaking Punjab, Hindi-speaking Haryana, and the hilly region of Himachal Pradesh. 

This linguistic reorganization, while addressing other demographic realities, left Sikhs without a clear majority in any of the new states, fostering a sense of political marginalization. The dream of a Sikh-led political entity, which many felt was promised during the freedom struggle, seemed to be systematically dismantled. This sentiment was compounded by ongoing disputes over river waters and the status of Chandigarh, further cementing a narrative of central government neglect and injustice. 

The Ideological Battle: Sikh Identity and the RSS Narrative 

Simultaneously, a more subtle but profound battle over identity was underway. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a major force in Hindu nationalist thought, propagated the ideology of Akhand Bharat (Undivided India) and the concept that Sikhs are an integral part of the broader Hindu fold. This was not merely a social observation but a political project. 

RSS ideologues like Ram Swarup argued in works like “Hindu Sikh Relationship” that Sikhism was essentially a reform movement within Hinduism, a reaction to Islamic rule rather than a distinct, revealed religion. This narrative deliberately overlooked the core tenets, scriptures, and lived traditions that define Sikhism, including the syncretic elements within it, such as the revered presence of Guru Nanak’s Muslim companion, Mardana. 

To advance this, the RSS created the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, an organization aimed at drawing Sikhs back into the Hindu ideological umbrella. This project was, and continues to be, largely rejected by mainstream Sikh institutions, who view it as an existential threat to their unique religious identity. The 2009 murder of RSS-affiliated Sikh activist Rulda Singh, who was on a mission to rehabilitate overseas Khalistan supporters, underscored the violent resistance such initiatives face from hardliners who see any cooperation as a betrayal. 

The Creation of a Phenomenon: Bhindranwale and the Descent into Chaos 

Into this tinderbox of political grievance and identity anxiety stepped Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. A charismatic and orthodox preacher from the Dam Dami Taksal, Bhindranwale began as a figure championing a return to religious purity. His rise, however, was cynically engineered by political players in New Delhi. 

In a classic case of political blowback, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Congress party, through her Home Minister (and future President) Zail Singh, deliberately promoted Bhindranwale in the late 1970s as a conservative religious counterweight to the Akali Dal’s political influence in Punjab. They armed him with patronage and platform, believing they could control the forces of faith. 

They were catastrophically wrong. The turning point was the violent clash on Baisakhi day in 1978 between Bhindranwale’s followers and the Nirankaris, a sect considered heretical by orthodox Sikhs. The bloodshed polarized the state. The moderate Akali Dal, to retain its credibility with an increasingly angry Sikh base, was forced to align itself with Bhindranwale’s radical stance, ceding ground to his more extreme demands. 

The Indian government’s response to growing unrest only poured fuel on the fire. During the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, Haryana’s government, under Chief Minister Bhajan Lal, instituted brutal checks on Sikh travelers, subjecting an entire community to collective humiliation. This heavy-handed tactic alienated the common Sikh, making Bhindranwale’s message of defiance and self-assertion more appealing than the Akalis’ pleas for negotiation. 

By 1983, Bhindranwale had transformed from a preacher into a warlord. Operating from within the Akal Takht—the seat of temporal authority in the Golden Temple complex—he and his followers, aided by disaffected Indian Army veterans like Major General Shabeg Singh, amassed weapons and ran a parallel justice system. A campaign of assassinations and intimidation silenced dissent, pushing Punjab into a state of terror. 

The Point of No Return: Operation Blue Star and its Scorched Earth Aftermath 

For Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the occupation of the Golden Temple was an untenable challenge to the Indian state’s sovereignty. In June 1984, she made the fateful decision to launch Operation Blue Star—a military assault on Sikhism’s holiest shrine. 

The operation, led by the army with tanks and heavy artillery, was successful in a narrow, tactical sense: Bhindranwale and his key lieutenants were killed. Strategically and morally, it was a disaster of historic proportions. The sight of the Akal Takht, a symbol of Sikh sovereignty, reduced to rubble by the Indian Army, was seared into the collective Sikh psyche as an act of desecration. It was not perceived as an action against militants, but as an assault on the faith itself. 

The trauma of Blue Star directly led to Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her own Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. What followed was a state-sanctioned pogrom that remains a festering wound on India’s secular conscience. Mobs, often led by Congress party leaders, hunted Sikhs across northern India, particularly in Delhi. Over 3,000 Sikhs were murdered in the capital alone, their homes and businesses burned, their men beaten to death and burned alive. 

The complicity of the state was epitomized by the statement of the new Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, who infamously said, “When a big tree falls, the earth shakes.” It was a grotesque justification for mass murder. 

The Legacy of Trauma: Where Justice is a Ghost 

The victims of the 1984 pogrom were not Khalistani separatists. They were ordinary citizens like Bhagi Kaur, who lost her husband and seven relatives, or Laxmi Kaur, who witnessed her husband burned alive and her infant son thrown into flames. For them, the political machinations of Bhindranwale and Gandhi were abstract; their reality was the smell of kerosene and the sight of their loved ones butchered. 

Thirty-nine years later, their quest for justice remains largely unfulfilled. Perpetrators like Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler have enjoyed political protection and delayed justice for decades. The children orphaned in 1984 are now middle-aged, passing down stories of state betrayal to a new generation. This unhealed trauma is the fertile ground in which the mythology of Khalistan continues to grow, especially in the diaspora, where memory often ossifies into a purer, more potent form of identity than the complex, evolving reality of modern Punjab itself. 

The period from 1947 to 1984 is not just history; it is the foundational story of a grievance. It explains why a movement that lost its popular support within India continues to find oxygen abroad, and why the ghosts of that era continue to haunt the relationship between India and nations like Canada today. Until the wounds of 1984 are addressed with genuine justice and accountability, they will remain open, a silent testament to a nation’s unresolved past.