Sikh separatism that generated a media frenzy in Canada following last year’s controversial Vaisakhi parade in Surrey was the fallout from a massacre 30 years ago. It’s worth revisiting that incident, which resulted in the deaths of 13 Sikhs in Punjab on Vaisakhi Day in 1978, to understand the roots of some of the violence that has plagued the community since then, including the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985.

Vaisakhi is a harvest festival of Punjab, and it is also celebrated as the birth of the Khalsa, which means “pure”. The Khalsa order was created on Vaisakhi Day in 1699 when Guru Gobind Singh baptized five Sikhs.

Pro-Khalistan leaders of Dashmesh Darbar Sikh temple who are organizing the Surrey Vaisakhi parade for Saturday (April 12) will remember those 13 men on the 30th anniversary of the bloody Vaisakhi. The bloodshed was provoked by alleged sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs, by the head of the Nirankari sect, Gurbachan Singh.

Traditional Sikhs described the actions of the Nirankari movement as “blasphemous” and described its followers as “bohemians from Delhi”. The Nirankaris’s choice of the day and the venue for their 1978 gathering added insult to the injury. Indian authorities had allowed the sect to gather on Vaisakhi Day in Amritsar, which is the Sikh equivalent of the Vatican. Orthodox Sikhs went to disrupt the congregation, resulting in a violent clash that left 13 Sikhs dead.

Traditional Sikhs later accused the Indian government of shielding the Nirankaris. Firebrand Sikh preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale vowed to avenge the killings. In 1980, Gurbachan Singh was murdered and, in quick succession, a number of Nirankaris were killed all over Punjab, laying the foundation for decade-long violence.

In June 1984, the Indian military stormed the Golden Temple complex, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar, to flush out Bhindranwale and his men, who had fortified the place with weapons. This attack enraged Sikhs across the world. The same year, India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. Thousands of Sikhs were subsequently murdered in what many feel was a state-sponsored pogrom to avenge Gandhi’s death.

Some of the alleged perpetrators of the pogrom are now members of the Indian parliament, despite the fact that India is currently headed by a Sikh prime minister, Manmohan Singh. These developments have further alienated Sikhs from the national mainstream.

Though Khalistan, an imaginary Sikh homeland, was never a popular demand in Punjab, the Indian government’s poor handling of the emotional, socioeconomic, and political fallout from the bloody Vaisakhi of 1978 fuelled Sikh separatism. Not only was the Nirankari-Sikh issue badly handled, but Punjab’s demand for equal treatment and for Punjabi-speaking areas in neighbouring states were not amicably settled.

Although the Sikh leadership cannot escape its share of blame for encouraging religious extremism, the Indian establishment should also shoulder some responsibility for the growth of separatism. With these issues remaining unresolved and with a fresh confrontation looming between the orthodox Sikhs and a sect called Dera Sacha Sauda, religious terrorism could easily raise its ugly head once again.