INDIAN MANDALA Delhi on the hunt for Amritpal Singh, leader of the Khalistan movement

A fugitive for almost a week, the Sikh preacher leads a separatist group in the Indian state of Punjab. Khalistani independence dates back to the time of the separation of India and Pakistan. A history of clashes with the central government. The role of the diaspora.

Milan () – He used five different vehicles in 12 hours to avoid being captured by the police in the Indian state of Punjab, while riots broke out outside the diplomatic headquarters in London and San Francisco to protest the mass arrests of his supporters and the Internet suspension throughout the Punjabi territory. Amritpal Singh, an alleged Sikh preacher leading a movement calling for Khalistan’s independence, has been on the run for almost a week. But it is not so much his figure that enjoys support inside and outside the country, but rather the Jalistani movement, which since independence has survived in various forms. After reaching its peak in the 1980s, before suffering a violent crackdown by the Delhi authorities, today it seems to have picked up steam again.

Called “Bhindranwale 2.0” in honor of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh militant whom the preacher said he was inspired by, Amritpal Singh had moved to Dubai to pursue the family business of transportation. He returned to Punjab last year to take over an organization called Waris Punjab De (Heirs of Punjab) after its founder, Deep Sidhu, was killed in a traffic accident. “Our goal of Khalistan should not be seen as evil and taboo. It is an ideology and ideology never dies. We are not asking Delhi for it,” had declared Singh on February 24. The day before, hundreds of his followers had confronted the security forces demanding the release of a member of the movement detained for the alleged crime of kidnapping.

The Khalistan movement has taken various forms over the years, but it has always called for the creation of an independent state in what is now Punjab, a region divided between India and Pakistan and today home to mostly people from sikh confession

The political struggle for autonomy began with the independence of India in 1947: during the separation with Pakistan, the Punjab was the scene of fierce sectarian clashes. Lahore and other major Sikh places of worship, such as Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, passed to Pakistan. Thousands of Muslims who had been stranded in India headed towards the new state, while Hindus and Sikhs took the opposite route. Shortly after, the Punjabi Suba movement was born, a forerunner of the movement for Khalistan: it called for the creation of a Pujabi-speaking state.

After more than a decade of protests, in 1966 the geography of India was redrawn to reflect the demands of the movement: Delhi divided the original territory into three, creating Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, Hindu-majority and Hindi-speaking, and Punjab, with a Sikh majority and where Punjabi is mainly spoken.

Thanks to the achievements of the Punjabi Suba, in the 1970s the political scene was then dominated by the Shiromani Akali Dal, a party that was actually born in 1920, shortly after the Gandhi Congress and its main rival in Punjab. In 1973, after meeting in the holy city of Anandpur Sahib, the group presented a series of demands to Delhi, including an autonomous Punjab with its own constitution, but imagining that it would remain in the Indian Federation.

However, within the party there was also a more radical current, represented by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The movement for Khalistan sought, among other things, to respond to the socioeconomic problems of the rural population, but the popularity that Bhindranwale achieved in the early eighties became a problem for the government of Indira Gandhi, which, instead of negotiate, decided that it was a secessionist movement. In 1984, the Indian government launched Operation Blue Star against the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest site for Sikhs. On June 6, Bhindranwale was assassinated and has been considered a martyr ever since. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 people were killed in the clashes. On October 31 of the same year, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards. Furthermore, according to conservative estimates, at least 8,000 Sikhs lost their lives in street riots after the assassination of the Prime Minister of Congress.

According to some observers, those who have protested for Singh in recent days are no more than a minority of Sikhs living abroad. For expert journalist Terry MilewskiInstead, “the diaspora is made up mostly of people who don’t want to live in India. There are many among them who remember the bad old days of the 1980s.” Today “there is a small minority that clings to the past, and that small minority remains significant not because of popular support, but rather because they try to maintain their own political influence with various political parties on the left and right. They can garner a mass of supporters that they will vote for the politicians who manage to flatter them”.

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