Jagjit Singh Chauhan, the Sikh who led a violent separatist movement in India’s northern Punjab State, died at his home in Tanda, India, on April 4. He was 80.
The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Charanjit Kaur.
Mr. Chauhan was born in 1927 in Tanda. A dentist by profession, he was active in Punjab politics in the 1960s. Later, he moved to London, and from his base there he began a campaign to create Khalistan (Land of the Pure), an independent state of Sikhs in northern India.
In 1971, as part of an effort to set up a Sikh government, he visited Pakistan and the United States, where he placed an advertisement in The New York Times proclaiming the formation of Khalistan and collected millions of dollars for it. In India, he was charged with sedition and other crimes in connection with his activities.
He became the self-styled president of the “Republic of Khalistan,” appointed a cabinet, issued symbolic passports and postage stamps, and created “Khalistan dollars.” He opened embassies in Britain and other European countries.
He remained in close contact with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a violent campaigner for a Sikh theocratic homeland.
They intensified the separatist insurgency in the early 1980s when thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of women were raped in Punjab. It is uncertain who was responsible for the killings. The death toll in more than a decade of violence was about 20,000, including 2,000 members of the security forces.
In 1982, Mr. Bhindranwale moved into the renowned Golden Temple of Amritsar, the holiest of Sikh shrines, with an army of followers armed with weapons, which led to a standoff against Indian troops.
In June 1984, Indira Gandhi, then the prime minister, ordered the army to raid the temple and clear out the militants. Mr. Bhindranwale was killed in the fighting. Mr. Chauhan immediately announced the Khalistan government-in-exile in Britain.
When asked by the BBC on June 12, 1984, whether he wanted to see the downfall of Mrs. Gandhi’s government, Mr. Chauhan said Sikhs would “behead” her and her family. The British government instructed Mr. Chauhan to keep his activities within the bounds of democracy and the law.
Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards on Oct. 31, 1984.
Gradually, the Khalistan movement lost popular support. Mr. Chauhan returned to Punjab in 1989 and hoisted the Khalistan flag at a Sikh shrine. The Indian government canceled his passport and protested when he was allowed to enter the United States using it. The Sikhs’ separatist campaign was crushed in the early 1990s.
After a long court battle, Mr. Chauhan was allowed to return to India in 2001 after 21 years of exile. He formed the Khalsa Raj Party to continue his campaign, but he could not muster the support of the new generation of Sikhs.
He later withdrew from public life and ran a small charitable hospital in Tanda, but he emerged to proclaim that an independent Khalistan would become reality in 2007.
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