INDS 386: The Movement of Khalistan: History, Politics, Culture
The Movement of Khalistan has been the biggest uprising among the Sikhs during the twentieth century. It started as a democratic agitation and transformed into an armed insurrection. The post-Partition Sikh uprising emerged as a dismissal of six decades of modernist, Marxist, and secular-nationalist discursive processes that legitimized Indian Nationalism and denied a religious community such as the Sikhs any space in the intellectual, political, and public spheres. The movement surfaced despite the unusual marginalization the Sikhs experienced in the post-Partition Punjab. The movement emerged as a revival of religious living among the Sikhs and its magnitude exposed the limits of discursive processes. Nonetheless, as the movement progressed and reached its climax, the discursive processes showed their strength and significantly contributed to the decline of the movement.
The course will offer an account of the historical developments during the Khalistan movement. Furthermore, this course will be an attempt to get inside the historical process, i.e., what do the important historical events and developments signify.
The course will be taught in English language.
- How did the Khalistan movement begin?
- If the idea to attain sovereignty has always been in the Sikh consciousness, why did the movement of Khalistan emerge during the 1980s?
- Who were the main actors?
- Punjab went through a half-a-century-long process of secularization. How did religious identity of the Sikhs surface during the 1970s?
- The return of religion among the Sikhs coincided with the postmodern turn in the West. Prior to 1970s, we do not see a significant discursive link between the Sikh intellectual circles and postmodernist circles in the West. What could be the experiential similarities between the Sikhs and postmodernism?
- How did a democratic movement transform into an armed insurrection?
- What made the Sikh youth so inclined to join the movement?
- What were the major turning points in the movement?
- What kind of organizational networks the movement had and how did they evolve?
- What kind of role did the discursive processes play?
- What was nature of the Indian State’s law-making and policy-making concerning the Sikhs and Punjab?
- What was the role of the communal forces in India?
- What was the nature of the State violence?
1. Religion and the making of the secular public space (1947-78)
Constituent Assembly
Punjabi Suba
Sikh Homeland
Anandpur Sahib resolution
The Emergency
The Nirankari Violence
2. Violence and Religion vs. Time and Language
Discursive to physical violence
Bhajan Lal and the Anti-Sikh Communal Violence in Haryana
Anti-Sikh Violence in Punjab
The Time of the Empire vs. the Language of the Marginalized
3. Religion, Democracy, and Mass Mobilization
Kapuri Morcha
Dharam Yudh Morcha
Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale
4. Democracy and its Limits: The Sikh Armed Resistance
Damdami Taksal
Sikh Students Federation
Babbar Khalsa
5. 1984: The Indian Army Invasion
Attack on the Sikh Gurdwaras
Operation Woodrose
6. The (In)security State
Indira Gandhi’s Assassination
The November Genocide
The Election Mandate
7. Memory, Trauma, and Violence
Deciphering the Wound
Reliving the Past Traumas
Deathlessness and the religious Living
Babbar Khalsa
8. The Sikhs and the Question of Sovereignty
Geography
Language
Territory
Space
9. Reliving the 18th Century Sikh Resistance
Spirituality of the Dream
Death, Destruction, and the Making of a Culture
The Will to Die
Spirit, Body, and the Dismissal of Power
10. Violence and the Urban Space
Urban Space and the Peasant Other
Trouble in the Castle
State within the State
11. Law Making, Policy Making, and the Democratic Mandate(s)
12. The Discursive Violence
13. The Sikhs and the Geopolitical Formations
spring 2025
Start Date: 16 July 2025
Time: Wednesday 5 PM - 8 PM PST
Lecturer: Prabhsharandeep Singh
Prabhsharandeep Singh is a Sikh scholar whose research involves areas such Sikh Studies, Study of Religions, Religious Experience, Religion and Literature, Religion and Violence, Postcolonial Theory, Intellectual History, and Continental Philosophy. He has Masters in English (Punjabi University), Masters in Study of Religions (SOAS, University of London), DPhil cand. (University of Oxford). He writes poetry in Punjabi and English. He has recently published a collection of Punjabi poetry titled Des Nikala that has poems on the themes such as exile, memory, trauma, time, and language.
Land Acknowledgment
We acknowledge and respect the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, on which the Vancouver Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies operates. We honour and recognize these nations as the true stewards of this land and are grateful to have the opportunity to work, study, and learn on this territory.