VANCOUVER - A group of B.C. Sikh students who wore controversial T-shirts to school have sparked a debate within their community and left some wondering why a group of youths would latch onto a divisive movement dating from before they were born.
The students showed up to Surrey's Princess Margaret Secondary School earlier this month wearing shirts emblazoned with the word Khalistan, referring to a Sikh separatist movement advocating for a Sikh homeland in India's Punjab region that was often linked to violence in the 1980s.
On the back was a quote from Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Khalistan advocate who was killed during India's 1984 raid on the Golden Temple.
School administrators told the students not to wear the shirts again.
Some have brushed off the T-shirts as youthful rebellion or dismissed the students as naive and uninformed.
The teens, however, insist they know the history and wanted to make a statement that would be heard.
"When people see this, they'll look at it and be like, `Wow, there's people still out there that still believe in this stuff. And it's not just the older generation, it's the youth,''' one of the boys said last week during a call-in show on a local multicultural radio station.
Another student -- they didn't provide their names -- made it clear the group was, in fact, advocating for an independent Sikh state.
"We want freedom in Punjab,'' he said.
There have been fears in recent years that the pro-Khalistan movement -- and the violent extremism often associated with it -- could be facing renewed growth in Canada.
The word evokes images of the Sikh militants who occupied the Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine, in 1984 in their fight for Khalistan, which ended in a bloody raid on the temple by the Indian army.
It's long been believed that pro-Khalistan extremists plotted the 1985 Air India bombing, which killed 329 people, mostly Canadians, reportedly in retaliation for the Golden Temple raid.
And several pro-Khalistan groups -- including the International Sikh Youth Federation and Babbar Khalsa -- have been labelled terrorist organizations in Canada.
But contemporary advocates of an independent Sikh homeland say they're no longer interested in violence.
The teens in Surrey argued as much during their radio appearance.
"We tend to misunderstand the whole concept of Khalistan. Right when they hear the word, they get scared. They think that this is a violent movement or there's going to be people killed,'' one of them said.
But John Thompson, president of the Toronto-based MacKenzie Institute, said anyone who suggests the Khalistan movement has ever been non-violent is rewriting history.
"Thousands upon thousands of people died as a result of this, and most of them were Sikhs -- I think the greatest share of people killed were Sikhs murdered by the Khalistan militants, although the Indian government came a pretty close second,'' he said in an interview.
Thompson said there are probably several reasons why young people would take up the cause.
He acknowledges it may very well be just an attempt to shock, but he said there could be more troubling forces at work, as well.
"The older Khalistan militants that came to Canada in the '80s and '90s are still preaching the cause, and when you get a terrorism cause past its mature date, they still try to romanticize the cause because it justifies whatever they've done,'' he said.
"The kids, the second generation, the third generation, will buy some of the myths. It's the second or third generation who will determine just how dangerous they're prepared to be.
"You can never be entirely relaxed about something like the Khalistan movement.''
The T-shirt incident has twice been the subject of heated debate on the same call-in radio program, and the president of one of the largest Sikh temples in North America said it has prompted real concern among local Sikhs.
"The community was quite upset with this issue,'' said Balwant Gill of Surrey's Guru Nanak Sikh Temple.
But T-shirts and talk radio don't amount to a resurgence, said Gill.
"Not many people now are supporting Khalistan, not a single person in Punjab,'' he said. "That movement in India is dead. ... I don't know if those kids know the meaning of Khalistan.''
Still, the issue continues to surface.
Also this month, the Sikh Vaisakhi festival and parade in Surrey drew criticism after pictures of the founders of several terrorist groups and the assassins of former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi were displayed on signs labelling them as martyrs.
The images prompted a complaint from the Indian government.
Last year, the same parade included a float featuring a photo of Talwinder Singh Parmar, the alleged mastermind of the Air India bombing.
Children were also seen at last year's event wearing jackets with the logo of the International Sikh Youth Federation.
Prof. Aditya Raj of the University of British Columbia said Sikhs in India 20 years ago had genuine grievances about the way they were treated by the Indian government, but he said times have changed.
"We have to understand the current prime minister of India is a Sikh himself, so I think we need to move beyond some of the issues that have divided communities,'' said Raj, whose research focuses on India diaspora in North America.
Raj said the Khalistan movement is largely non-existent in India, but he said ethnic communities living away from their native countries can be more prone to extremism, even if they don't fully understand it.
"When you are in the diaspora, you try to remember the links and culture, but when you push it too far, it becomes sometimes a xenophobia,'' he said.
"I think the main reason this happens sometimes is because of lack of proper engagement in the past, lack of proper education, and sometimes ignorance fuels their enthusiasm.''
