Khalistan movement liability, not cause, for majority of Sikhs: Report

Ottawa: The continued promotion of Khalistani extremism in Western capitals undermines Sikh interests, isolates the community, fuels suspicion, and diverts attention from pressing challenges such as integration, youth radicalisation, and drug and gang networks that some findings have linked to separatist financing, a report has stated.

It noted that the Khalistan movement has already exacted a devastating human cost, from the Air India bombing to years of militancy and bloodshed in Punjab.

Two years after pro-Khalistan radicals attacked devotees with sticks and flagpoles during a consular camp at Sabha Mandir in Canada’s Brampton, Canadian journalist Daniel Bordman unexpectedly found himself at the heart of the story, a report in Khalsa Vox stated.

The way Canadian broadcaster CBC framed the violence as somehow centred on him prompted a two-year global investigation. The result was Finding Khalistan, a documentary that traces the movement’s trajectory from the bloodshed after Partition and the 1980s insurgency to its present-day echo chambers in the West, it added.

“The film arrives at a moment when the cost of this ideology is impossible to ignore. Khalistan is not a legitimate expression of Sikh aspiration. It is a political project that has repeatedly turned violent, that has been sustained by external patrons, and that stands in direct contradiction to the core teachings of the Gurus. Guru Nanak rejected religious bigotry and political division; the Guru Granth Sahib repeatedly stresses the oneness of humanity (‘Na koi bairi nahin begana’),” the report detailed.

“The Khalsa was created to defend the oppressed, not to carve out an ethno-religious state through terror and intimidation. Modern Khalistani activism—temple attacks, glorification of terrorists, and ‘referendums’ staged in Canadian community centres—bears no resemblance to that spiritual and ethical inheritance,” it noted.

According to the report, the Khalistan movement is seen as a liability rather than a cause by the overwhelming majority of Sikhs, both in India and across the diaspora.

“In Punjab it has negligible electoral support. In Canada, former British Columbia premier Ujjal Dosanjh has repeatedly stated that less than five per cent of Canadian Sikhs endorse it; most simply want to work, raise families, and practise their faith without being tarred by association. Yet the loud minority has succeeded in equating ‘Sikh’ with ‘Khalistani’ in the public mind,” Khalsa Vox mentioned.

“The result is a global reputational tax paid by ordinary Sikhs: the hard-working truck drivers, entrepreneurs, soldiers, and professionals whose community is known for seva and prosperity now find their identity co-opted by those who traffic in grievance and, in some cases, organised crime,” it stated.

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