Khalistan Was Nehru's Reply To Jinnah's Pakistan

The issue of Khalistan is rather a non-issue for a majority of Sikhs. Instead of giving it undue weightage, the leaders would do well to focus on the genuine and constitutional demands of the community.

- Harcharan Bains

The first task one needs to undertake to solve any problem is to understand it. On Punjab, where we needlessly continue to insist on turning an asset into a liability, understanding has been the greatest casualty. Therefore, before we get prescriptive on the subject, let’s first get the diagnosis right. Let us, in other words, get our facts in place.

The Sikhs constitute below 2 per cent of the population of the country. They have a long tradition of being fiercely patriotic. But every now and then, when a nondescript Sikh declares himself a radical, the whole of our national media splashes it as ‘Breaking News’ or a headline as if the entire Sikh community had spoken through that self-styled spokesperson. It doesn’t matter that the self-proclaimed spokesperson generally has not won a formal mandate to represent a state legislative constituency or even a village Panchayat in Punjab. And there are at any given time more than two scores of such “sole spokespersons” of the Sikh community none of whom has ever won an election in Punjab — neither for a legislative nor for a religious role among the Sikhs.

This guy called Jaspal Atwal who was at the heart of the controversy surrounding the recent trip of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one such “sole spokesperson” of the Sikhs. Quite embarrassing for the media that Atwal has since declared himself against all forms of violence, separatism, pledging himself to the unity and integrity of his country. “India is my country,” he declared the other day for emphasis.