The Sikh Story India Tries to Erase

Criminalization of the Sikh identity has become a disturbing and shocking routine particularly in the wake of the Indo-Pakistan standoff of 2025 in Narendra Modi India. Once comprising of mere political marginalization and demonization through rhetoric, this has currently bloomed into a state sponsored mechanism of propaganda, intrigue, and suppression directed against one of the most agile and proud of the communities in India, the Sikhs. This is because after being once identified as an example of bravery, sacrifice and strong faith in the freedom of India, Sikhs are now being portrayed incorrectly as foes of the state on grounds of strategic espionages, terrorism and anti-national fuels without proof or trial. The Sikh Story Not only has Modi government criminalized dissent but it has now used state machinery to demonize Sikh identity altogether implying that to be Sikh is to be a mischievous suspect, a traitor or a proxy of Pakistan.
The so-called concept of national security and under the mocking term of Pakistani agents, the regime has already established the premises to collectively punish an entire religious community that had once helped India to become strong and united. Under the direct guidance of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and involving full cooperation of the so-called “Godi Media” (a term used to describe pro-government news channels in India), there have been raids of Gurdwara, Sikh relief and welfare agencies and the residences of Sikh community leaders across the state of Punjab wherein they have been labeled as Khalistani terror financiers without trial, evidence or accountability. To the Modi regime, every Sikh who dares to claim his rights, who refuses to kneel before the Hindutva dominance, who goes to the streets because he needs to survive economically as he did in the Farmers Movement, is not a citizen anymore, he is an enemy.
Sikhs are paying a price to their bravery in claiming dignity, equality, and constitutional security. What can be more wrong than those whose love to their religious heritage be regarded as sedition? This is because the answer can be found in the tactical way in which Modi seeks to present any form of Sikh pride as separatism. Sikhs find themselves entangled between the state propaganda and majority fanaticism in which fondness to their religion and acknowledgment that Pakistan respected the sanctity of the Sikhs is twisted into allegations of treason. The government of Modi, using point person media partners, portrays every opposition voice as Khalistani and confuses a normal voice of protest with a criminal conspiracy. The false flag attacks such as the Pahalgam incident in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) itself either staged attacks or attacked innocent people themselves and then blamed them on non-existent Sikh terror cells show the level to which the regime is willing to blacklist the community and implement its spying and crackdown.
Among the most shocking facts about this state campaign is the deposition and arrest of ordinary Sikhs without trial and charge. Resorting to sweeps, dozens of Sikh youths in Punjab, Delhi and Haryana have been detained by the security agencies on the suspicion of spying on behalf of Pakistan which is unsupported by any evidence in the streets. The families are left unwarded, the lawyers refused access and the courts under political pressure are silent. In India, the justice is not blind anymore because it is gagged and chained to serve the ideology of the ruling party. The notorious Jyoti Malhotra, a Hindu journalist imprisoned on pretext of being a Pakistani spy because he gave an honest report of Kartarpur, shows that this psychosis is not limited to the Sikhs only. No one that tells the truth can be safe in Modi India where truth itself is treason.
Not to be out done even the holiest place in Sikhism which is the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar has not escaped this politicization. To make matters worse, media spokesmen of the regime suggest that the threat that might be directed at the Golden Temple would be the fundamentalist backed by Pakistan, therefore, making a figurative foe and ensuring the Sikh population is in the dark and under suspicion. This strategy has not succeeded in painted Sikhs against its historic neighbors as the construction and management of Kartarpur Corridor to all the Sikhs pilgrims across the world has been a matter of pride and gratitude among Sikh community.
In other parts of India, besides Punjab, the crime wave that is the criminalization campaign to exiled Indian Sikh leaders in foreign countries. In Canada, the UK and Australia, NIA officials have indulged in lobbying the foreign governments to blacklist Sikhs organizations even when these were involved in peaceful political activism.
The international Sikhs diaspora is referred to as a front of the Khalistan is even without any kind of violent intentions. This remains an obsession of the Modi regime instilled with a greater fear that Sikh opposition, none the less, cultural, none the less, political, could not be suppressed even beyond the boundaries of India. In the meantime, back at home the Sikhs are slowly being evicted out of its lands, business and institutions. Economical crippling, law enforcement harassment, character assassination, the result is the family persecution causing the family to leave the land leaving the land to be transformed into a non-Sikhs to repopulate traditionally Sikhs majority regions. It is not safety this is ethnic dilution by design. But what of the history of India itself? Today when young Sikhs are being arrested, it is the same state that at one time lauded the name of Bhagat Singh, the revolutionary which had to struggle against British imperialism and was revered by millions of people. Banda Singh Bahadur, the great Sikh hero who fought with Mughal oppression does not figure much in the BJP run history. It is therefore not a surprise that Sikhs believe that they do not belong in India under the rule of Modi, who hails their sacrifices yet punishes them when they disagree.
Possibly the most graphic evidence indicating the decline of India into authoritarian injustice is the suppression by the forces of repression of such truth tellers as the woman Jyoti Malhotra who was imprisoned merely because she presented Pakistan in a neutral or a positive light. Her arrest demonstrated just how much of a sham India tried to put on its democracies front- a country that cannot tolerate the press freedom and religious integrity is a morally ruined country. However, the true reason why the regime is terrified is not due to truth but because the Sikh voice has denied silencing and they have been vocal since the farmers protest to human rights activism. Whenever Sikhs stand up to ensure their dignity, Modi state resorts to crack ups, demonization and terror laws. But still despite this oppression, the resistance spirit has not been crushed. The Sikh community remains in demand of justice, wanting to enforce their religion, against the state-imposed erasure. Through this struggle of identity, truth and rights, Sikhs have not emerged in this battle as agents of Pakistan but defenders of freedom of the Indian constitution, a freedom which they are paying a costly but honorable price.