In the early 1980s, separatist pressure in the prosperous agricultural heartlands of the Punjab seemed briefly to threaten the survival of the Indian nation-state. Sikh followers of a charismatic leader, Sant Jarnail Bhindranwale, engaged in local skirmishes with Indian police and soldiers in pursuit of their campaign for an autonomous state of Khalistan. When Bhindranwale and his supporters took refuge in the holiest Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Indira Gandhi authorized the use of heavy force to dislodge them. Bhindranwale and many of his supporters were killed in intense fighting, in which parts of the temple complex were also badly damaged. A few months later, Mrs Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards, provoking waves of attacks on Sikhs in cities across North India, most of them organized by local Congress Party leaders. There followed a decade of escalating violence, in the Punjab and beyond, before the situation gradually calmed in the second half of the 1990s. As with the parallel case of northern Sri Lanka, many of the most dedicated supporters of Khalistan came from the extensive Sikh diaspora, especially in Britain, Canada, and the United States.

A few years ago, the American anthropologist Cynthia Keppley Mahmood published an interesting book, based on her conversations with Sikh militants committed to the Khalistan movement. Much of the book is concerned to report, in as authentic a manner as possible, the self-descriptions, personal histories, and political vision of a group of people often labelled as ‘terrorists’, and subject to villification in both popular and academic media.