Sikhs in California vote for independence from India

Sikhs hold a rally in Sacramento, California ahead of the independence referendum on March 31.

Sandhya Dirks/NPR

It’s a busy Saturday at Sacramento Gurdwara Bradshaw, on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by fields and malls. In front of the shiny new white temple, a crowd of people are dressed in their finest for a wedding. The sounds of worship are broadcast into the morning air through loudspeakers.

You walk around the back of the domed building and encounter something else, a sea of ​​bright yellow flags emblazoned with bold blue letters that spell out one word: Khalistan.

Khalistan does not exist on any map, but it is an imagined homeland for some Sikhs who dream of their own nation separate from India. Demands for an independent state have become more urgent among Sikhs following last year’s attempted assassination of a Sikh activist on US soil. The Department of Justice charged an Indian national in the plot.

The Sikhs are an ethno-religious group originating from what is now the Indian state of Punjab. There are an estimated half a million Sikhs in America, many of them based in California.

A long line of truck cabs and cars winds through the Gurdwara parking lot – trucks because Sikhs make up a growing percentage of America’s truckers. This caravan is preparing to hit the streets of Sacramento and its sprawling suburbs – a get-out-the-vote rally on wheels ahead of Sunday’s referendum.

The question on the ballot: Should there be an independent Khalistan?

After stops in Europe and Canada, the non-binding Khalistan referendum is underway in the US. The first vote took place in San Francisco at the end of January. Organizers say it was so popular they scheduled a second vote for late March.

“We Will Be No More”

The struggle for Khalistan has a long history, but the roots of this referendum can be traced back to events that took place 40 years ago, says Irbanjit Sahota, who helped organize the rally.

“We want to let the world know that this happened to us in India, that there was a Sikh genocide in November 1984.”

In the early 1980s, some Sikh separatists were violent in their demands for Khalistan. In 1984, in response to the growing unrest, the Indian Army took over the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest of Sikh sites, along with other Gurdwaras. A few months later, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.

What followed was more horrific bloodshed – angry mobs drove people from their homes, temples were burned to the ground, Sikhs disappeared.

“We will never get justice from India,” says Sahota. “I don’t know that there’s much the world can do to do us justice.”

In 2005, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh formally apologized for the anti-Sikh violence. For some Sikhs, this was not enough. They wanted what happened in 1984 to be recognized as genocide. Sahota says they also wanted something else.

“I feel our only way forward is to make Punjab an independent state where we can practice our religion, preserve our culture, preserve our history.”

Sahota says that although the violence took place decades ago, India’s current government – ​​the Hindu nationalist BJP, led by Narendra Modi – targets religious and cultural minorities, including Sikhs. At the rally, a truck towed a U-Haul trailer with a huge sign: “Modi: Face of Hindu Terror.”

“It just makes it worse,” Sahota says. “Now we have no more room. We used to feel that we were not just equal citizens. But now we feel that we either have to do something or we won’t be.”

“Sikhs are happy in India”

Not all American Sikhs see the Modi government’s Hindu nationalist agenda as dangerous for Sikhs.

“To say it’s a systematic program, some kind of anti-Sikh program these days, it doesn’t exist,” says Jasdip Singh, leader of Sikhs for America. “What we’re doing,” he says of his group, “is highlighting the contributions of the Sikh community in the U.S. and trying to integrate the community into mainstream America.”

Singh was also a founding member of the group Sikhs for Trump.

He says the situation for Sikhs has improved significantly since the violence of the 80s and 90s. “Sikhs have problems in India like any other community, but they have a legal framework, they have a constitution, they have a justice system in India,” he says . “Sikhs in India are happy.”

For Sikhs living outside India, he says, “who are a very, very small percentage of the Sikh population who are starting to demand a separate homeland, I mean, I don’t understand it.”

He noted that the referendum has no legal status – it is not binding. Even if millions of Sikhs vote for Khalistan, nothing will happen because it is a purely symbolic exercise.

“As immigrants, when we come here, we come here to contribute to this country — positive things,” he says. “If we want to protest for Khalistan, we should go to India, Punjab and start protesting. Why are we using the soil of this country to bring issues that are not relevant to America?”

But the US government began to take notice of the Indian government’s treatment of religious and ethnic minority groups.

In December, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom asked the US State Department to list India as a “country of particular concern” due to “systematic, continuing and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief”.

This month, the Tom Lantos Commission on Human Rights heard testimony from experts and activists about the threat to minority communities from the Indian government.

Transnational repression

There are three moments in recent history that are changing and shaping American Sikh identity, according to Harman Singh with the Sikh Coalition. The civil rights advocacy group was formed as a result of the initial moment, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

The first motivated killing after 9/11 was the killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man from Mesa, Arizona, by a white man who wanted to “kill a Muslim.”

About a decade later, in 2012, a white supremacist walked into a Gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and opened fire, in the deadliest hate crime at an American place of worship since.

Both tragedies brought Sikh Americans together.

But the third moment, the one we’re in now, Singh says, reveals a very different threat.

Last winter, the FBI unsealed an indictment accusing an Indian government employee of orchestrating a hit-and-run assassination attempt on a Sikh separatist activist in New York City. The agency labeled the incident as an example of transnational repression — oppression or interference by foreign governments on citizens or former citizens abroad.

“This is a major turning point within the Sikh community,” says Singh.

“There are significant issues with the safety of Sikhs in the United States, but also targeted harassment, India’s intimidation attempts to silence dissent here,” he says.

Singh and the Sikh Coalition are not involved in the Khalistan referendum, but Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the man targeted for assassination in New York is. Pannun is the leader of Sikhs for Justice, which is organizing the referendum campaign. The Indian government labeled him a terrorist and banned him and Sikhs from justice in India.

The revelations of the plot to kill Pannun followed the killing of another Sikh activist in British Columbia. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of being behind his death. The Indian government has denied any involvement and says that in the US case their employee acted alone.

The ballot, not the bullet

While the killing in Canada and the attempted assassination in New York drew attention, transnational repression is not new to many in the Sikh community, says Harman Singh. “People who support this idea of ​​Khalistan, an independent Sikh state, have been very vulnerable to transnational repression for several decades.”

Sikhs who advocate for Khalistan or vote in the referendum are not terrorists, he claims. “What India has done is to criminalize the right to self-determination,” he says.

At Gurdwara Bradshaw Sacramento, trucks prepare to hit the road, horns blare and music blares from the speakers.

Avtar Singh Pannu, coordinator of Sikhs for Justice, helps fire up the crowd. He says the referendum is a chance to tell their story and vote for freedom. After California, the next stop is New York.

Asked if he is afraid of being targeted or killed, Pannu says no, because “everyone will die one day.” But, he says, everyone should also have the right to self-determination.

“We believe that the vote,” he says. “We don’t believe the bullet, and that’s how we support this.”