The
Khalistan movement is a
nationalist[4] political liberation movement, which seeks to create a separate country called
Khalistān(
Punjabi: ਖਾਲਿਸਤਾਨ, "The
Land of the
Pure") in the
Punjab region of South Asia. The territorial definition of the proposed country ranges from the
Punjab state of India to the greater Punjab region, including the neighbouring Indian states.
The Punjab region has been the traditional homeland for the Sikhs. Before its conquest by the British it had been ruled by the Sikhs for 82 years; the Sikh
Misls ruled over the entire Punjab from 1767 to 1799,
[8] till their confederacy was unified into the
Sikh Empire by
Maharajah Ranjit Singh. However, the region also has a substantial number of Hindus and Muslims, and before 1947, the Sikhs formed the largest religious group only in the
Ludhiana district of the
British province. When the Muslim League demanded a separate country for Muslims via the
Lahore Resolution of 1940, a section of Sikh leaders grew concerned that their community would be left without any homeland following the
partition of India between the Hindus and the Muslims. They put forward the idea of Khalistan, envisaging it as a
theocratic state covering a small part of the greater Punjab region.
After the partition was announced, the majority of the Sikhs migrated from the Pakistani province of Punjab to the Indian province of Punjab, which then included the parts of the present-day
Haryana and
Himachal Pradesh. Following India's independence in 1947, The
Punjabi Suba Movement led by the
Akali Dal aimed at creation of a Punjabi-majority state (Suba) in the Punjab region of India in the 1950s.
[9] Concerned that creating a Punjabi-majority state would effectively mean creating a Sikh-majority state, the Indian government initially rejected the demand. After a series of protests, violent clampdowns on the Sikhs, and the
Indo-Pak War of 1965 the Government finally agreed to partition the state, creating a new Sikh-majority Punjab state and splitting the rest of the region to the states of Himachal Pradesh, the new state Haryana.
[10] Subsequently, the Sikh leaders started demanding more autonomy for the states, alleging that the Central government was discriminating against Punjab. Although the Akali Dal explicitly opposed the demand for an independent Sikh country, the issues raised by it were used as a premise for the creation of a separate country by the proponents of Khalistan.
KLF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan_Liberation_Force