Khalistan Referendum 2021: destined for separate homeland

With narrowing space for their community in India, Sikhs are congregating under the umbrella of Sikhs For Justice


Irfan Shahid January 25, 2022

In the garb of democracy and secularism, the Indian state has become the worst nightmare for minorities, especially Muslims and Sikhs. By towing the RSS’s radicalised ideology, deliberate hate campaigns, discrimination, and genocide, the Indian establishment is on the brink of fulfilling its agenda of turning India into a totalitarian state with no scope for already marginalised non-Hindus. Members of Muslim and Sikh communities have started intuiting a state of alienation under the hurriedness of intolerance in Indian society and the doctrinaire behaviours of incumbent rulers.

Following decades of desolation, state oppression, and narrowing space for their community in India, Sikhs across the globe are now congregating under the umbrella of Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) — an outspoken rights organisation that has long been raising voice against systematic genocide of their peaceful community by Indian authorities. SFJ is believed to be the sole representative of the Sikh community advocating their purely democratic demand of a separate homeland ‘Khalistan’ comprising the areas of Punjab presently under Indian rule.

Several instances compelled Sikhs to consider the option of their separate country where they can preserve their ideological foundations and exercise religious obligations without the interposition of any authoritarian statute. Among Sikhs, the impulse for a separate homeland within India was triggered after the 1984 Sikh genocide by the Indian state following the murder of Indra Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, by a Sikh security guard. Ongoing agitation of Sikh farmers in Indian Punjab has further substantiated the need and longing for a separate Sikh homeland.

The most anticipated event of the referendum started on 31st Oct 2021 by voting at Queen Elizabeth Hall outside Westminster Palace UK, and SFJ’s Khalistan referendum pursued voters on the question of the separation of Punjab and other Sikh dominating areas from India. According to SFJ, after casting 20,000 votes on the 31st Dec 2021, now the number of Sikhs across the UK who voted in favour of the liberation of Indian Punjab from illegal occupation has reached 2,00,000.

This rehearsal of SFJ has greatly influenced the democracies like the UK. It is also a milestone that Sikhs in such a huge number showed up at a platform to convey their message to the world that they don’t want to be part of the Indian state anymore which has beleaguered them for decades by curtailing their religious autonomy as well as their distinctive identity.

With the mounting popularity of SFJ’s demand of liberation from the Indian state, India has become infuriated and started slandering propaganda against the Sikh community by establishing baseless and fraud terror links against the members of the organisation. Even the Prime Minister of India, while speaking to an event a couple of days ago, shamelessly tried to build optics by saying that “attempts are being made to tarnish India’s global image.” But by convoking a democratic process of the plebiscite, SFJ has proved that they are the followers of a peaceful ideology and preferred ballot over the bullet.

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the SFJ leader, has underlined smearing tactics being used by the Indian government to malign their movement by leveling terror allegations against the members of the organisation without having a legal ground. He further articulated that such brazen acts of the Indian government cannot restrain Sikhs from accomplishing their longstanding demand for a separate homeland for the 30 million members of the Sikh community worldwide.

Indian authorities have banned SFJ in 2019 under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) also designated Gurpatwant Singh Pannun — a US-based lawyer and SFJ’s General Counsel — as a “terrorist”. The Indian government also lodged an official protest with the UK government and asked it to curb SFJ’s activities.

In this regard, in late 2021, a two-member delegation of SFJ, comprising General Counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and Council of Khalistan President Dr Bakhshish Singh Sandhu, also met UN officials and briefed them about their demand for self-determination as well as with the international law and illicit use of ferocity and treason charges by Modi government against Khalistan referendum activists in India and abroad.

Despite the Indian opposition, the Sikh community has been successful in convincing the international community that they have been one of the prime victims of Indian state-sponsored genocide campaigns against the minorities. In a recent development, New Jersey Senate has passed a resolution that has designated 1984 killings of the Sikh community following the murder of Indra Gandhi as “genocide”. The incident took the lives of more than 30,000 Sikhs across the Punjab state in a matter of a few days under the supervision of the state machinery. New Jersey Senate is also planning to submit the resolution to the President and the Vice President of the United States, and representatives of all houses.

Henceforth, this initiative of SFJ is entirely democratic and satisfies all international and legal benchmarks. The world must contemplate the outcomes of the referendum very seriously. If the plebiscite proves to be successful, it will pave the way for other fraught communities in India, especially the people of IIOJK, to intensify their legal battle for self-determination following in the footprints of SFJ. The international community and global human rights organisations must also support the demand of Sikhs to attain their fundamental right to self-determination and must stop the BJP’s Hindutva ideology from turning India into a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ because that would be calamitous for the impoverished minorities of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25th, 2022.

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