A voter registers to solid his poll within the Khalistan Referendum on Oct. 29 in Surrey, British Columbia. The desk is staffed by two individuals — one a British Columbia ballot employee, the opposite a Punjabi-speaking Sikh volunteer to assist with translation if obligatory.

On Jan. 28, Californians will solid ballots in a historic vote on creating a brand new impartial nation.

Why is the primary you’re listening to of it? Because the one Californians who can vote within the election are Sikhs. The proposed nation could be in northern India.

But that’s no purpose to miss a very powerful election within the Golden State subsequent 12 months.

Indeed, the Khalistan Referendum is worthy of your consideration for 2 causes. First, it raises the questions of whether or not democracy is extra more likely to quell, or to inflame, violence throughout disputes over nationhood. Second, the vote is a part of an ongoing experiment in how poll measures may form a brand new world system of democracy.

The Khalistan Referendum is a worldwide election, held on totally different dates and in numerous world cities which are residence to many Sikhs. The Jan. 28 balloting, which is able to happen in San Francisco, follows votes in London, Geneva, Rome, Toronto, and Vancouver.

The referendum itself is non-binding — even when nearly all of voters favor independence, it gained’t assure a brand new nation. But if the outcomes present widespread help for independence among the many diaspora, organizers will push for a Khalistan Referendum in Punjab itself.

The Khalistan Referendum was proposed by Sikhs for Justice, a U.S.-based group. Sikhism is a 500-year-old faith, fusing components of Hinduism, Islam and different faiths. There are 25 million Sikhs worldwide, 80% of whom reside in India, primarily in Punjab. California is residence to 250,000 Sikhs, most of whom stay within the Central Valley or the Bay Area.

The referendum’s supporters argue that Sikhs, as targets of discrimination in India and elsewhere, want the safety of an impartial Sikh-majority nation, which they’d name Khalistan. But India has opposed the referendum, banning Sikhs for Justice in 2019 for “espousing secessionism.”

These claims are grounded in a longstanding violent battle between the federal government and pro-independence armed insurgents that was particularly lethal within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties.

The Indian authorities says the referendum may inflame violence. But its Sikh backers say that the referendum is a democratic instrument for peacefully resolving battle in Punjab, as supplied for within the United Nations Charter, which grants all peoples the proper to self-determination.

To persuade the world of the referendum’s legitimacy, Sikhs for Justice requested an impartial worldwide committee of main democracy students and practitioners to set referendum guidelines and oversee the voting.

The committee is impartial on the referendum query of an impartial Khalistan. But many members are working to plan methods of worldwide elections so that individuals in each nation can collectively resolve insurance policies on world points.

I embedded with the committee chair, Dane Waters, the U.S.-born, Beirut-based founding father of the Initiative & Referendum Institute on the University of Southern California, in the course of the referendum vote Oct. 29 in Surrey, British Columbia.

The ambiance was tense. The Surrey-based Sikh chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and referendum organizer, had been assassinated in June. The Canadian authorities says it has credible proof tying the assassination to India’s authorities. More just lately, U.S. prosecutors charged a person, with ties to an Indian authorities worker, with trying to assassinate a referendum organizer who’s an American citizen.

The assassination has impacted the referendum. The worldwide committee prefers to carry votes at impartial websites and had rented a Surrey public college. But after the Canadian authorities’s announcement that India was behind the Nijjar assassination, the college bowed out, citing safety issues.

The vote was as a substitute carried out at Surrey’s gurdwara or Sikh temple, steps from the place Nijjar was killed. A big police element supplied safety. Outside the voting corridor, Khalistan supporters performed Punjabi music so loudly that it was exhausting interview voters ready in lengthy traces.

Inside, nevertheless, the occasion was quietly managed by British Columbia ballot employees — all non-Sikhs employed via a 3rd get together. At every check-in desk, one paid ballot employee was paired with a Punjabi-speaking Sikh volunteer, who may translate for voters uncomfortable in English. Any Sikh may vote with a photograph ID. Tens of 1000’s solid ballots.

Could the Khalistan referendum grow to be a mannequin for deciding whether or not breakaway states can type their very own nations? Perhaps. It’s becoming that independence-minded California, will subsequent host this democratic experiment.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column at Zócalo Public Square.