Future of a Referendum

There are fringe elements prevalent in every facet of society. When fuelled with resentment, these peripheries often traverse towards a cultural and political shift, at times seeking for self rule. However, what seems as deviance is actually the upshot of generational victimization, maltreatment and persecution. These oppressed communities, therefore, often harbour separatist elements which challenge the social fabric of a nation and also its sovereignty.

The Khalistan movement has always been a prime example, highlighting the recusant sentiment prevalent within various communities of India. These feelings of nonconformity with New Delhi have been further accentuated after the coming into dominance of Hindutva in a “secular” India. Recently, the Khalistan Referendum - among Sikh expatriates – has been lighting up the lingering flames of sovereignty within the Sikh community.

To understand the Khalistan Referendum, we first need to delve deep in the history of the Khalistan Movement and view Eastern Punjab through the prism of symbolic interactionism. Accordingly, throughout several centuries, Punjab has been viewed as the “pure” land by the Sikh population residing there. Khalistan or “land of the pure “encompasses a religio-political vision that realized Sikhs being preordained by God to rule this land. From a historical perspective, there have been several communities throughout the times, albeit nuances, that claimed a certain area as rightfully their’s as divinely told by their gods. Jewish Zionism is a great example of this. Apart from religion, the resentment of being a minority within a Hindu dominant majority, where Hindu nationalism has always been viewed as the proverbial cornerstone, has propelled the pro-Khalistan sentiments by great degrees through recent decades.

Since India’s independence, there have been numerous incidents that show those who argued that Sikhs couldn’t feel secure under a Hindu-run state were right. The Operation Blue Star and the ensuing anti-Sikh riots, both of which occurred in 1984, are the two most noteworthy ones. The first incident included the Indian military attacking the Sri Harmandir Sahib Gurudwara in Amritsar, Punjab. They used deadly force against the unarmed pilgrims who had assembled at the place of worship as well as the separatists who were looking for safety. This marked the culmination of months and years of emergency regulations, crackdown measures, and suspension of habeas corpus, which led to a surge in the number of Sikhs supporting autonomy in large regions of Punjab and North India.

The historic 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi were started by the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards later that year in retribution for the Operation Blue Star. These violent riots had a significant impact on the Khalistan cause by showing Sikhs all over India that good neighbourly relations could not be taken for granted. Sikhs continued to be a minority community with limited means of defence against a powerful majority. It is obvious why these incidents show Sikhs in India require their own independent sovereign state to feel safe and secure.

All of these incidents of victimization have been the precursor to the Khalistan Referendum and the call for an autonomous Khalistan has been getting support again in recent times. With all the current developments going on, one begs to ask the question that can an independent Sikh state sustain. The answer to the feasibility lies in the “Hindutva” factor and Indian centrality. An analysis of the Kashmir conflict helps us to understand why India, at least for the foreseeable future, will never give in to calls for Punjab’s independence since doing so would result in the same issues as in Kashmir—namely, the weakening of India to the advantage of its rival neighbour. Furthermore, allowing a secession that would be almost completely motivated by religious differences would be bad for ties between different ethnic groups in the nation as a whole. How could India claim to be a really secular nation to the other main religious communities of India - particularly Muslims, and also Christians and others - if it could not provide the protection and safety of Sikhs, to the point where they declared independence?