Authorities within the Indian state of Punjab blocked cellular web for 27 million residents and arrested at the very least 154 individuals whereas conducting a large manhunt for a Sikh separatist chief who was comparatively unknown till lately: Amritpal Singh.

The massive image: The manhunt has gripped the nation since Saturday and woke up reminiscences of a decade of bloodshed within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties when Sikh separatism, generally known as the Khalistan motion, was violently suppressed.

Singh, 30, seized nationwide headlines in February when he and dozens of supporters — many wielding swords and a few carrying weapons — surrounded a police station in Punjab and demanded the discharge of one in every of his associates, allegedly injuring a number of law enforcement officials within the course of.

• Politicians and commentators across the nation demanded Singh and his colleagues be arrested, with the native chief of the opposition Congress Party urging the federal government to “nip the evil in the bud” earlier than one other separatist rebellion might start.
• Police say once they tried to arrest Singh on Saturday, he eluded them in a automobile chase.

The following day the furor went worldwide when protesters at India’s High Commission in London pulled down an Indian flag, smashed home windows and waved Khalistan banners. The same incident adopted on Monday on the Indian consulate in San Francisco.

• Indian politicians and commentators fumed that separatists within the diaspora have been being allowed to run riot. New Delhi summoned a senior U.Ok. diplomat, and U.S. nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan put out a statement condemning the “acts of violence.”
• Back in Punjab, the authorities deployed 1000’s of paramilitary troopers and blocked roads. Singh apparently stays at massive.

The backstory: Singh has brazenly advocated for an unbiased Sikh state since reportedly getting back from Dubai final 12 months and taking the helm of a company known as Waris Punjab De (WPD).

• WPD was based by actor-turned-activist Deep Sidhu to advocate for larger autonomy for Punjab — a largely agricultural area on the border with Pakistan, and the Sikh faith’s historic homeland — and to help the 2020-2021 farmers protests, during which Sikh farmers performed a distinguished function.
• While the Khalistan motion is outlawed in India on nationwide safety grounds, a extra radical era of leaders like Singh has began to push separatism extra brazenly, says Milan Vaishnav, director of the Carnegie Endowment’s South Asia program. Some native politicians “have sort of played footsie” with separatist teams to win votes in Punjab, he says.
• While the extent of separatist sentiment in Punjab is difficult to gauge, there may be definitely discontent with the state’s financial stagnation and rising drug epidemic. “People feel like okay, India is booming, but Punjab is declining,” Vaishnav says. The farmers protests additionally inflamed tensions with the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Sikhs account for lower than 2% of India’s total inhabitants however are the bulk in Punjab. The largest Sikh diaspora populations dwell in Canada, the U.Ok. and U.S.

• “Talk of Khalistan is much more robust, much more open in the diaspora, the reason being exactly what we’re seeing in Punjab. Amirtpal Singh talked about Khalistan and the entire state shut down,” says Balpreet Singh, authorized counsel and spokesperson for the Ottawa-based World Sikh Organization (WSO).

• Singh says WSO’s tweets elevating the alarm concerning the crackdown in Punjab have been blocked inside India. He warns that the “draconian methods” being utilized in Punjab are paying homage to the ’80s and ’90s, when 1000’s of Sikhs have been killed or disappeared.
• Along with tweets denouncing the federal government’s harsh strategies, there have been others exhibiting Sikh counterprotesters waving Indian flags. Singh notes that Sikhs aren’t monolithic and a few do oppose separatism, however says some might really feel the necessity to show their patriotism as a result of they worry the kinds of anti-Sikh reprisals that came about within the Eighties.

Flashback: Amritpal Singh is a visible reminder of that violent period. He attire like and idolizes Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh spiritual chief who was killed in 1984 when the Indian Army stormed the Golden Temple complicated — the holiest web site for Sikhs — during which he and his supporters had barricaded themselves.

• Sikh bodyguards for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi assassinated her after the bloody raid. “That set off a huge chain of events and basically a decade of civil war,” says Aidan Milliff, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford who has researched the Punjab disaster.
• More than 3,000 Sikhs have been killed in mob violence, principally in Delhi. “The violence was targeted basically by profiling people who wore turbans, people who had Sikh names,” Milliff says.
• In Punjab, the government waged a decade-long campaign to put down the separatist insurgency.

The bottom line: “There’s this simmering fear that this separatist motion will come up once more, and I believe that fear is behind plenty of what’s occurring now,” Milliff says of the federal government response.