The Blue Danube Coffee House in San Francisco, California is quite close to the Indian consulate, which has been attacked twice by Khalistan supporters this year. In mid-July, I met a few Sikhs in this coffee house who live in the Bay area.
During our conversation, I was told in a dozen different ways: “Khalistan ke liye hamara koi andolan nahi chal raha. Khalistan ek hawa hai. Kuch aur gal karo. (There is no movement going on for Khalistan. Khalistan is an illusion. Talk about something else.)”
Boota Singh Basi, who runs many media platforms, including Punjabi newspaper Sanjhi Soch, met me over coffee. He was more interested in meeting powerful politicians in New Delhi than talking about Khalistan.
“Khalistan yahan nahi, sirf India ki media mein hai (Khalistan is non-existent in America, it exists only in Indian media),” he said. Basi emphatically claims that not even 2 per cent American Sikhs are sympathisers of Khalistan in the West coast of US.
“The Sikhs and India are inseparable. The matter ends there (baat khatam)!” he said.
Also read: Pro-Khalistan groups stage protest at India House in London
Silence of the majority
My conversations with Sikhs in and around San Francisco took place just a month after the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on 18 June 2023. He was the chief of the banned Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) and one of the most wanted terrorists in India.
At the time, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had not decided to blow up the issue, as he did later on the floor of Parliament, turning the event into a diplomatic weapon.
Nijjar was shot dead by two unidentified gunmen outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, in Canada. But in the Bay area region in the US—which includes San Francisco and Silicon Valley—where more than half a lakh Sikhs reside, the killing had no resonance at all.
I met Satnam Khalsa, who runs Sade Lok, Khalsa Affairs, and radio channel Galbaat in the Bay area. Here, I had conversations with a few insiders of the Sikh community to understand how gurdwara politics is exploiting the Khalistan sentiment.
Khalsa is blacklisted by the Indian government, which has prevented him from traveling to India since 2015 due to his alleged “support” for Khalistani causes. He claims, “hum unke news run karte the, blacklist main daal diya (We publish news reports about pro-Khalistanis and we were blacklisted).” He said he is wrongly trapped in the game.
The fanatic groups that publicly support the idea of Khalistan give highly paid advertisements with provocative details against Prime minister Narendra Modi and the Indian establishment. Many local Punjabi newspapers and sites in San Francisco carry these advertisements. Separatists want people to believe that a silent majority of the Sikh community supports the Khalistan movement.
However, Sikh leaders refute this claim, saying “silence of majority” is construed by the secessionists like Sikhs for Justice chief Gurpatwant Singh Pannun as support to the movement. This has allowed them to take the centre stage in discourses within the community. Pannun’s trial balloon of conducting referendum for Khalistan is a failure.
Basi and Khalsa both agree that Khalistan or no Khalistan, the new generation of American Sikhs will never go back to India. “The vested interests against India and the global powers will not allow idea of Khalistan to die down. The funding and tacit support for it will continue,” a third-generation American Sikh told me.
Also read: India and Australia can’t go the Canada way over pro-Khalistan activities
1984 and Sikh sentiments
Most Sikhs agree that discussions about Khalistan and the reaffirmation of Sikh Punjabi identity are revived every Baisakhi and on the anniversary of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
On those days, inside the local gurdwaras, people are reminded about the “massacre of 5,000 Sikhs in New Delhi,” who haven’t received justice through the Indian judiciary system.
The term ‘Khalistan’ has become a money spinner because American Sikhs, many of whom are multi-billionaires, generously donate to gurdwaras for the “cause of justice.”
“$10,000 is a petty amount for many leaders attached to gurdwaras,” Basi said.
Sikhs who are settled here since two or three generations are so cash-rich that they buy peace within the community circles by giving funds to the extremists.
In the Bay area, I also visited Fremont Gurdwara, supposedly ran by “moderate” Sikhs. Community insiders suggest that some American Sikhs who support Pannun also exert influence over Stockton Gurdwara. But in San Jose, Pannun’s base has shrunk considerably.
In Stockton, where the first gurdwara in the US was built in 1912, deep-rooted connections exist between the Sikh community and the local society. Sikhs families living in California have cultivated a small but significant sub-culture.
It’s well-known in the Bay area that American Sikh families hold a dominant position in the cultivation of walnuts, almonds, raisins, okra, kiwi and pistachios. They control markers and are giving European markets a run for their money. The life stories and financial power of individuals like Gurnam Pamma, Didar Bains, Surjit, Ranjit, Pritam and Amarjit Tut, Charanjit Batth, Harbhajan Samra, Raj Singh Kahlon and Jasbir Kullar are the stuff of wildly popular legends.
In California, not many Sikh families are interested in talking about the Khalistan issue as they struggle at multiple fronts, living a competitive life in the US.
However, everyone wants to know about the latest update in the US migration policy, legal and illegal ways of migration, Mexico’s real-time border situation, and ways of getting cheap labour for Californian farms.
Basi said that Pannun, who has been grabbing eyeballs on Indian television, hasn’t been able to enter the Bay area for the past 18 months. He doesn’t have a large support base here.
The Sikh farmer living in Fremont, who knows Pannun personally, even claimed that, “Kunwara bichara bhagta firta hai. Pagadi nahin, patka pehenta hai. (Poor bachelor can’t even settle at one place. He doesn’t wear a Sikh turban but wraps a cloth around his head).”
In the US, more than two-three dozen Sikh outfits are well-connected to various countrys’ security agencies and undercover agents. Indian intelligence agencies have kept their database.
These outfits are aware what the United States Commission on International Religious freedom (USCIRF) is all about. At the global level, many Sikhs have used asylum route to settle in western countries.
But if the Khalistan secessionist movement doesn’t exist in reality, then what is the international buzz all about?
“It is about the Punjabi Sikh sentiment and its strong identity issue that’s exploited in international diplomacy against India under the garb of non-existent Khalistan movement. Since Indian media covers Khalistan issue with shock and awe effect, this issue is a handy diplomatic tool to embarrass the Indian establishment,” a Sikh living in San Francisco said.
Also read: Punjab’s Sikhs have 99 problems but Khalistan ain’t one. They’re very proud Indians, but angry
Support of host nations
The separatists during informal conversations with Indian spies have expressed confidence that they won’t be arrested outside India.
In the US, Sikh radicals know that the American police doesn’t take strong action against pro-Khalistan activism. Whenever Indian sleuths wants to visit certain places of attacks, the local police’s response is cold.
The fact that this so-called Khalistani movement in the UK, Canada, and the US is used against India’s interest becomes evident every time Indian embassies want the local governments to take police action. They have been found lethargic or absent.
In many informal conversations with Indian sleuths and diplomats the leaders of SFJ and many other sundry outfits’ members have spoken about their “reach” to undercover agents and operators in Canada, Australia, Pakistan, the US, and UK.
Lately, a few Khalistani secessionist leaders’ involvement in drugs trade has made them vulnerable, which has weakened their credibility.
If compared to other political or geo-strategic issues that have diplomatic use, Khalistan is a low-cost investment for foreign countries’ “state departments” to use against India.
For many years now, separatists like Pannun have been providing well-oiled legal machinery outside India to the Sikh youth who wants to escape police case in India or is facing drugs-related issue or wants to migrate for good.
Currently, no militancy, no civilian secessionist movement is active in Punjab or elsewhere in India, and no armed group openly talks about Khalistan. But the sentiments of injustice against the “Hindu establishment” is kept alive by these international operators with covert support of their host country. In Fremont Gurdwara’s large hall, there are photos of legally convicted Sikh prisoners in India with the appeal to release them.
Gurdwara politics
A local resident in San Francisco told me that because Pannun was portrayed as larger-than-life by the Indian media, Dr Pritpal Singh and many other Sikh leaders who were challenging him and his politics in gurdwaras were slighted.
Gurdwaras in the Bay area are so powerful and cash-rich that control over it has become a prestige issue. Invariably, during the election of gurdwara management committees, one panel turns “pro-Khalistan” to garner votes by provoking religious sentiments.
It’s a short cut to win election. Posters of former Congress MP Jagdish Tytler, an accused in 1984 riots, come up overnight. Photographs and video speeches before the riots are re-circulated. These days “India will be a Hindu rashtra” has become an election theme with monologue videos of Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, a self-styled godman in Madhya Pradesh.
The panel members on the other side have to counter by saying “Khalistan kuch nahi banana hai, hamare opponents ko sirf paisa banana hai. Ye fraud bandh karo.(No one wants Khalistan. Our opponents just want to make money. Stop this fraud.)
Every single voter in the gurdwara election is aware that there is no movement for Khalistan and the young Americanised generation isn’t even aware of the map of Punjab. The word Khalistan is a metaphor to exploit, raise funds, and keep the show going.
It’s a name of hurt that can be poked as and when polarisation of the Sikh votes is needed at election time in gurdwaras.
Sheela Bhatt is a Delhi-based senior journalist. She tweets @sheela2010. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)