Khalistan movement

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The Khalistan movement is a separatist movement seeking to create a homeland for Sikhs by establishing an ethnoreligious sovereign state called Khalistan (lit. 'land of the Khalsa') 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. 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". In the 1940s, a demand for a Sikh country called "Sikhistan" arose. With financial and political support from 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...

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