Speaking in Washington DC, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that the religious freedoms of Sikhs in India were under threat. Given that he chose to ignore the collective intergenerational trauma suffered by the Sikh community at the hands of the Indian state in the 1980s, his concern smacks of insincerity.
On the one hand, he was seen as inadvertently pandering to US-based Khalistanis. Indeed, Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun declared that Gandhi’s stance “reverberates” with the demand for Khalistan. The separatists, in their efforts to gain legitimacy, will doubtless spin the Congress leader’s statement as an endorsement of their cause.
On the other hand, Gandhi overlooked the impact of Operation Blue Star and the 1984 riots on the Sikh diasporas based in North America and the UK. Arguably, the seminal events of 1984 — the military action against the Golden Temple and the genocidal attack on Sikhs in Delhi — bred a transnational separatist movement.
Sikh sub-nationalism developed indigenously over decades, but there is evidence enough and more that the ‘Khalistan’ aspect of the movement was exported to India in the 1980s by radical organisations based overseas. The idea of a Sikh homeland, which surfaced briefly at the time of Partition, had been all but forgotten until then.
For the Sikh diaspora, 1984 was a defining year in that it gave rise to an assertive politics of identity within these overseas communities. Gandhi was 14, old enough to recall footage of Sikhs protesting at Indian embassies and consulates across the world in June, 1984 (in the wake of Operation Bluestar). They were protesting against the oppressive Indian state – a state then ruled by the Congress.
“The fight is about whether he, as a Sikh, is going to be allowed to wear his turban in India and he, as a Sikh, is going to be allowed to wear a ‘kada’ (bracelet) in India, or he as a Sikh is going to be able to go to a gurudwara”, Gandhi declared.
The statement is prima facie bizarre, because Hindus are as much at home in gurudwaras as Sikhs, and also sport turbans (and ‘kadas’) of various kinds. But let us interpret his remarks in the spirit in which they were meant — that the current dispensation wishes to deny religious freedoms to minorities.
Given that Gandhi’s audience comprised Indian Americans, and the subject was religious persecution, he could have acknowedged the thousands of US-based Sikhs who fled India after 1984, for fear of victimisation. They, or their descendants, could well have been present among the audience at Washington DC.
A rant on religious freedom cannot erase 1984 and the collective trauma of a whole community. While it is no one’s case that Gandhi should carry the burden of his predecessors’ sins, he would have done well to confront the past and express regret for the excesses of 1984 and his party’s behaviour at the time. Otherwise, how can he convince the Sikhs that the Congress of 1984 is not the Congress of 2024?
Gandhi clearly believed that his remarks would appeal to the Sikh diaspora and its sense of victimhood. The identity politics that developed post-1984 among diasporic communities was aimed precisely at nurturing that victimhood. This emphasis on ethnicity was vigorously supported by western governments, under the garb of multi-culturalism. It gave the Sikh community a voice out of proportion to its limited numbers.
Diasporic politics converged with separatism. The Khalistanis pitched themselves as a nation-in-exile, and mobilised public opinion and resources to influence diplomatic relations. Separatist organisations, even those that openly advocate violence, have been remarkably successful in deploying global NGOs and anti-India lobbies on the human rights issue, with manufactured evidence or none at all.
They succeeded in derailing Indo-Canadian relations, beginning with the mishandling of the investigation into the role of Sikh extremists in the attack on IC 182 in 1985, in which 329 people died. The recent kerfuffle over the killing of separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada has brought diplomatic ties to an all-time low. Likewise, the US claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate Pannu on American soil.
Separatism may be integral to Sikh diasporic politics, but is not relevant to the politics of Punjab. The bonds between the diaspora and Punjab are economic and spiritual, but the domestic political narrative is very different from the ‘globalised’ one. Other than a section of the dominant Jat Sikhs, no community in Punjab is invested in a separate homeland.
Agrarian distress and a failing economy are Punjab’s primary concerns, and grievances against the Indian state are based on those issues. Besides, the demography of the state is changing; the share of Sikhs in the population is declining in India as a whole and in Punjab. While Sikhs have migrated to other countries, people from different states and communities have settled in Punjab.
The election of Amritpal Singh, a charismatic separatist leader with considerable youth appeal, to the Lok Sabha may have encouraged the view that separatist rhetoric has traction in Punjab. But Singh’s arrest in 2023, marked by violent attacks on Indian missions in the UK and Canada, and demonstrations and death threats in the US, did not spark any large-scale protests in Punjab. This underscores the fact that separatism is largely a diasporic construct.
The Congress, as a responsible national party, must distance itself from this kind of political manoeuvring. According even a hint of legitimacy to radical organisations to promote narrow political aims comes at a very high cost; a lesson the grand old party should have learnt by now.
Bhavdeep Kang is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines. She is now an independent writer and author
