ABSTRACT
This chapter will account for the demise of Sikh separatism in India in the Punjab in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star. It will be argued that, although the movement was initially crushed by a reassertion of state and central government power using a strategy of ‘violent control’ as Gurharpal Singh suggests (Singh 2000), the demise of Congress hegemony afforded Sikh elites an opportunity to articulate Sikh demands to the Indian political system from within the democratic system. The economic reforms which Dr Manmohan Singh initiated as finance minister in Narasimha Rao’s government in particular facilitated a structural transformation in Indian politics, economics and society resulting in both regional and Hindu ‘nationalist’ challenges to the Congress ‘system’ (Kothari 1964).
