Sikh separatists' violence should concern host countries, not just India

If Sikh separatists are a nuisance, it should worry their host countries. Should it bother India if they keep killing their own in gang rivalries and making their neighbourhoods unsafe?

How do we make the case that, while grave dangers threaten to return and old demons, buried for a generation, are stirring, it’s time to call your troops back to the barracks? We are talking about Punjab and Sikhs.
 

But hello, you might ask, where is the war? Punjab is quiet and probably more peaceful and lawful than any state in north India, definitely more than any state in the Hindi heartland. The Sikhs just voted in large numbers in state and Lok Sabha elections, dissing the almighty Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Their choice, the Aam Aadmi Party, is even more of an outsider than the BJP or the Congress.
 

Where is the problem, the challenge, what grave dangers are we talking about, what’s stirring, and where’s the war? One challenge of being in power — or more importantly, in a position of total power — is that it makes people believe they must do something with it. Inside every power system, there is a latent Don Quixote itch. You need that monstrous, malevolent windmill to tilt at, with Sancho Panza by your side. So far, so good, except it isn’t a Miguel de Cervantes work from 1605. It gets more complicated when the windmill is located in British Columbia. It is the troops fighting those demons that need to be recalled to the barracks. Because the land, the people, and the politics that need attention are here. A five-and-a-half hour Vande Bharat train ride or an hour’s flight from New Delhi: Amritsar.
 

There is no war, battle or even skirmish there. There is an unhappy, sullen and even increasingly frustrated population wanting to leave India through immigration, which will be near-impossible now.

The statements the separatists make, the abominable tableaux at their parades, the slogans, posters, and selfies with assault rifles are not India’s problem. By the way, I am intrigued as to what Hardeep Singh Nijjar was conveying by posing in a saffron Banana Republic T-shirt.
 

All of this involves, at the outer limit, a few thousand people. If they are a nuisance, it should bother their host countries, because they are armed and have their own underworld with deadly gang rivalries. Significantly, none of this happens in the US — only in snowflaky Canada.
 

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who runs the nastiest finger in India’s eye, is careful with his words. He puts his training as an attorney to good use. His hoardings will say “destroy/crush India,” but if you take a close look at the fine print at the bottom, it will be footnoted with something like, “With ballots, not bullets.” It’s much worse in Canada, sort of in the middle in Britain, and whatever happens in Australia, New Zealand and other countries is relatively marginal.
 

They can be infuriating. But do they matter? Or do they matter so much that we take the fight to them at the risk of strategic ties of existential significance, given the neighbours we have? Or specifically, the neighbour we have to the north? A wise big power must have the ability to weigh its friendships, threats and the timing of its actions. It is also human that we tend to respond first to whatever irritates us the most at any point of time. Yet the experience of nations, societies and even personal and professional lives tells us that if we merely take a deep breath, let that moment of anger pass, the next morning we always wonder: Is this what I was going to war over? Or breaking a relationship? Quitting my job? Firing an employee? Powerful people, and nations, don’t let anger determine their actions.
 

None of these noisy separatists believes in some equivalent of a biblical inevitability of a sovereign Sikh state, and most can’t win a panchayat election or collect 100 armed people behind them in Punjab. One way of looking at them is as people who were once fellow Indians who now, mostly as Canadians, are helping Pakistanis spend whatever remains of their money. They are making a living from it. India and its formidable intelligence assets can pay the compliment back in kind in Pakistan. Which they had been doing until the kerfuffle in the Anglosphere brought about a hiatus.
 

India, the US and even Canada will see their respective spats play out in the course of time, if in different ways. Ties between sovereign nations, especially ones that share so much, do not remain broken for long. The US and India have already moved forward, compartmentalising the Pannun issue. What will not change, however, is the fact that large and influential sections of the Sikh diaspora live in both countries. In Canada, they are electorally significant in a number of constituencies (or ridings). In both, radical elements will continue to be funded and fuelled by the ISI.

It is a fortnight to the 40th anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the massacres of Sikhs that followed. It also follows that this is the 40th year of Operation Blue Star. It took a much bloodier decade post-Bhindranwale than his three active years for normalcy to return to Punjab. There have since been three decades of total peace in Punjab. There are, however, stirrings of anger and frustration. It comes primarily from the state’s economic decline. There is also a rising belief that the Sikhs have lost their traditional ability to punch above their weight (in population terms) in the national power structure.
 

It might look odd that I say so weeks after another Sikh has taken over as an armed forces chief—the Indian Air Force in this case. But the power at the Centre now resides fully with the BJP, the party the Sikhs like the least. The BJP lacks a Sikh leader from Punjab, and the Shiromani Akali Dal ceased to be a coalition partner of the National Democratic Alliance in 2020.

Whatever its political logic, severing ties with the Akali Dal didn’t serve the national interest. As Atal Bihari Vajpayee often explained, the challenge in Punjab was a Sikh-Hindu schism. The best answer was an alliance of the primary Sikh and Hindu parties, the Akalis and his BJP.
 

With that broken, everything is up in the air. The Akalis are unpopular and radicals are moving into their religious space. It’s called “panthik” (from Khalsa Panth) in Punjab. This vacuum in panthik politics is a danger. And please save your virtue signalling on secular politics etc. First of all, in Punjab, they will tell you that if the BJP seeks a Hindu nation, how can you question those wanting a Sikh nation? That’s said only rhetorically, however. Amritpal Singh has been subsumed by democratic politics and his incarceration has caused no upheaval. 
 

The tougher question is: Who controls the Sikh faith and its biggest temples, their resources and institutions? That is done by an elected body, the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, for which only observant Sikhs can vote. That election was last held in 2011, and one reason is the halving of the number of eligible Sikh voters in the ongoing enrolment process. The observant Sikh numbers are declining .
 

All of this adds up to insecurity and worry, compounded by suspicion of the Centre. There is no rebellion, bar the slogans and posters of the kind you will see on these coming 40th anniversaries. Will you lock them all up under UAPA or NSA? If not, why go to war with a few hundred people doing this two oceans away? That’s why we need to call those troops back to the barracks.

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