Khalistan Referendums Outrage Hindus Like Me. They Should Outrage You Too. (2025)

A few thousand Los Angelenos lined up recently to vote in a referendum. The crowds were not voting for a minimum wage increase, a proposed bond to fund the construction of better public transportation, or civic infrastructure. Nor did they turn out to greenlight efforts to speed up rebuilding after the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires, just a few months past.

No, these LA residents were responding to a call to vote in a nonbinding poll about aposterglorifying violence, and to weigh in on a demand to create a nation of Khalistan by breaking up the nation of India.

Khalistan is a proposed ethno-nationalist Sikh state that some Sikhs, almost entirely in the diaspora, believe should be carved out of a hugeswath of northern India— not only India’s entire state of Punjab, whose population is 60% Sikh, but including a wider land mass across several other Indian states, which are more than 80% Hindu.

California is famous for its ballot initiatives, but when California puts initiatives on statewide ballots, the state doesn’t announce a preferred outcome. In the case of the Khalistan referendum, however, the organizers announce their expected and desired result. “Punjab will be Khalistan,” their poster reads in the Punjabi language.

What’s more, the organizers of the Khalistan referendum say that only Sikhs may vote. Hindus, Jains, Muslims, and Christians in the U.S. and Canada with ties to Punjab are not welcome to weigh in on whether they’d like to separate from India, not to mention those people in the surrounding Indian states that Khalistan supporters indicate they’d also force to be part of this new nation.

My father and his relatives lived in India’s Punjab region, where Hindus and Sikhs long lived as one, sharing worship spaces, celebrations and family ties. My family name is commonly found among both Hindus and Sikhs. When the British were forced out in 1947, Punjab was divided along religious lines. One section became part of Pakistan, which declared itself an Islamic republic, and one remained a part of India, a secular state. Falling on the Pakistan side, my family members were forced to flee, along with millions of others, settling in India.

If Khalistan ever came to pass, an ensuing second partition could force millions of Punjabi Hindus to be forced from their homes for a second time in a century. This is why for Hindu Americans like me, with family roots in greater Punjab, the referendum is a farce and moral outrage.

While the Khalistan referendum may be symbolic, my religion already disqualifies me, and thousands of other Punjabi Hindus, from even voting. More dangerously, it tries to divide communities and destroy centuries-old Hindu-Sikh bonds. That might be on par for a theocracy, but not exactly consonant with Californian or American values.

The vote would be a minor annoyance if there were not also a radical Khalistan militancy, based on acontestednarrative of persecution of Sikhs. In 1983, its leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale,threatenedto hack to death 5,000 Hindus if his demands from the Indian government were not met. After Bhindranwale and his cohort turned the holiest Sikh place of worship, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, into his redoubt, the Indian army stormed the temple, killing Bhindranwale and many others. In retaliation, Sikh bodyguards assassinated Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for ordering the siege, and her party’s minions killed thousands of innocent Sikhs in revenge in 1984.

Even after his death, Bhindranwale’s followers continued acting on his vow,carrying outthe bloodiest terrorist attack in Canadian history in the bombing of an Air India flight departing Montreal, which left all 329 on board dead in 1985. In 1987, militants beganhijackingbuses, killing non-Sikh passengers, and Hindus were forced into anexodusfrom Khalistan-controlled parts of Punjab. While Hindus were targeted simply for being Hindus, the militants also slaughtered thousands of innocent Sikhs who opposed the Khalistani ideology.

The tentacles of this violent movement remain active in the Golden State today.

So many Hindu temples in the Bay Area have been vandalized with pro-Khalistan slogans that members of Congress havecalledfor a briefing on the matter from the Department of Justice. The State Department hascondemnedan arson attack at the Indian Consulate in San Francisco, blamed on Khalistanis. In 2017, Balwinder Singh wassentencedto 15 years in federal prison for conspiracy to provide material support and resources to Khalistani terrorists in India. A Khalistan activist was a target of a U.S. Customs and Border Protectionstingoperation for attempting to ship arms to militants in Punjab through Pakistan. Multiple Khalistani groups remain on a State Departmentlistof banned terrorist organizations.

It is time Californians see the Khalistan referendum less as some jamboree of democracy, with free food and rocking music, and more as a celebration of extremism open only to true believers.

It is time to clearly see the movement for Khalistan as what it is: a secessionist movement with a harrowingly violent, anti-Hindu pedigree. It is time to understand why Americans with Punjabi heritage like myself are calling out the Khalistan referendum as the antithesis of what I’d hope Californians and Americans cherish most: peace, democracy, and religious pluralism.

This article was first published in RNS.

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