Last week, Sikh protesters damaged Indian diplomatic services within the United Kingdom and the United States, smashing home windows and injuring personnel on the High Commission of India in London and the Indian Consulate in San Francisco. Indian stories recommend the protesters support radical preacher and Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh, who faces an arrest warrant underneath India’s National Security Act. India’s police have launched a manhunt for Singh, who’s believed to have fled his house state of Punjab, and detained alleged supporters within the state. Over the weekend, a whole bunch of protesters gathered once more on the Indian Consulate in Vancouver, Canada, to protest the crackdown.

Last week, Sikh protesters damaged Indian diplomatic services within the United Kingdom and the United States, smashing home windows and injuring personnel on the High Commission of India in London and the Indian Consulate in San Francisco. Indian stories recommend the protesters support radical preacher and Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh, who faces an arrest warrant underneath India’s National Security Act. India’s police have launched a manhunt for Singh, who’s believed to have fled his house state of Punjab, and detained alleged supporters within the state. Over the weekend, a whole bunch of protesters gathered once more on the Indian Consulate in Vancouver, Canada, to protest the crackdown.

Some analysts concern that the safety breaches at Indian diplomatic missions might recommend the return of the separatist violence that wracked Punjab for greater than a decade starting within the Nineteen Eighties. This violence spilled past the state: Sikh assailants carried out the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, and a Sikh group was implicated within the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. Given this historical past, India’s political management is understandably involved a few revival of separatist ideology. But to forestall future terrorist violence, it should want Western international locations with important Sikh diaspora populations to take the menace critically, too—presenting a fragile problem for New Delhi.

In the Nineteen Eighties, some members of the Sikh diaspora supported the separatist motion in Punjab. India finally rooted out the insurgency by harsh methods that gave no quarter to the militants. Relative political normalcy returned to Punjab, which has since seen a number of peaceable transfers of energy. However, components throughout the Sikh diaspora—which incorporates communities in Australia, Canada, the U.Okay., and the United States—have remained dedicated to the imaginative and prescient of a Sikh homeland generally known as Khalistan (actually, “the land of the pure”). As this diaspora has grown in energy, Western international locations have voiced concern over the remedy of Sikh activists in India, with some even extending political refugee standing to Sikh dissidents.

In 2020, social unrest returned to the forefront in Punjab, as Sikh and Punjabi farmers organized a mass protest motion in response to nationwide farm legal guidelines designed to finish state subsidies for farmers and open up agricultural markets. Demonstrators occupied India’s capital for greater than a yr, finally main the federal government to withdraw the legal guidelines. The farmers’ protest motion obtained widespread worldwide help and galvanized the Sikh diaspora. The protests had been largely peaceable, and plenty of activists who search an impartial Khalistan have sought change by nonviolent means. But the farmers’ protests, together with current developments in diaspora communities, appear to have spawned a brand new era of militant pro-Khalistan leaders.

Singh’s group, which was fashioned in 2021, has reintroduced a violent political rhetoric that romanticizes the militance of the Nineteen Eighties. Known as Waris Punjab De, or “heirs of Punjab,” the group is allegedly linked to a brand new wave of violence, together with a number of encounters with the police. In response, the Indian authorities has cracked down throughout Punjab this month, arresting suspected members and sympathizers of Waris Punjab De. Singh has up to now evaded seize, however the authorities has arrange roadblocks and restricted internet service all through the state. This crackdown has prompted protests in cities all over the world, together with in London, San Francisco, and Vancouver.

India’s Western companions face a problem in responding to the attainable return of Sikh separatism. The U.Okay. and the United States have promised to coordinate with native authorities to punish those that focused the Indian diplomatic services final week. But New Delhi rightly expects extra from its companions, and it might desire to see rising Sikh separatist teams akin to Waris Punjab De designated as terrorist organizations. This would increase India’s efforts to restrict Sikh separatism, particularly by serving to to cease diaspora help for violent organizations. India is more likely to ask for help in stemming this overseas financing, nevertheless it might additionally search the extradition of these members of the diaspora who might be held legally liable for supporting violent separatism in Punjab.

India’s Western companions are unlikely to honor such requests, given the political energy of Sikh constituencies. Democratically elected leaders within the West are already delicate to Sikh pursuits and could also be hesitant to take a tricky stance in opposition to supporters of Sikh separatism inside their very own borders. Consider Canada, which has a sturdy Sikh diaspora largely concentrated round Toronto. There, elected leaders are inclined to pursue insurance policies in keeping with the calls for of the diaspora, together with offering asylum, dawdling on extradition requests, and largely ignoring fundraising for separatist actions. And because the 2020 farmers’ protests showed, the Sikh and Punjabi diasporas can mobilize broad help in opposition to the Indian authorities on the world stage.

Furthermore, Western international locations stay involved about India’s current declines in civil and spiritual liberties. Under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, spiritual minorities face an unprecedented degree of state-led persecution—together with Sikhs, whose religion is distinct from Hinduism and Islam. The rise of Hindu fanaticism in India and the ensuing political surroundings make it harder for Western leaders to help India’s efforts to beat again Sikh separatism, lest they be seen as condoning Modi’s efforts to construct a Hindu-first state. All of this makes full-throated help from the West extra unlikely.

Against this backdrop, Indian policymakers should tread rigorously. New Delhi’s makes an attempt to swiftly comprise a renewed insurgency are reliable, however its leaders want to indicate that they won’t additional erode the rule of regulation—particularly given the nation’s current historical past of police brutality. India’s efforts up to now have been confined to lodging official protests in regards to the safety lapses that allowed its diplomatic missions to be vandalized. But because it seeks to curb the actions of the separatists at house, it should additionally should assuage the issues of Western companions that it’s going to not disregard authorized norms.

Ultimately, Western leaders ought to look previous their very own political calculations and condemn violent Sikh separatist actions. By failing to take action, they add fodder to the favored Indian notion that the West is a fair-weather associate—which isn’t solely unfounded. For instance, though India staunchly supported U.S.-led efforts in Afghanistan, it was largely sidelined in negotiations with the Taliban and the 2021 U.S. troop withdrawal. India can also be circumspect about Western entreaties to Pakistan, which proceed to happen regardless of Islamabad’s long record of supporting terrorism, together with Sikh separatism. Without taking a agency stance in opposition to violent pro-Khalistan actions, Western leaders danger additional alienating India.

From a geopolitical perspective, the reemergence of Sikh separatism couldn’t come at a worse time. A extra highly effective Sikh separatist motion would complicate relations between India and the West, simply as Australia, Canada, the U.Okay., and the United States shift from specializing in terrorism to containing China within the Indo-Pacific area. If these Western international locations wish to set up a really sturdy partnership with India, they can not proceed to help diaspora networks that allow violence, even tacitly.