Sikh Political Failure 1984-2026
Keywords:
Khalistan, Khalastan, Sikh, 1947, ghallughara, genocide, Punjab, referendum, separatists, Khalsa raj, Maharaja Ranjeet SinghAbstract
Sikhs have a history of Statehood. Sikhs established their Kingdoms twice: 1710-1715 and 1799-1849. They could not achieve Political Sovereignty at Crossroads of History in 1947 and were condemned to exist as fourth class (lowest class) citizens in a ‘caste’ driven third world country. They launched a movement for equal rights in 1984. Sikhs suffered Sikh Ghallughara (the Sustained Sikh genocide 1984-98) in which 1 million Sikhs were killed by Indian government (American Sikh Council, 2015). Indian “police under the direction of the Director General of Police K.P.S. Gill, were eliminating all young, aware Sikhs” (Pettigrew, 1995). Indian military attacked Sikh’s holiest shrine the Darbar Sahib in 1984. Sikhs today have a movement for Sikh Sovereignty for their own Sovereign State Khalastan. Will the Sikh movement for Political Sovereignty succeed? The future is hard to predict. Sikh Leadership gets the blame for Sikh Political Failures. This paper takes a deeper look at root causes of Sikh Political Failures. We argue it is not leadership that is the root cause. Lack of wise and politically savvy leadership is one of the symptoms. This paper claims that most of Sikh’s problems are due to their own fault, but they blame others for it. This paper is important as Sikh’s movements for greater political relevance and participation keep failing. There are real consequences of this in terms of lives lost and money wasted. But there has been no serious in-depth analysis of Sikh Political Failures. This is a Historical and Analytical Study of Institutional absence, Strategic Missteps, and the Crisis of Modern Sikh Politics. The author has tried to be objective and politically neutral in a potentially emotionally charged discourse on political failures.
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