Khalistan Movement
Origins, Insurgency, and Resurgence
The demand for a separate Sikh homeland called "Khalistan" dates to the 1940s but became a violent insurgency primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, when Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) provided training, weapons, and shelter to groups such as Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), and the Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF). The insurgency peaked following Operation Blue Star (1984) and was effectively suppressed by the mid-1990s through counter-insurgency operations. However, the movement persisted in the Western diaspora — particularly in Canada, the UK, and the US — and has witnessed a revival in recent years, fuelled partly by online radicalisation and continued ISI patronage channelled through diaspora nodes in Malaysia, Canada, and Europe.
- ISI's operational support for Khalistani groups was organised through a dedicated Punjab cell with a three-phase plan: alienation, subversion, and armed confrontation.
- Operation Black Thunder (1988) — a Punjab Police-led operation to flush out militants from the Golden Temple — is studied as a successful model for urban counter-terrorism in a sensitive religious site.
- The last major insurgency incident was the assassination of Punjab's Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995 by a Babbar Khalsa operative.
- Modern modules increasingly recruit through social media, radicalise youth locally, and then send operatives abroad for training before tasking them with attacks inside India.
● Tracked since February 24, 2026 · last seen April 28, 2026 · updates as the daily brief publishes