Khalistan
Abstract
The concept of a sovereign Sikh State, Khalistan, was first formulated by a medical practitioner from Ludhiana, V.S. Bhatti, in 1940. Strategically as well as semantically, this concept was a mimetic, and simultaneous, response to the demand for Pakistan by the Muslim League. Pakistan and Khalistan both refer to a ‘land of the pure’; the latter term also refers to the Khalsa, founded by the last Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh (1666–1708), in 1699 (Singh 2004)...