Calling it “absurd, India on Monday refuted the accusations, levelled by Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau strongly claiming that New Delhi ordered the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a separatist Khalistan Sikh chief, who was murdered in June this yr close to Vancouver.
The political activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was working for the creation of “Khalistan,” an autonomous Sikh nation in India.
The Khalistan marketing campaign dates again to India’s independence and has been blamed for the assassination of a first-rate minister and the bombing of a passenger jet.
It has additionally been a sore level between India and several other Western nations dwelling to giant Sikh populations, with New Delhi demanding Canada and others take stricter motion in opposition to separatists, AFP reported.
Here’s what we all know concerning the Khalistan motion:
Khalistan motion
Sikhism is a minority faith originating in northern India that traces its roots again to the 15th century and drew influences from each Hinduism and Islam.
Its adherents make up lower than two p.c of India’s 1.four billion individuals however Sikhs are practically 60% of the inhabitants within the northern state of Punjab, the religion’s heartland.
The Indian subcontinent gained independence in 1947 because it was struggling by the blood-soaked Partition that divided the previous British colony alongside non secular traces.
Muslims fled to the newly fashioned nation of Pakistan whereas Hindus and Sikhs fled to India within the ensuing violence, which killed at the least a million individuals.
The historic area of Punjab was break up between the 2 international locations and was wracked by a number of the worst violence of Partition.
Since then, some Sikhs have known as for the creation of “Khalistan”, a separate sovereign nation and “land of the pure” carved out of Punjab and ruled by the religion’s precepts.
These calls grew louder in subsequent a long time as Punjab grew to become one of many wealthiest states in India, owing to an agricultural revolution that dramatically lifted farm yields.
Controversy
The marketing campaign was largely thought-about a benign fringe motion till the early 1980s when a charismatic Sikh fundamentalist launched a violent separatist insurgency.
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers murdered scores of Sikh political opponents and Hindu civilians within the title of building Khalistan.
In 1984, they started stockpiling arms and barricading themselves within the Golden Temple, the religion’s holiest shrine within the metropolis of Amritsar.
Bhindranwale, his high lieutenants, and a whole lot of Sikh civilians had been killed when the federal government stormed the location that June, additionally leading to in depth harm to the temple.
The military’s motion, codenamed Operation Blue Star, outraged Sikhs all over the world who accused the troops of spiritual desecration.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot useless later that yr whereas strolling by her backyard, in an act of vengeance by two Sikh troopers on her bodyguard element.
Her assassination triggered a spasm of violence that noticed hundreds of Sikhs killed in New Delhi and different components of the nation in brutal reprisals.
Gandhi’s assassins had been later hailed as martyrs by Sikh leaders and their painted portraits adorn the museum on the Golden Temple.
Why menace
The insurgency was finally introduced underneath management however violence continued in Punjab for one more decade after the storming of the Golden Temple.
Supporters of the Khalistan marketing campaign have additionally been accused of terror assaults exterior of India’s borders.
Canada-based Sikh extremists had been accused of finishing up the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight, killing 329 individuals.
Reminiscences of the insurgency nonetheless hang-out India, which has outlawed the Khalistan motion and listed a number of related teams as “terrorist organisations”.
Because the insurgency ended, shows of help for the Khalistan motion in Punjab are uncommon and have been shortly clamped down upon by authorities.
Indian police in April arrested firebrand Sikh chief Amritpal Singh, who had returned to Punjab from overseas the earlier yr and begun preaching for a separate Sikh homeland.
Singh was caught after main authorities on a weekslong manhunt that noticed cell web lower off for days within the state, dwelling to 30 million individuals.
Helps
The Khalistan motion’s principal vocal advocates are nowadays primarily among the many giant Sikh diaspora, significantly in Canada, Britain, and Australia.
Fringe Sikh teams periodically maintain referendums to endorse the institution of a Sikh homeland in India.
India has typically complained to overseas governments concerning the actions of Sikh hardliners who, it says, try to revive the insurgency.
Earlier this yr, Indian consulates in Britain and the USA had been vandalised by Khalistan supporters.
India’s overseas ministry criticised Canada in June for permitting a float in a parade depicting Gandhi’s assassination by her bodyguards.
