VANCOUVER - The president of one of the largest Sikh temples in North America fears at least one banned terrorist group may be behind the possible revival of a violent movement to create Khalistan - an independent state in northern India.
Balwant Gill, of the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple in suburban Surrey, said members of another temple, considered a fundamentalist sect, participated in a recent parade to celebrate Sikhism with a float exhibiting photos of so-called Sikh martyrs.
Gill said members of the Gurdwara Sahib Dasmesh Darbar entered a float in the April 7 Vaisakhi festivities to mark the 308th anniversary of the Sikh nation and the beginning of the harvest season in Punjab, India.
He said there are concerns in the Sikh community that the International Sikh Youth Federation, a pro-Khalistan terrorist group which the Canadian government banned in 2003 along with the Babbar Khalsa, may have been involved in organizing the float.
Among the pictures displayed on the float was one of Talwinder Singh Parmar, a devout Sikh, member of the Babbar Khalsa and accused mastermind of the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight that killed 329 people, mostly Canadians
Most Sikhs aren't keen on seeing Parmar considered a martyr, Gill said.
"Everybody's upset, the whole community."
But Perry Dulai, who took part in organizing the float, said proponents of Khalistan still want their own homeland carved out of a section of Punjab, but they no longer want to participate in any violent activities.
"It's a political movement that I think everybody's supporting, not any armed struggle."
He said about five or six youths were seen around the float wearing ISYF T-shirts but they didn't have anything to do with the Dasmesh Darbar.
Dulai said support for Khalistan has fizzled in India and elsewhere in the last decade and Gill said no one wants a return to the separatist clashes of the past.
"We are worried because these people were quiet for a while," Gill said. "Now they start again."
"Nobody even knows, in Punjab, India, what Khalistan means. These people here are the ones demanding Khalistan, nobody else is saying (anything)."
It's believed Sikh extremists were behind the bombings against India's national airline in retaliation for the Indian army's June 1984 raid on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine.
The raid was an attempt to flush out Sikh militants, who had occupied the temple in their fight for Khalistan.
The deadly bomb was thought to have been planted in a suitcase at Vancouver International Airport, along with another bomb destined for a second Air India flight. It exploded at Tokyo's Narita airport, killing two baggage handlers.
Parmar was killed in a shootout with Indian police in 1992 during a time of Sikh insurgency against the Hindu-led Indian government, which owns Air India planes.
Two other British Columbia men, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri who were also members of the Babbar Khalsa, were acquitted of the mass murders.
Members of the Damesh Darbar did not return repeated phone calls for an interview about their involvement in the parade, the display of Parmar's picture, or their pro-Khalistan stance.
But Gurmit Aulakh, president of the Council of Khalistan in Washington, DC, said those who are committed to creating Khalistan have not wavered from their fight to establish the separate homeland.
"The Khalistan struggle is alive and well," Aulakh said, adding he hoisted "the flag of Khalistan" before the Vaisakhi parade in Washington on April 14 and will speak at a similar parade in New York on April 28.
Aulakh said the 22-year struggle for Khalistan will continue until Khalistan is a reality.
"Freedom struggles, sometimes they last quite a while," he said, adding he doesn't condone violence, only "peaceful, democratic means. To go for militancy would be stupid."
He said that would be akin to the mentality that led to thousands of Sikhs deaths after the Oct. 30, 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards.
Aulakh said a Sikh genocide by the Indian government meant 250,000 Sikhs were killed. Others have estimated that about 3,000 Sikhs were murdered in the bloody aftermath of Gandhi's death.
John Thompson, president of the Toronto-based MacKenzie Institute, said the support for Khalistan still exists to some extent in Canada and could rise to greater levels.
"If it's going to happen it's going to happen here," he said, adding explosive economic growth in Punjab means people there are content with their lives.
"There's no chance for revival of the Khalistan movement on the ground in Punjab. But for the Sikhs who left in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, especially those who left because of their involvement in the Khalistan movement, as they get older their nationalism is likely to crystallize and stay stronger and they will try to pass it off to the younger generation."
Those who were part of the pro-Khalistan movement in its heyday may cling to their beliefs as a way to validate their position in the community "by being more militant Sikhs than other Sikhs," Thompson said.
The older generation that was devoted to Khalistan may tell exaggerated stories to their children about great heroism and sacrifice during the Sikh insurgency of the 1980s to the point of creating a myth, Thompson said.
"They've been told all these great and wonderful, exaggerated stories about what heroes their father's generation were and they want to connect with it."
"It's the same dynamic that we have with the jihad generation in the Islamic community, the same sort of phenomenon that's been seen time and time again."
Thompson said the more times Aulakh repeats that a quarter million Sikhs were killed by the Indian government, the more he convinces himself and others of something that is not a fact.
"He'll try and make sure now that the next generation understands that as a truth as well.
"The other attraction that might bring in new supporters is among the children of other Sikhs who didn't support the Khalistan movement but feel, being raised in Canada, they're apart from the Sikh experience and some of them will reach toward a more militant expression of their Sikh identity."
