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Although he claims to lead a movement for “human rights,” Pannun has unblushingly sided with China in its border dispute with India and recently wrote to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, swearing that, “if India ever attacked Pakistan, the Pro-Khalistan Sikhs will extend full support to Pakistan.”
The prime minister was surely touched. But, in truth, the Khalistan movement would be of very little use in a conflict, given the lack of support it commands even in Punjab — the only Indian state with a Sikh majority. There are good reasons for this.
According to an official count by the Punjab Police, the 12 years of Sikh insurgency ending in 1993 were scarred by hijackings, stabbings, shootings and bombings which took a staggering 21,469 lives — and most of the victims, whether civilian, police or separatist fighters, were Sikh. Fourteen hundred Punjab policemen were murdered, along with many of their family members. Farmers, judges, teachers, journalists, bankers who lent to the wrong people, and delivery men who brought the wrong newspapers were all butchered.
Much of the violence was driven by groups of puritanical Sikh fundamentalists who demanded strict religious observance and killed, with equal zeal, both Hindus and Sikhs deemed insufficiently devout. When a schoolteacher failed to ensure that her students wore proper religious dress, she was shot dead. When the Babbar Khalsa decreed that family planning was forbidden for Sikhs, seven doctors who defied the order were all murdered.