Internet shutdowns, dozens of arrests and a manhunt. What’s happening in India’s Punjab state?

Police in India’s northwestern Punjab state, the country’s only Sikh-majority state, say they are looking for a key voice in the separatist movement and are taking extraordinary measures to find them.

Punjabi police said they are doing a “mega crackdown” to arrest Amritpal Singh, dubbed “self-styled preacher” in India English media. Police said he may have “slipped” on Saturday when they tried to arrest him and a group of his followers. Officials have since made more than 100 “preventive arrests” of people he said were “attempting to disrupt law and order.”

Officials also limited gatherings in some areas to a maximum of four people and set up road checks in the country with a large separatist movement campaigning for an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan.

In February, a large number of supporters stormed a police station in a village near Amritsar demanding the release of one of Singh’s associates, who had been arrested in a kidnapping case.

Mobile internet connections, including SMS messages, have been largely cut in the country since Saturday and are expected to be blocked until at least noon local time on Thursday. Broadband services are not affected.

While authorities say the measures are necessary to maintain order and prevent the spread of “fake news”, members of the Sikh community in Punjab, and in Canada, are critical.

“There is no clear understanding of why these steps are needed,” said Harjeet Singh Grewal, who teaches Sikh studies at the University of Calgary.

Nearly 25 percent of the world’s Sikhs live outside India, including more than 750,000 in Canadawhich means that events in Punjab are being watched closely far beyond the borders of the state.

Grewal, like many other Sikhs in Canada, is concerned about “potential human rights violations” as Indian authorities restrict communications in their pursuit of Singh. This also happens when many Punjabis from Canada will travel to the country to see family.

Who is Amritpal Singh?

Police, who accused Singh and his supporters of attempting to kill, obstruct law enforcement and create disharmony, said he “got away” when officers tried to block his motorcycle and arrest him.

Punjab’s top police officer, Sukhchain Gill, told Reuters Amritpal Singh had set up a militia called Anandpur Khalsa Fauj, the logo of which was found on the gate of a house and on a rifle and bulletproof vest found by police there.

Thirty-year-old Amritpal Singh recently rose to prominence in Punjab, a country of 31 million people.

Many Sikhs in Hindu-majority India say they face discrimination and oppression, allegations Indian authorities deny.

Amritpal Singh returned to India last August, becoming the leader of a group whose name translates to “Heirs of the Punjab.” Earlier, while living in Dubai for 10 years, he found the following debate on the Punjab issue. online forum such as Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces.

From social issues to separatism

At the helm of this group, Amritpal Singh has been able to attract young followers with a message that resonates with him.

“Drug use and drug deaths are on the rise, and [Singh’s] there is a message that young people should get from drugs and return to [religious] roots,” said Balpreet Singh, legal counsel and spokesperson for the Toronto-based World Sikh Organization (WSO).

Amritpal Singh has also spoken about his desire for a sovereign Sikh state, said at a public meeting in September that “every drop of [his] blood dedicated to the freedom of our community.”

Grewal of the University of Calgary said, according to the decision of the Supreme Court of India, it is not illegal to promote separatist aspirations in India, as long as it is non-violent.

But Amritpal Singh was also accused of threatening Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, saying he would suffer the same fate as Indira Gandhi, India’s prime minister, who was assassinated amid the Sikh militant insurgency and counterinsurgency in the 1980s and 90s that leaving thousands dead.

Gandhi sent the military to the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, in 1984 to crush the leaders of the rebellion and their supporters in a bloody episode that outraged Sikhs around the world.

A few months later, Gandhi was shot dead by two Sikh bodyguards at his home in Delhi.

Shivaji Mukherjee, a University of Toronto Mississauga professor who studies political violence in India, said that the Indian government “is always worried that some potential radical elements, whether in the diaspora in Canada or England or in the Middle East, will come back and try to spread … seeds of discontent.”

“This particular government [of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party] being a Hindu nationalist and more conservative may be more worrying,” he said.

leader shut down the Internet

With mobile internet connections, including text messages, still blocked, WSO’s Balpreet Singh is concerned about the possibility of an “information blackout”.

He said it could allow the authorities to take more severe crackdowns, as happened in the 1984 attack on the Golden Temple, when thousands of Sikhs were killed.

Although broadband internet connection works, as well as landline phones, he explained most people in Punjab depend on mobile internet communication.

The Punjab government said the blockade was “in the interest of public security [and] to prevent violence.”

But severing some digital communication to stymie dissent is a familiar practice; India has been dubbed a world leader in internet shutdowns and already cursed for that by human rights groups.

According to Access Now’s Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project website, India states 58 percent Internet shut down globally in 2022.