AHC: Independent Punjab/Khalistan by 1999

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Starting with a PoD of a failed/disasterous Operation Blue Star in 1984, the challenge is to get an independent Sikh nation by 1999.
Based on your TL, what would be the territory and form of governance of this state and what would be it's relative geopolitical power?
 
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Perhaps, in a scenario in which the whole of India or most of it was colonized by France rather than the British. The French seem to be less keen on giving up their colonies especially after the especially humiliating defeat at World War 2 by Germans made their desire stronger in some circles. The French balkanize the region in attempt to retain some sort of French influence over the region.
 

Zachariah

Banned
Perhaps with some sort of overt collaboration with the Pakistanis, and by extension the Americans (as opposed to merely a covert action plan in corroboration with the Pakistanis by the CIA and the Nixon administration to encourage the formation of the Khalistan separatist movement from the early 1970s onward, as we saw IOTL, in order to destablise India and strengthen their allies in Pakistan as a crucial part of the Cold War)? IOTL, the trans-border sources of IB and R&AW reported that ISI was infiltrating Pakistani ex-servicemen and some serving Pakistani army men into Punjab, though these reports were later proven to be wrong. But what if the Pakistanis actually did do so ITTL, along with their allies in the CIA? As for the PoD, perhaps if the operation itself failed due to the failure of the Indian government to impose a full media blackout ITTL? With the group of British journalists (among them, Michael Hamley of The Times) who tried to drive into Punjab a day or two prior to the attack, stopped at the road block at Punjab border and threatened with being shot if they proceeded, calling the bluff of the authorities and going ahead anyway, soon followed by several other journalists and news agencies.

After all, if the international media has eyes on the attack, and films the Indian authorities shelling the Harmandir Sahib complex before launching a full frontal assault on the Golden Temple (and simultaneously attacking 42 or 74 other gurdwaras in Amritsar, increasing the likelihood that a press crew would be able to film the Indian army's attacks, and perhaps even offering a more pro-Sikh impression than the attack of the Golden Temple itself, given that they wouldn't also be filming the separatists firing back, killing the Indian soldiers in return and destroying the advancing Indian tanks with RPG launchers), then the Indian government would face widespread condemnation, and many might even accuse them of outright genocide. And with the Americans firmly taking the side of the Khalistan separatists, skewing the coverage in the Western media to be as pro-Khalistan and anti-Indian as possible, how much more support would the Sikhs have in the west? Given that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was the greatest advocate of close political and military ties between India and the Soviet Union, with the Indians firmly on the Soviets' side in the Cold War, could this potentially result in Khalistan being 'liberated' in a proxy war of sorts? It'd be a challenge, given that India already had nuclear weapons, but not entirely impossible.
 
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Zachariah

Banned
So, to clarify my proposal to try and bring about this outcome and meet this AHC- this wouldn't technically start with the failed/disastrous Operation Blue Star of 1984 ITTL, but several years prior to this, in the immediate aftermath of the signing of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in August 1971, when the Richard Nixon administration in the US initiates a "covert action plan" in collusion with General Yahya Khan's government in Pakistan to encourage a separatist movement in Punjab, as IOTL. This plan envisaged the encouragement of a separatist movement among the Sikhs, for an independent state to be called Khalistan, and the beginning of a joint covert operation by the US intelligence community and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence to create difficulties for India in Punjab. Jagjit Singh Chauhan, a Sikh leader from Punjab, and the CIA's chosen prime candidate to bring this state into being, was immediately moved to the UK to take over the leadership of the defunct Sikh Home Rule movement and rename it after Khalistan. The Pakistani military ruler Yahya Khan then invited Chauhan to Pakistan, "lionised" him as a leader of Sikhs and handed over some Sikh holy relics kept in Pakistan, which Chauhan took to the UK to win a following in the Sikh diaspora. Chauhan was then invited to visit the USA, and in New York City, he met officials of the United Nations and some American journalists (in meetings which were discreetly organised by officials of the US National Security Council Secretariat, then headed by Henry Kissinger), calling to attention human rights violations of Sikhs in India, before he placed an advertisement in the New York Times proclaiming an Independent Sikh state on Oct 13, 1971.

So, just as IOTL thus far. And with even greater American and Pakistani encouragement ITTL, along with financial support and Pakistani ISI Sikh militant training, the activities of Chauhan continue, with the Khalistan movement continuing to amass ever greater support, both among the diaspora and in India itself. But IOTL, after the defeat of Indira Gandhi in the elections in 1977 and the coming to power of the government headed by Morarji Desai and the Janata Party-led coalition, Chauhan abruptly called off his Khalistan movement and returned to India, only to migrate back to the UK again in 1979 upon the collapse of the Janata Party coalition, where he created the "Khalistan National Council", declared himself president of the "Republic of Khalistan", named a Cabinet, and issued Khalistan "passports", "postage stamps" and "Khalistan dollars", running his operations from a building termed "Khalistan House" and remaining in contact with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and with contacts among various groups in Canada, the USA and West Germany, as well as visiting Pakistan frequently as a guest of pro-democracy leaders such as Chaudhuri Zahoor Elahi. ITTL though, Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party resort to electoral fraud and vote-tampering to ensure that they don't lose the 1977 election, drawing widespread condemnation from all except the Communists and effectively consolidating Indira Gandhi's position as a corrupt dictator firmly aligned with the Soviet camp.

As such, with a return to India out of the question, Chauhan instead returns to Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, eagerly invited to do so by his CIA contacts, and establishes the Khalistan National Council there instead, with the full support and recognition of the Pakistani government led by the new President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the immediate aftermath of Operation Fair Play, along with unofficial support and acknowledgment from several other Western nations. Here, the movement amasses even greater local support, and becomes far more organised, with Chauhan maintaining contact with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and the ISI helping to coordinate the militant activities of the Khalistani separatists in Punjab and elsewhere in India, with ISI agents regularly smuggling Sikh militants across the border and providing safe havens in its own territory just across the border, as well as training Sikh militants in Pakistani military camps and supplying them with armaments and explosives. The Pakistanis themselves are given far more free rein ITTL, due to their increased importance in the context of an even more overtly Soviet-allied India, and the altered geopolitical landscape allows them to pursue their atomic bomb project with the full support and encouragement of the USA and of NATO as a whole, with the implosion-type bomb constructed by the Pakistanis in 1978.

So, going into 1984, the Khalistani separatist movement has far more international support in the West, and an effective government-in-exile in Pakistan. The attack on the Golden Temple still happens ITTL, but goes far worse for the Indian army, due to the Khalistani separatists being better armed, better trained and far more numerous; Indira Gandhi doesn't have any Sikhs in the entourage of bodyguards by this stage in TTL, so she isn't assassinated, and instead of the anti-Sikh riots which followed it IOTL, you'd have more extensive anti-Sikh pogroms ITTL, as seen in Operation Woodrose IOTL, to round up anyone carrying a kirpan and/or protesting and "prevent the outbreak of widespread public protest" in the Punjab. According to estimates published by Inderjit Singh Jaijee, as many as 1 million individuals were reported as missing or killed as a result of Army operations during this period; according to the Joint Intelligence Committee, about 100,000 Sikh youth were been taken into custody within the first four to six weeks of the operation, a great many of whom were not heard of again, with about 20,000 Sikhs crossing over to Pakistan to escape.

ITTL, with an even more authoritarian and dictatorial India, you'd expect to see an even more extensive crackdown, comparable to or even worse than Operation Searchlight and the 1971 Bangladesh genocide. And with global public opinion turning against India as news of atrocities spreads, with a fully sympathetic and supportive Pakistan openly accepting the millions of Sikh refugees who'd flee to neighbouring Pakistan for propaganda purposes and its own ulterior motives to further weaken and destabilize India, you'd see a Khalistani Declaration of Independence, and the provisional government in exile in Nankana Sahib, gaining just as much or even more international support than the Bangladeshis did. Will it be enough to see the reduced Indian state of Punjab granted independence, in the same manner as Bangladesh?

If the Soviets and the Americans exert enough pressure on the Indians and the Pakistanis not to engage in nuclear war, with naval task forces of both the USA and the USSR dispatched to the Arabian Sea in an even more tense Cold War standoff than that during the Indo-Pakistani War, then it's possible that the Soviets could force the Indian government to accept it as a fait accompli and give up Khalistan. And even if not, then the Khalistani Sikh nationalist movement in exile in Pakistan would have more support and a larger membership than ever. Once the Soviet Union collapses, TTL's India could well collapse along with it, and you'd anticipate Khalistan would be state #1 to break away and emerge from it after the fall of the Iron Curtain, quite possibly as a partner of NATO in the same manner as Pakistan.
 
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