HALISTAN: the age-old dream of the Sikhs and the Sikh-Indian opposition

8
Among the many ethnic and religious communities in India, Sikhs stand out. It is difficult not to notice a Sikh in the crowd - firstly, it can always be recognized by a specifically tied turban on the head, and secondly by an impressive beard and mustache. The surname “Singh” (“Lion”) also makes it possible to unambiguously identify a Sikh. Sikhs are serious people. Their military qualities are famous not only throughout India, but also abroad. The altercation with the Sikhs once cost the life of the legendary Indira Gandhi.

HALISTAN: the age-old dream of the Sikhs and the Sikh-Indian opposition


What is Sikhism

Sikhs are a unique ethno-confessional community living in the north-west of India, primarily in the state of Punjab, although there are many Sikhs in the neighboring states of Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh. Sikh religion - Sikhism - was born in the XVI century in the territory of modern Pakistan and North-West India. Currently, there are up to 26 millions of Sikhs all over the world, but this very large nation, up to the present, is deprived of its own statehood. The Indian state of Punjab, in which the Sikh population predominates, can only be called Sikh autonomy with reservations.



Punjab is the cradle of Sikhism. This is the richest agricultural region of modern India, the climate of which favors the development of agriculture and turns the region into the "granary" of modern India. In addition, the Punjab, which is translated from Sanskrit as “Five Rivers” (Pancanada), is also historical area of ​​formation of Indian culture. It was here that the first states of the Indus Valley appeared.
Here, in Punjab, there was a point of intersection of two major religions of India - Hinduism and Islam. The Muslim conquerors who penetrated the territory of India from Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, could not finally subjugate the Hindus and convert them to Islam. Forced to coexist side by side, both religious traditions inevitably influenced each other. The consequence of this influence was the formation of Sikhism as a religion that absorbed both Hindu and Islamic components.

At the root of Sikhism was Guru Nanak (1469-1539). He was born in the area of ​​modern Lahore, in the modern Pakistani part of Punjab. It is Guru Nanak who is prescribing the composition of the Sikh holy book Adi Granth. A Hindu by birth, who grew up surrounded by Muslims, Guru Nanak laid the fundamental pillars of Sikhism, formulating its basic principles - faith in the one and all-powerful God - the Creator, meditation as a method of worshiping the Creator, teaching about the posthumous "dissolving" the soul, returning it to the Creator.


Guru Nanak


The second most important after Nanak among Sikh gurus is Gobind Singh (1666-1708). It is he who is credited with creating the “Khalsa” - the Sikh community, and the Sikh nation itself, which is regarded as a special nation of the most freedom-loving and just people. Gobind Singh preached equality among the freedom-loving Sikhs and considered himself recognized by the rest of the Sikhs as a guru, equal to the rest of the ordinary representatives of the Halsa.

[Center]

Gobind singh[/ Center]

Sikhism, in contrast to the same Islam, is characterized by an extremely loyal attitude to other religions and cultures, which is largely due to its syncretic nature, as well as to the multinational composition of the Sikh community itself, which in addition to people from Punjab were replenished India In Sikhism, caste affiliation was not significant, which became attractive for representatives of many oppressed castes. At the same time, the bulk of the Sikhs were and still are the representatives of the main Punjabi agricultural caste, the Jats.

Both from Islam and Hinduism, Sikhism borrowed a rather rigid ordering of the lives of its followers, including in its private manifestations. So, Sikhs are not allowed to divorce, marriage is an age obligation. Each Sikh should have five sacred attributes with him - five "K": cash - long hair, kangha - a comb to support hair, a penalty - a steel bracelet, quality - knee-length pants and a brick - sword. Sikh men wear a large turban on their heads, tied in a special way. Wearing a turban is also a sacred duty for Sikhs, in connection with which even Indian soldiers and policemen are allowed.

Sikh State

Despite the declared peacefulness and the philosophical nature of their religious doctrine, the Sikhs turned out to be a very militant ethno-confessional community. By the beginning of the 18th century, a special military caste of the Sikhs, the nihangi, was formed. Unlike other members of the Sikh community, the Nihangs swore an oath to devote their whole life to military craft and die on the battlefield. Naturally, these passionaries of the Sikh community rejected any peaceful trades and willingly went to war, whether for the interests of the Sikh state or for any other country, which included Sikh ethnos as a result of historical upheavals. Up to the present time, the Nihangs remain faithful to the traditions, preferring to work the eternal wandering and military service, and also striving to stand out with their appearance - as much as possible with an impressive beard and high turban. The traditional colors of Nihangs — blue and yellow — have spread among the entire Sikh ethnos as a whole and are now also the official colors of the self-proclaimed Sikh state Khalistan.

In 1716-1799 there was a Sikh confederation, which from 1799 was transformed under the leadership of Ranjit Singh into a powerful Sikh Empire. During its heyday, the Sikh Empire, the core of which was created by the Punjabi Sikhs who defeated the Mughal army, included not only Punjab land, but also the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, Delhi, the territory of Chandigarh, North-West Frontier Province Pakistan, Pakistani Tribal Areas, Pakistani Islamabad Territory and parts of northeastern Afghanistan. Amritsar and Lahore became the central cities of the empire.



The political system of the Sikh Empire was quite different from other Indian states of that time. In fact, it was a military democracy with the Sikh community (Khalsa) as the official central authority. It was the community that chose the leader of the Sikhs, the Serdar provinces of the empire. It should be noted that the Sikhs in the empire were a minority of the population - no more than 10%, while at the same time being the ruling community. The overwhelming majority of the population of the Sikh Empire (more than 80%) were Muslims, since the Khalsa extended its power primarily to the Islamized territories, which became part of Pakistan after the decolonization of the Indian Peninsula.

Gradually, the Serdaras, who ruled the individual regions of the Sikh Empire, concentrated in their hands ever greater power, turning into the analog of the traditional Indian Maharaja. Like other Indian states, the Sikh Empire began to be eroded by internal divisions, which contributed to its conquest by the British. The Sikh army twice suffered defeat from the British colonial troops - in the first Anglo-Sikh (1845-1846) and the second Anglo-Sikh (1848-1849) wars. As part of British India, the territory of the former Sikh state was divided partly into dependent principalities led by rajas and maharajas, partly in the territory of central subordination.



The Sikhs, initially quite negatively related to the British colonization, ultimately completely fit into the colonial society. It was from Sikhs that police units were largely formed in the northwestern provinces of British India. At the same time, the Sikh community gained great weight in cities, where it was represented by many prominent entrepreneurs and persons of liberal professions. The British colonial troops included Sikh units. The Sikhs who once fought for their freedom turned out to be reliable allies of the British, primarily because the latter skillfully played on Sikh-Muslim and Sikh-Hindu contradictions. Sikhs, even minorities in Punjab, also saw significant advantages in working with the British.

Fight for Halistan

After the proclamation of the sovereignty of India and Pakistan, numerous inter-ethnic conflicts began to shake the Indian subcontinent. The most significant of them in scale were Indo-Muslim conflicts, which grew into a perennial confrontation between India and Pakistan. However, Sikhs, no less than Hindus and Muslims, were embroiled in interethnic contradictions. Their first victims were Sikhs who lived in the part of Punjab that remained with Pakistan. It was the Pakistani Punjab with its center in Lahore that was the cradle of the Sikh religion and the Sikh people. However, the Muslim majority of Punjab, who did not lose the memory of the Sikh Serdar domination over it, after Pakistan gained independence managed to drive out most of the Sikhs to the territory of neighboring India. The scale of the Sikh-Muslim conflict in Pakistan’s Punjab is staggering: about a million dead and eight million refugees fell victim to it. In response to the Indian Punjab, Muslim pogroms began, also culminating in the emigration of a significant part of the Muslims to Pakistan.



Relations with the Hindus for the Sikhs developed relatively evenly until the 1970s, until Sikh public figures spoke about the continuing discrimination of the Sikhs by the Hindu government of India. Thus began the formation of the Sikh separatist movement, advocating the creation of at least autonomy, and to the maximum - an independent Sikh state called Khalistan.

Separatist sentiments were also strong in Akali Dal, the largest political party uniting the Sikhs. Largely due to the active political position of the Akali Dal party, the state of Punjab was formed, in which Sikhs constituted more than 65% of the population. However, the radical part of the “Akalists” did not stop at creating their own Sikh state. The goal of the struggle was to proclaim the creation of the Sikh state of Khalistan. In 1975, there was a final split of Akali Dal into a relatively liberal part, focused on integration into Indian society and participation in the construction of a unified state, and radical, insisting on Khalistan’s self-determination. The leader of the radical part of the Sikh movement was Jarnayla Singh Bhindranvala.

One of the key lines of confrontation in the newest period of Sikh history lay between the Sikhs and Nirankari. Nirankari is a sub-branch of Sikhism that believes in a living guru and is considered by other Sikhs as a “traitorous sect,” oriented towards the assimilation of the Sikh ethnos in the Hindu majority.

In 1978, there was a major clash between Sikhs and nirankari in the city of Amritsar. This city, as it is known, is sacred for Sikhs - this is where the famous “Golden Temple” is located and the imposing Sikh community lives. However, the Nirenkari, who also claim leadership positions in Sikh society, decided to hold their own conference in Amritsar. Naturally, the conference ended in mass collisions.


The bodies of Sikhs killed in the storming of the Golden Temple in India in 1984


But the most large-scale armed actions of the Sikhs against the central government and their rivals, the nirankari, unfolded in the 1980-1984 years. During this period, 1200 terrorist acts were committed against influential politicians, police, military, representatives of the Hindu community, nirankari, that is, against all "non-Sikhs" who found themselves in the territory of Punjab and neighboring states of India.

It should be noted here that the growth of the Sikh separatist movement in the state of Punjab is largely due to socio-economic reasons. As you know, the state is one of the most economically developed, the Sikh community has quite stable positions in the economy, but it is not capable of realizing its political will due to the concentration of power in the country in the hands of Hindus. There was a banal conflict between the emerging counter-elite and the current state elite - since all the key positions in the economy of Punjab were occupied by Hindus, Sikh youth, including those educated, and therefore possessing certain ambitions, had no other way than to leave the country, leaving in emigration, or take the path of radical political activity, relying on self-realization already in the sovereign Sikh Khalistan.

The apogee of the Sikh-Hindu confrontation in the 1980-ies. became the operation "Blue Star", which was an attack units of the Indian army and police on the "Golden Temple". Harmandir Sahib, as the Sikhs call it, was, according to legend, founded in 1577 year by Guru Ram Das, who dug Amritsar reservoir, which gave the name to the city of the same name of Punjab. The foundation stone of the temple was laid in 1588 by the Sufi Hazrat Miyan Mir, and the construction itself took a period from 1588 to 1604. Since 1604, the original Sikh sacred book Adi Granth has been kept in the temple.

In June 1984, the most important shrine of the Sikhs and the supporters of self-determination of the Sikh state on its territory were attacked by order of the country's leaders. The explanation of the attack was the fact that supporters of Khalistan’s independence strengthened in the Golden Temple, in effect turning the Sikh religious shrine into a political headquarters. Nevertheless, the cruelty of the operation impressed even people who did not feel much sympathy for Punjabi separatism. After all, the victims of the attacks of the Indian units was 492 man.

Jarnayla Singhu Bhindranval, whom the radical part of the Sikh community recognized as their guru, also died during the storming of the Golden Temple among other Sikh radicals. This overly harsh decision on the part of official Delhi caused a reciprocal wave of bloody terror on the part of Sikh radical organizations, which unfolded not only in the state of Punjab, but throughout the country. Sikh militants destroyed Hindus, blew up trains, attacked police stations and military units. The greatest fame around the world received the murder of Indira Gandhi.

Revenge for Amritsar

The legendary female prime minister was killed on October 31 1984 by her own bodyguards. Since Sikhs were considered to be the most reliable warriors since the colonial era, it was from them that the personal guards of the British governors were staffed. Indira Gandhi followed this tradition, without understanding the main point - the Sikhs respect their faith and their people to a slightly greater degree than the military oath.
On the morning of October 31, 1984, Indira had a scheduled interview with the British writer Peter Ustinov. On the way to the reception, through the courtyard of her residence, Indira greeted her with two Sikhs - bodyguards - Beant Singh and Satwant Singh. The answer was the revolver shots and machine gun fire. The escaped security officers shot and killed the assailants. Hurriedly brought to the hospital, Indira Gandhi, without regaining consciousness, died a few hours after the attempt.

Thus, the Sikh radicals carried out revenge for the attack on the “Golden Temple”, which demonstrated to the Indian leaders that a blow can be expected from anywhere - including from their own bodyguards. Seven years later, Indira’s son Rajiv Gandhi, who replaced his mother as prime minister of the country, was also killed by the separatists - only now Tamil.


Indira Gandhi Cremation


The murder of Indira, adored by the Hindus, only added fuel to the fire of Sikh-Hindu contradictions. Numerous new clashes between Sikhs and Hindus followed in all the states of India. The victims of anti-Sikh hysteria were at least ten thousand people. In response, the October 7 Sikhs officially announced the creation of the independent state of Khalistan. Naturally, the West played a significant role in the growth of separatist sentiments in this case, first of all through the Sikh diaspora, numerous in the United States of America and in Great Britain. In particular, Gurmit Singh Aulah, who permanently resides in the USA, was proclaimed president of Khalistan. On the other hand, support for the Sikh movement is provided by neighboring Pakistan. As if, the historical conflicts that led to the death of many Sikhs and the flight of millions of people in Pakistan’s Punjab to India were forgotten.

What awaits Indian Sikhs?

Naturally, the Indian government, the creation of Khalistan, did not recognize and launched an active struggle against the separatists. The economically successful state of Punjab turned into a territory of heightened activity of extremist groups, regularly subjected to police stripping and special operations involving army units. In one 1986 year alone, 3 450 terrorist acts were committed by Sikh radical organizations.

In parallel with the growth of armed resistance to the Indian authorities, a revival of the Sikh national identity took place. First, the radical movement for the independence of Khalistan involved more and more numerous layers of Sikh youth, dissatisfied with the lack of prospects and willing to avenge their own people for discrimination, without much understanding of the methods. Secondly, there was a surge of interest in the Sikh national culture, including among the urban Sikhs, who had previously been “Westernized” as successfully as the Indians. Accordingly, national culture and religion began to be perceived as something important, as a means of underlining their national identity, the opposition identity of the same Hindus or Muslims.

Is there any prospect of settling the Sikh issue in modern India? It is hardly possible to give a definite answer to this question. First of all, it is necessary to understand that Sikhs, unlike the same tribes of Northeast India, are an extremely influential and close-knit community. The economic position of the Sikh community is strong not only within India, but also at the global level. On the other hand, Sikhs make up a significant part of the Indian Army and special forces and police officers, which is also of great importance for assessing the prospects for fighting Sikh separatism. In the Indian army, the number of Sikh military personnel reaches 20% of the total number of personnel, that is, almost every fifth soldier is of Sikh origin, although in relation to the total population of the country, Sikhs constitute only 2%.

Finally, we should not forget about the role of foreign states in the “artificial stimulation” of numerous ethnic and religious conflicts in India. Sikh interests are lobbying Sikh communities in the United States and the United Kingdom, which are closely associated with local business circles. Revitalizing Sikh separatists is beneficial for neighboring Pakistan, because it weakens India’s military potential in the border areas of Jammu and Kashmir and helps to divert the attention of the country's leadership from the Kashmir problem.

At the same time, there are certain hopes for a political solution to the Sikh issue, which may consist, first of all, in creating such social conditions for the existence of the Sikh community that would help to weaken radical sentiments and deepen the integration of Sikhs in Indian society. The growth of autonomy without indulging the separatists, thus, can also give its positive results. And then bloody clashes and acts of terrorism will become history, and peace will reign in Indian soil.
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8 comments
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  1. +5
    18 June 2014 09: 17
    An interesting article, I read it with pleasure.
  2. +4
    18 June 2014 09: 31
    I am not a specialist in Hinduism, but it seems to me that in the rapidly growing population of India - and accordingly, increasing competition for everything in this country, such disputes are unlikely to suddenly be resolved in the direction of calming and reconciliation. The author himself points to the main reason - not the youth's ability to find themselves in the already occupied high society of their country. sad
  3. avt
    +3
    18 June 2014 09: 48
    “The Sikhs, who initially reacted rather negatively to British colonization, eventually fit into colonial society. It was from the Sikhs that the police units in the northwestern provinces of British India were largely formed. "--------- laughing Well, just like Krasnov with the Nazis with his "Cossack", or the current ykry - "hto do not jump that mockal". And what to do !? Great people, not everyone has knee-length panties and hair is not cut.
    1. +3
      18 June 2014 10: 40
      Quote: avt
      or current ykry

      And the flag is yellow-black.
      1. +3
        18 June 2014 10: 48
        Quote: anip
        Quote: avt
        or current ykry

        And the flag is yellow-black.

        No, these are from another continent.
        1. lars
          +3
          18 June 2014 11: 14
          Indeed, there are many parallels.
        2. +3
          18 June 2014 16: 36
          That's how they got them ...
  4. 0
    18 June 2014 12: 01
    Interesting and informative. India is a very peculiar country.
  5. alexpro66govno
    0
    19 June 2014 06: 38
    Khalistan fallow and independence under a yellow-black rag
  6. 0
    20 June 2014 10: 42
    They have no way out - either integration or degradation.
  7. Valentine77 64
    +1
    29 June 2014 11: 18
    This smoldering conflict will be inflated by Amer’s specialists to undermine the BRICS and prevent Russian gas from reaching India.

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