Another warm spot

Prompted by reference 1 to have a poke around.

The Punjab was was a mixed area - I have not run down what sort of area; region, county, district or whatever - in British India and there was presumably some historical or geographical unity; the area made sense of a sort. Whatever the case, the Western half was mainly Muslim and is now in Pakistan, the eastern half was mainly Sikh or Hindu and is now in India. As far as I can make out a mixture of districts run by the British - red or dark green on the map above - and princely states where there were princes. At the time of partition a lot of the Sikhs and Hindus in the western half moved to the eastern half. I believe there was a great deal of communal violence.

The eastern half is now made up of three small states: Punjab (west), Haryana (south east) and Himachal Pradesh (north east). There is a lot of agriculture in the Punjab and there are disputes with neighbours over water rights. Traditionally, lots of Sikhs have served in the armed forces, perhaps also in the police.

There are around 22m Sikhs in the world, say 2m of which are overseas, with around 0.75 million in Canada and 0.25 million in the UK. About 75% of the balance are in today's state of Punjab, where they make up around half the population.

And there is lots of tangled history, including a separatist movement with a violent wing, a movement whose popularity and support among Sikhs in India appears to be declining. But it does not help that the present union government is aggressively Hindu and majoritarian - a far cry from the the inclusive, civilised secularism of the Congress leaders at the time of independence.

All of which puts the hosts of large diaspora communities in an awkward position - particular the US and Canada.

PS: I am reminded now of the Kurds, another people with a tangled history, and the Turkish irritation with the Swedes.

References

Reference 1: Alleged plot to assassinate Sikh separatist complicates US-India ties: Concerns of New Delhi involvement in attempted killing on US soil come as Washington has been seeking closer relations - John Reed, John Paul Rathbonn, Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: http://pakgeotagging.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-last-assembly-punjab-provincial.html. The source of the snap above, derived from the 1941 census, the last before partition.

Reference 3: https://www.punjabdata.com/. More facts and figures.

Reference 4: http://www.ipcs.org/issue_briefs/issue_brief_pdf/1787132181IPCS-ResearchPaper12-SimratDhillon.pdf. An alternative to the story at Wikipedia.