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Violent Sikh Separatism Is Repeating as Farce

How India became captivated by a hapless fugitive Sikh separatist.

By Anchal Vohra, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

Chief of a social organisation, Amritpal Singh along with devotees takes part in a Sikh initiation rite ceremony also known as Amrit Sanskar at Akal Takht Sahib in the Golden Temple in Amritsar on October 30, 2022.

April 4, 2023, 7:09 AM

A cat-and-mouse game has been playing out in the northwest Indian state of Punjab for the last two weeks. Thousands of police officers are trying to track down a Sikh separatist who has called for Sikh youth to directly challenge the Indian government. The separatist campaign has revived fears of a resurgence of the long-dead secessionist movement for Khalistan, an independent state for Sikhs.

The authorities still do not know where exactly 30-year-old Amritpal Singh might be. He has managed to evade security forces by constantly changing vehicles and appearances to conceal his identity as he zips through hamlets, towns, and states across northern India. CCTV footage shows that he has switched among traveling via a Mercedes SUV and a motorbike, among other vehicles; and between wearing turbans and masks and removing them. Rumors have placed him in Punjab, Delhi, and maybe even Nepal.

The surveillance camera footage, along with regular doses of information attributed to unnamed intelligence sources, has ended up with media networks, fueling the drama as the Indian press reports every twist and turn. The hunt has become a media frenzy, making Singh—otherwise a nobody who worked for his father’s transport company and drove a truck in Dubai until last year—the kind of national celebrity he probably never previously imagined.

The efforts to hunt him down have elicited protests in Western cities home to large Sikh populations. Khalistan supporters have smashed windows at the Indian consulate in San Francisco, pulled down the Indian flag from India High Commission in London, and protested in Canada, all in Singh’s name.

The Indian security forces are in a tizzy and Indian diplomats concerned over support Singh may be getting from abroad. But how has he become the most wanted man in India? Has he been groomed by a hostile nation or, as some suggest, created by domestic political forces to polarize the nation further? Does he have the clout to revive the Khalistan movement that has little to no support in Punjab? Or does his appeal merely reflect growing frustration of a group dealing with perennial problems—such as contraband drugs killing its youth—that no government seems able, or willing, to solve?

Singh returned last year from Dubai to India to support farmers’ protests against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agricultural reforms. He joined Waris Punjab De (“heirs of Punjab”), an organization formed to “fight for ‘the rights of Punjab.’” After the untimely, and some say mysterious, death of the group’s leader in a car crash, Singh took over.

In a few months since his return Singh became a different person, or at least looked like one. He donned attire reminiscent of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Indian militant central to the Khalistan movement who was killed in a counterinsurgency operation by the Indian government inside Amritsar city’s Golden Temple in 1984.

Thirty years later, Singh is emulating Bhindranwale. Previously a guy who dressed in T-shirts and had short hair, Singh grew a long beard; started to wear a big turban; and flamboyantly displayed a sword, or kirpan, that all Khalsa (Sikhs initiated into more orthodox forms of their religion) are required to carry on their person.

He surrounded himself with an entourage of armed Sikhs holding rifles and showing off bandoliers slung on their shoulders, in an image strikingly similar to how Bhindranwale styled himself. It was an eerie reminder of the decade-long bloody insurgency that ensued in Punjab after Bhindranwale’s death.

Like his idol, Singh has ritually initiated people into orthodox Sikhism, talked about social issues of the day, and provoked Sikhs to see themselves as separate from the rest of India, which is majority Hindu. Singh is feeding off the wave of Hindu nationalism in the country and has said that he is within his rights to ask for Khalistan if Hindu nationalists claim India as a Hindu Rashtra, or nation.

“Young Sikh boys are captivated when [Singh] speaks about [Sikhism] and stories of Sikh bravery,” Sonal Matharu, a journalist with the Indian online news platform ThePrint who met Singh in October 2022, told Foreign Policy from Chandigarh, Punjab’s capital. “A man in a village I visited said Amritpal is only trying to help kids fight drug addiction.”

Singh has found some appeal among people by hitching himself to the biggest social issue in Punjab. Over 3 million people, more than 15 , consume drugs that come from Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. Stories of lost lives and destroyed families are common in a state that is otherwise among the more prosperous in the nation. Every political party that has come to power in Punjab has promised to get rid of the drug menace; no party, however, has delivered. A corrupt network among drug smugglers, politicians, and policemen, as well as a lack of coordination between the central government’s forces on the border and the state police, has meant Punjab is flooded with a range of dangerous intoxicants.

Singh has offered a Faustian bargain to a despondent people. While addressing a gathering in October 2022, he said that the path to addiction recovery was through orthodox Sikhism; in return, however, the mothers of those recovered drug addicts should be ready to sacrifice their sons for the Sikh community.

The people of Punjab are interested in resolving the drug crisis but not in dying for Singh’s cause. There is no evidence he has the support required to start or run a militant organization. Local police have already accused him of roping drug addicts treated in his rehabilitation centre into a private militia called Anandpur Khalsa Fauj (AKF). The militia’s acronym is marked on the gate of Singh’s home in Punjab. But evidence to support the claim that there is a well-functioning militia is scant.

Singh’s speeches give a sense of his ambition but not any evidence of the existence of resources needed to achieve them. He does not seem to have the know-how to free young people from drug addiction, much less take on corrupt drug networks. Equally, there is no proof he has the necessary funding or support—from inside or outside Punjab—to build a militant organization.

Several Indians experts have dismissed fears of the revival of Khalistan movement. Singh, they believe, is just a charlatan.

Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management’s South Asia Terrorism Portal, is seen as an absolute authority on Sikh separatism. He has unequivocally dismissed the fears of a revival of the Khalistan movement and described Singh as a comic-version of Bhindranwale. The fear of the revival, “is far out of proportion with the realities of the ground,” he wrote in a recent op-ed, “as, indeed, is the inflated image of Amritpal Singh in the media and political discourse.”

There are several theories swirling around in Punjab about whether Singh appeared on the scene of his own accord or because someone propped him up. Shashi Kant, a Punjab cadre Indian Police Service officer who has worked with several investigating agencies in India, told Foreign Policy that Singh came across as far too rehearsed and well prepared to be a lone wolf. He said Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) may be trying to foment trouble.

“Somebody abroad indoctrinated him,” Kant said. “[The Indian] diaspora doesn’t have the capability to plan in such detail—identifying the right social issues, the right strategy. This can only be done by an intelligence agency and only one comes to mind. … Of course, the ISI; they aided Khalistanis in the ‘80s too.”

But that is speculation. Officially, the police have only said that they are investigating Pakistan’s involvement and whether Singh has received any foreign funds.

Others suggest the focus on Singh is a ploy by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to show the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Punjab state government as inefficient, and ultimately allow BJP to declare central rule in the guise of protecting national interest.

“[AAP sympathizers] argue that Amritpal Singh has been propped up by elements in the Indian government itself,” Indian journalist Vir Sanghvi wrote in his column. “When you point out that this seems absurdly far-fetched, the response is: Isn’t this exactly what the Congress did with Bhindranwale?” Indian National Congress, colloquially the Congress, was widely accused of aiding Bhindranwale in the 1980s to weaken the local opposition party.

Sahni argued that the Indian media and state intelligence agencies’ selective leaks had built up Singh; he sees “domestic mischief” rather than foreign interference at play in Punjab, he wrote in a New Indian Express article. “The principal threat in Punjab is intentional partisan political destabilisation, the politics of communal polarisation, and strident media distortions, all of which incline to exaggerated threat perceptions,” Sahni wrote.

Experts believe it is impossible for Singh to get any local support for a nefarious anti-India agenda. There are, however, mounting concerns that the talk of secessionism and Sikhs in one breath might subconsciously create mistrust between Sikhs and Hindus.

The 1984 operation to extract Bhindranwale from the Golden Temple, the most spiritually significant temple in Sikhism, was approved by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She was assassinated later that year by her Sikh bodyguards. Her killing led to the massacre of thousands of Sikhs by their Hindu compatriots. That played a part in the long and bloody Khalistan movement.

History has shown that events can very quickly spiral out of control in Punjab. As long as Singh has yet to be apprehended, he will continue to be a media sensation. Experts warn that giving him further attention will only aggrandise his stature.