What makes India fear Sikh self‑determination abroad? The question has grown sharper since the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, an incident that Canadian authorities have directly linked to Indian agents. Instead of opening space for dialogue with a diaspora that continues to grapple with historic wounds, India has extended the methods of its internal security state into foreign territories. This is not simply a reaction to a single activist; it is rooted in decades of unresolved trauma and mistrust between the Indian state and its Sikh community.
The history matters. In the early 1980s, Sikh demands for greater autonomy in Punjab were met with violent suppression. The 1984 Operation Blue Star, in which Indian forces stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out armed separatists, resulted in heavy civilian casualties and deep scars in the Sikh psyche. Months later, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, which triggered a wave of pogroms across India. Thousands of Sikhs were killed in targeted mobs while state institutions largely stood by. These events turned an internal debate about federalism and identity into a full‑blown insurgency in Punjab, where thousands were killed over the next decade in encounters, disappearances, and counter‑insurgency operations often carried out with impunity. Even after the insurgency was crushed by the mid‑1990s, trust between Sikhs and the Indian state never fully healed.
Sikhs brought this unresolved history into their diaspora. There has been some survival of the memory of those years and in some quarters the vision of Khalistan, a sovereign Sikh nation, in the vibrant Sikh communities in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. To a large extent, these movements have been peaceful, eliminating the use of arms militancy in organising referendums and rallies. However, the Indian state has maintained labeling them as extremists. A Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, was in the forefront of promoting such symbolic referendums. He had no record of being in violent activities, and no international organization declared him a terrorist. Nevertheless, he was targeted.
On September 1, 2023 Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shocked the world telling Parliament that there were very good allegations that the murder of Nijjar was at the hands of Indian government agents. One of the senior Indian diplomats had been expelled by Ottawa, and intelligence partners started exchanging notes. This was later followed by reports that the U.S law enforcement had intercepted a different attempt to murder another Sikh activist said to have been planned by Indian operatives. There was a very worrying trend to these events, which is that India was ready to apply its own coercive apparatus into states where Sikhs had sought asylum and citizenship.
While India projects these actions as necessary to counter separatism, they violate international law and the sovereignty of other states. A democracy does not justify assassination abroad under the guise of security. If India truly believed Nijjar posed a threat, it could have pursued legal channels, extradition requests, or transparent evidence-sharing. By choosing a shadowy approach, it undermined its own claims of adherence to democratic norms.
This is contrasting as compared to the approach by Pakistan concerning the world Sikh heritage and identity. Pakistan opened the Kartarpur Corridor in 2019 and since then Sikh pilgrims have been able to travel to their holy Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in India and abroad without visa restrictions. This action was not forced and was not done out of violence rather out of goodwill voluntarily, which touched the chords of the Sikhs across the world. The families who were drifted apart during decades were reunited, and there were a lot of pilgrims who openly expressed their gratitude to Pakistan because it did not distort their history and religion. Islamabad presented the Sikh aspirations as a potential engagement and an exercise of soft power instead of perceiving it as a menace.
The parallel is amazing. Pakistan, a much maligned country of the Indian rhetoric provided a corridor of peace and religious freedom. India, a country that likes to boast of its democratic credentials, has shipped abroad a policy of intimidation, subjugation and widened its divide with a community that has long been yearning to be heard and respected. Problems such as murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar is not just exception cases or tragedy but a clear indication of state that is not able to come to terms with its past. The ghost of 1984 continues to hang heavily around and until India is honest about 1984, this side armed approach on an already underground as well as overseas Sikh movement is only carrying it further to underworld and even further out of the country.
The Sikh movement in the world is not fading away. It is not on the defensive line, instead, it is operating smarter and acquiring power through transnational networks and legal immunity in nations that prioritize free speech. By still reacting in covert operations, India can lose many allies and even repeat past mistakes. However, Kartarpur initiative by Pakistan indicates that opening up is far more persuasive and constructive than cracking down. The option before New Delhi is straight forward, face history and open a dialogue or be condemned to a future of fear and isolation on the international front as directed by the ghosts of the past.
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