Khalistan Movement: Cultural Trauma and Memory Identity

Abstract

The secessionist movement which became militant in the last quarter of twentieth century known as Khalistan movement was the result of Sikh grievances having traces in colonial India to loads in post-colonial India. The movement had a strict blow back in the decade of 1980s specifically post operation blue star and successive military operations conducted by the repressive state machinery of India. It lost the capital required for active insurgency which brings the study to a central riddle that how the movement persists despite collapsed material basis and organizational capacity. This paper intends to describe the persistence of the Khalistan movement by the institutionalization of trauma central to the political identity of Sikh community that is transmitted intergenerationally through various institutions in the domestic and international spheres. This trauma has become an integral part of collective consciousness of the Sikh community which cannot be deleted altogether by military incursions. This study has shifted the analysis from security-oriented explanations to memory recognition and identity gathering around trauma of 1984 Operation Blue Star.