Unshared Histories

IN HIS PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS at the 1940 session of the Muslim League, in Lahore, Mohammed Ali Jinnah outlined his version of the two-nation theory and spoke of the necessity of a separate Muslim state. Despite later claims by Hindutva ideologues, Jinnah was by no means the first person to propose a two-nation theory—many of the ideas he articulated had been stated by figures such as Lala Lajpat Rai and VD Savarkar well before Jinnah became an adherent. But Jinnah’s assertion was the first time that the idea had been clearly articulated by someone with significant political support, something the backers of Hindutva were unable to acquire until recently. The community most badly impacted by the idea were the Sikhs, scattered in large numbers over the very region that was to become Pakistan.

In their book Sikh Nationalism: From a Dominant Minority to an Ethno-Religious Diaspora, the academics Gurharpal Singh and Giorgio Shani write:

All shades of Sikh political opinion condemned the demand for Pakistan, with some calling for ‘Khalsa raj’ and ‘Khalistan’ under the maharaja of Patiala. Dr V. S. Bhatti produced a short pamphlet outlining the case for ‘Khalistan’ as a buffer state between India and ‘Pakistan’. … The etymology of the name Khalistan is found in the Khalsa … signifying the ‘land of the pure.’

The demand did not meet with widespread acceptance within the Sikh community, and from its very inception, the idea of Khalistan was conceived as a reaction to Pakistan, never to be quite taken seriously. In this form it occasionally surfaced each time Pakistan was debated before 1947, only to almost entirely disappear from political discourse, till the early 1980s.