ABSTRACT
The appointment of the first Sikh prime minister of India, ironically one instigated by the daughter-in-law of the woman who ordered the infamous storming of the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar in June 1984,1 provides an opportune moment to reflect upon Sikh national identity. The twenty-odd years since the military action, codenamed ‘Operation Blue Star’, designed to eliminate a band of armed Sikh militants taking refuge in the holiest shrine in Sikhism have seen the rise and fall of a separatist movement dedicated to the achievement of an independent Sikh state: Khalistan. Although this movement was unsuccessful, there is evidence to show that it enjoyed the support of a significant number of Sikhs in the Indian state of the Punjab (Pettigrew 1995; Gurharpal Singh 2000) and in the ‘diaspora’ (Tatla 1999; Axel 2001). What then can account for first the strength and then the ‘strange death of Sikh ethno-nationalism’ (Gurharpal Singh 2004)?
