Why is it in news?

Khalistan becomes an issue between India and Canada again.

Details

• Khalistan, the issue that kept India-Canada ties on ice through three decades from 1980, has reappeared as an issue more recently, taking away much of the warmth that was expected during Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ongoing visit to India.
• It is being said the seeds for the current tensions have been sowed since Mr. Trudeau came to power in 2015, receiving widespread support from some of the most extreme Khalistani political groups, and has repeatedly failed to take into account the sensitivities in India over the past where Sikh terror groups received support from elements in Canada.
• One major breaking point came last April when Mr.Trudeau attended a “Khalsa day” parade organised by one of the more radical Gurudwaras in Toronto. At the time, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) made it clear India’s protest had been taken up with the Canadian government.
• Among other issues was the felicitation at the parade of a politician responsible for a resolution in the Ontario assembly that accused India of “genocide” during the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots, a vote that India had also protested strongly. In addition, floats at the parade depicted Sikh militant leaders Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Amreek Singh and former General Shahbeg Singh who were killed in the siege of the Golden Temple and Operation Bluestar in June 1984, as heroes.
• To add to the tensions, last month, 16 Canadian Gurudwaras announced a “ban” on the entry of Indian elected officials, consular officials, etc., without any action from the Trudeau government.
• Another sore point on the current visitwas Mr. Trudeau’s insistence on taking along with him the Ministers in his cabinet accused of sympathising with the Khalistan movement, like Mr. Sajjan and Navdeep Singh Bains, to Amritsar. Last year, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had refused to meet these Ministers calling them “Khalistanis”, and Mr. Trudeau’s decision to take them with him to Punjab appeared to have complicated plans to meet the Chief Minister, before the issue was resolved.

About the Khalistan movement

• The Khalistan movement is a Sikh nationalist movement, which seeks to create a separate country called Khalistān (Khalistan means “The Land of the Pure") in the Punjab region. The territorial definition of the proposed country Khalistan ranges from the Punjab, including Lahore, to parts of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Rajasthan.
• After the partition was announced, the majority of the Sikhs migrated from the Pakistani province of Punjab to the Indian province of Punjab, which then included parts of present-day Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Following India's independence in 1947, the Punjabi Suba Movement led by the Akali Dal aimed at the creation of a Punjabi-majority state (Suba) in the Punjab region of India in the 1950s.
• Concerned that creating a Punjabi-majority state would effectively mean creating a Sikh-majority state, the Indian government initially rejected the demand. After a series of protests, violent clampdowns on the Sikhs, and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, the Government finally agreed to partition the state, creating a new Sikh-majority Punjab state and splitting the rest of the region into the states of Himachal Pradesh and the new state of Haryana.
• Subsequently, Sikh leaders started demanding more autonomy for the states, alleging that the Central government was discriminating against Punjab. Although the Akali Dal explicitly opposed the demand for an independent Sikh country, the issues raised by it were used as a premise for the creation of a separate country by the proponents of Khalistan.
• The Khalistan movement reached its zenith in the 1970s and 1980s, flourishing in the Indian state of Punjab, which has a Sikh-majority population and has been the traditional homeland of the Sikh religion. Various pro-Khalistan outfits have been involved in a separatist movement against the government of India ever since. There are claims of funding from Sikhs outside India to attract young people into these pro-Khalistan militant groups.

Source

The Hindu