The Khalistan movement is a separatist movement seeking to create a homeland for Sikhs by establishing an ethno‐religious sovereign state called Khalistan () in the Punjab region. The proposed boundaries of Khalistan vary between different groups; some suggest the entirety of the Sikh-majority Indian state of Punjab, while larger claims include Pakistani Punjab and other parts of North India such as Chandigarh, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh. Shimla and Lahore have been proposed as the capital of Khalistan.
The call for a separate Sikh state began during the 1930s, when British rule in India was nearing its end. In 1940, the first explicit call for Khalistan was made in a pamphlet titled "Khalistan". With financial and political support of the Sikh diaspora, the movement flourished in the Indian state of Punjab – which has a Sikh-majority population – continuing through the 1970s and 1980s, and reaching its zenith in the late 1980s. The Sikh separatist leader Jagjit Singh Chohan claimed that during his talks with Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto following the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Bhutto had proposed "all out help" to the Khalistan cause, but this support never materialised. With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the insurgency petered out, and the movement failed to reach its objective for multiple reasons including heavy police crackdowns on separatists, factional infighting, and disillusionment from the Sikh population.
There is some support within India and the Sikh diaspora, with yearly demonstrations in protest of those killed during Operation Blue Star. In early 2018, some militant groups were arrested by police in Punjab, India. Former Chief Minister of Punjab Amarinder Singh claimed that the recent extremism is backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and "Khalistani sympathisers" in Canada, Italy, and the UK. Simranjit Singh Mann, elected in 2022 from Sangrur, is currently the only openly Khalistani MP in the Indian parliament and his party, Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), is currently the only pro-Khalistan party in the Indian parliament.
Pre-1950s
Sikhs have been concentrated in the Punjab region of South Asia. Before its conquest by the British, the region around Punjab had been ruled by the confederacy of Sikh Misls. The Misls ruled over the eastern Punjab from 1733 to 1799, until their confederacy was unified into the Sikh Empire by Maharajah Ranjit Singh from 1799 to 1849.
At the end of the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849, the Sikh Empire was dissolved into separate princely states and the British province of Punjab. In newly conquered regions, "religio-nationalist movements emerged in response to British divide and rule administrative policies, the perceived success of Christian missionaries converting Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, and a general belief that the solution to the downfall among India's religious communities was a grassroots religious revival."
As the British Empire began to dissolve in the 1930s, Sikhs made their first call for a Sikh homeland. When the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League demanded Punjab be made into a Muslim state, the Akalis viewed it as an attempt to usurp a historically Sikh territory. In response, the Sikh party Shiromani Akali Dal argued for a community that was separate from Hindus and Muslims. The Akali Dal imagined Khalistan as a theocratic state led by the Maharaja of Patiala with the aid of a cabinet consisting of the representatives of other units. The country would include parts of present-day Punjab, India, present-day Punjab, Pakistan (including Lahore), and the Simla Hill States.
Partition of India, 1947
Before the 1947 partition of India, Sikhs were not in majority in any of the districts of pre-partition British Punjab Province other than Ludhiana (where Sikhs formed 41.6% of the population). Rather, districts in the region had a majority of either the Hindus or Muslims depending on its location in the province.
British India was partitioned on a religious basis in 1947, where the Punjab province was divided between India and the newly-created Pakistan. As result, a majority of Sikhs, along with the Hindus, migrated from the Pakistani region to India's Punjab, which included present-day Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The Sikh population, which had gone as high as 19.8% in some Pakistani districts in 1941, dropped to 0.1% in Pakistan, and rose sharply in the districts assigned to India. However, they would still be a minority in the Punjab province of India, which remained a Hindu-majority province.
Sikh relationship with Punjab (via Oberoi)