We’ve just had a bunch of Khalistan independence protests in Canada following the killing of one of their major figures. The Canadian government seems to be tacitly allowing them and more or less shying away from or ignoring the topic, and most of the Western media seems to say it’s a fringe extremist group. From what I read they’re basically an ethnostate/theocracy type of movement and not any sort of leftist and are by no means popular with the broader Sikh or Punjabi communites, but I’m not a Sikh nor a South Asian so I don’t have any personal perspective on it.
Interestingly I’ve not seen it mentioned in socialist/communist circles and really don’t want my only source of information to be Western mainstream news, so anyone more knowledgeable on the subject able to weigh in and point me to some reading material from a socialist view? Especially interested in thoughts from Sikh or South Asian socialists.
the reality is support for Khalistan within Punjab is quite low now. India’s recent complaints about Canada sheltering ‘Khalistanis’ even before Trudeau publicly talked about the Indian state involvement was very sus.
The Khalistani movement isn’t a left wing movement either, not even something like LTTE. If anything they are affiliated more with the right-wing Sikhs.
I do not believe an independent Khalistan is a good idea either for Punjab or India especially considering that Punjab’s economy isn’t doing so well and separating from India will only make it worse. It could also result in rest of India balkanizing which again will be a disaster.