The Smethwick gurdwara at the heart of a geopolitical storm
Guru Nanak Gurdwara has become a focal point of pro-Khalistan activism in the West Midlands. Now its political ties are coming under closer scrutiny
By Samuel McIlhagga
“He could be an RSS or Modi spy…be careful what you share with strangers…probably part of RAW.”
This was one of three or four highly suspicious responses which greeted me when I posted a request for information on several forums about Sikh politics. I had not entered a role-playing chat room dedicated to a South Asian adaptation of a John le Carré novel. Instead, I had inquired online about the Khalistan movement in Birmingham, a separatist set of political, ethnic and religious organisations arguing for a Sikh homeland carved out of the northwestern Indian province of Punjab. One commenter requested I post my “journalism badge”.
The acronyms levelled at me, RAW (Research and Analysis Wing — India’s external intelligence agency) and RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — an ultra-nationalist Hindu paramilitary organisation associated with the ruling BJP party), testify to the paranoia that stalks any, and all, conversation about the Khalistan movement in the Midlands. The claim that I, an unassuming British journalist, might be an Indian intelligence asset only added to the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere pervading the movement.
Over the last few years, several Khalistan activists in the West Midlands have been issued with ‘threat to life’ warnings by Birmingham police in response to reports of potential violence from Indian intelligence. Meanwhile, many suspect foul play concerning the sudden death of Birmingham Khalistan activist Avtar Singh Khanda, who died in Birmingham City Hospital on June 15th, 2023 following the onset of unexplained acute myeloid leukaemia.
Khanda’s death came alongside the alleged assassination of a prominent Khalistan activist in Canada and the expulsion of Indian diplomats for supposed espionage, murder and ‘transnational repression’ by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In response, the Indian government under Narendra Modi has denied all allegations concerning both Khanda and the deaths of Khalistan activists in Canada. For many, it seems like Birmingham’s Sikh community, and especially its Khalistan supporting segment, now find themselves at the centre of a global geopolitical storm.
The focal point of the Khalistan movement in the West Midlands, I’m told, is the controversial Guru Nanak Gurdwara (GNG) Smethwick. Alongside its vaunted community functions, the Gurdwara has been described as a hub for Khalistan activism, the separatist Sikh Federation and an eccentric politically tinged form of Sikhism distinct from other gurdwaras.
The other thing that makes the GNG Smethwick of particular interest, at least to those opposed to the Khalistan movement, is some of its better-known attendees. These include important Sikh politicians: Edgbaston MP Preet Gill, the new Smethwick MP Gurinder Josan, who was a former trustee of the Gurdwara and Parbinder Kaur, a Sandwell Labour Councillor who was recently investigated by the party for pro-Babbar Khalsa (a Khalistan terrorist group) messages.
Of the two MPs, sources I talked to described Gill as closer to the Khalistan movement than Josan, who has since left his trusteeship at the GNG. Indeed, The Guardian has detailed accusations about how Gill allegedly undermined accounts of sexual violence towards women committed by conservative elements within gurdwaras, despite her progressive credentials. Gill was also pictured with Keir Starmer, before he was prime minister, in 2023 at the GNG Smethwick in front of a controversial Khalistan martyrs memorial (containing members of UK-proscribed organisations) and alongside a man holding a pro-Khalistan ‘Sikh manifesto.’
Of course, to many, Gill has no charge to answer. Sikh refugees moved to Birmingham and the West Midlands in the 1980s to escape the bloodshed of Indian-Khalistan violence: finding a place, community and political identity at the GNG distinct from India. In 2024, depending on who you ask, Khalistan is either a considered response to historic Indian government repression, growing Hindu-nationalism, and human rights abuses or an ethno-religious supremacist movement that seeks a Sikhs-only state through violent terrorism.
On a rainy Wednesday, I took a commuter train to Rolfe Street station, disembarking at the very ordinary west Birmingham suburb of Smethwick. There, cutting through the bleak October drizzle, I was met by the splendour of GNG Smethwick’s building, converted from an unremarkable Victorian church in the 1950s.
To the left of the golden-domed Gurdwara, next to L&P Gents Salon, Smethwick Cars and GHK accountants sits a fenced courtyard emblazoned with bright yellow flags bearing the legend ‘KHALISTAN’ and the martial Khanda emblem. However, passers-by, while stumbling through the rain, were paying little, to no, attention to the political valence of the Khalistani flags. Instead, the banners appeared like unremarkable neighbourhood ornaments, belying their significance as symbols of an ongoing international conflict.
In the Gurdwara entrance hall, I was greeted by GNG president Kuldeep Singh and several security guards decked out in high-vis jackets. Earlier we’d spoken on the phone, during which he’d relayed a breathless and monologic account of Khalistan’s history going back to the 18th and 19th centuries, from the theft of the storied Koh-i-Noor diamond by the British to the destruction of the Sikh Empire in 1849.
On the phone, Kuldeep seemed enthusiastic to convey the historical, political and indeed, emotional reasoning behind the Khalistan movement in Birmingham, telling me: “What is [the Sikh] nation supposed to do when their own army and services are killing them — basically ethnically cleansing them. In the 1980s Sikhs were being treated like second-class citizens, being abused.” Kuldeep cites Indian transnational repression in the Midlands as a leading contemporary cause of pro-Khalistan feeling: “We’ve been talking to the most senior police officials in the Midlands about [the threat of Indian intelligence]. We feel we’re being taken out.”
According to many Sikh activists I spoke to, this repression is engineered through intelligence services based at the Consulate General of India in Birmingham, although no evidence currently exists to corroborate this claim. While no mass protests have been staged outside Birmingham’s Consulate General, there have been large Khalistan actions against the Indian High Commission in London where the Indian flag was taken down and windows smashed.
One of the movement's most prominent opponents is Lord Singh, Director of the Network of Sikh Organisations, who sees the Khalistan movement as a betrayal of the religion’s idealistic universalism, anti-racism and anti-nationalism. In 2018 he clashed with Preet Gill and the Sikh Federation (which is usually seen as supportive of Khalistan issues and has a strong base in the West Midlands) over the inclusion of a Sikh ethnicity tick box in the 2021 UK census. Gill then accused Singh of bullying and harassment, of which he was cleared by the Commissioner for Standards.
In a letter, published under Freedom of Information (FOI), to the Chief Statistical Officer of the ONS (Office of National Statistics) John Pullinger, Lord Singh claimed in 2018 that the “Sikh Federation are pushing [a] demand for calling Sikhs an ethnic group, are arguing for Khalistan-the creation of a separate state for Sikhs in India.” He went on to claim that Preet Gill, as “one of their supporters,” had called a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the instruction of the Sikh Federation from which three of the five Sikhs in Parliament, including Singh, were excluded. The Sikh Federation disputes this account of events and told The Dispatch the meeting was called by vice chair Pat McFadden who did not act on their instruction.
Speaking to The Dispatch, Singh describes the campaign as a “cynical attempt to promote the notion Sikhs are separate from India.” He added that “the concept of Khalistan is simply not consistent with Sikh teachings.”
Of course, many Sikhs disagree. The Sikh Federation views Khalistan as an appropriate and pragmatic response to their ethnic-religious minority status in both India and the UK. They told The Dispatch that the Khalistan movement came down to a very basic principle: “The right to self-determination is a basic human right and international law allows for Sikhs to exercise this right.”
What can’t be disputed is that both the Indian state and the Khalistan movement have been responsible for horrific violence. The Indian government has a record of disappearing and torturing thousands of Sikhs in the 1980s, after the killing of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards over Operation Blue Star: an attack on the Sikh’s Golden Temple. At the same time, the Khalistani ‘Babba Khalsa’ group in Canada committed the 1985 Air India Flight 182 bombing killing 329 people, including 27 British citizens.
Back in the Gurdwara, Kuldeep leads me past huge oil paintings and posters of 18th-century Sikh warriors and up into the GNG boardroom, which in turn resembles a corporate office, replete with leather chairs and a massive circular table. This is the nerve centre of GNG, where connections are forged with Birmingham politicians. “We work with Preet Gill, Gurinder Josan and other local councillors, the Sandwell Council leader Kerrie Carmichael, we have to, we work with everyone, across the board,” Kuldeep tells me. “It’s not to do with what party you’re in — we lobby everyone.” Connections to politics run deep here: “Preet’s dad was my equivalent, he was the president for many years,” Kuldeep says.
A large part of the reason Gill’s connection to the Gurdwara is controversial, is the ‘Martyrs of the Sikh Homeland of Khalistan’ wall, which Kuldeep agreed to show me. This is a prominently displayed collection of dozens of images in a wing of the gurdwara just outside the main worship hall. He tells me: “these people [in] the pictures, these were normal people like us, right? But they stood up [to the Indian army]. They stood up to the injustice of 1984 when the Indian army went from village to village [in the Punjab] trying to exterminate Sikhs. [This is historic] we were almost wiped out by the Mughals, by the British. But we’ve never given up. Some might say [these men] are radicals or terrorists, but for us, they stood up.”
Yet, on closer inspection, many of the portraits do reveal connections to several proscribed organisations in the UK (Babbar Khalsa) and the USA, Japan and India (the ISYF). There are portraits of Harminder Singh Ji Nihang (7th Leader of the Khalistan Liberation Force and a former member of Babbar Khalsa in the 1990s), Bhai Balbir Singh Khaira (a member of the ISYF involved in kidnappings of Indian diplomats in Pakistan), Manjeet Singh Babbar (a ‘general’ of the Babbar Khalsa), and Jathedar Sukhdev Singh Babbar (co-leader of Babbar Khalsa whose followers, according to The New York Times, killed numerous women and children in India in the 1980s and 1990s).
I brought up the presence of these portraits with Gill over the phone asking her if she was aware of the martyrs wall and the organisations such as Babbar Khalsa and the ISYF represented across the gurdwara. She texted me back saying: “Hi, not sure where the information you have, which is inaccurate, has come from…it's my local place of worship, Gurinder Josan also attends the gurdwara and he is the local MP. Are you talking about the martyrs whose pics are in the golden temple in India?”
The fact that Gill and Gurinder Josan, both prominent Labour MPs have not mentioned the memorial bears scrutiny: did they know it was there, have they contacted the leadership of the gurdwara to complain? These types of pictures are, by no means, unusual for Khalistan supporters in the Midlands, according to Sikh Press Association representative Jasveer Singh: “The founders of the Khalistan movement, their pictures are everywhere. They’re supported everywhere. People have their pictures up in the living room. That’s the same in my household, in many households you’ll visit.”
Jasveer goes on to tell me over the phone that: “There isn’t a strong opposition to groups like Babbar Khalsa, because there is a clear understanding that what they did was needed at the time. When they [Babbar Khalsa] were active there was a genocide going on [against Sikhs]. These were men of the defence.”
The Dispatch also contacted GNG Smethwick for comment about the members of proscribed organisations adorning their walls. Kuldeep replied that: “These individuals are recognised as Martyrs of the Sikh Nation by the Sikh Supreme Authority, Sri Akal Takht Sahib.” He added that: “many dignitaries have visited GNG Smethwick [including the] Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police, Craig Guildford…These same photos are displayed in the Martyrs Gallery at Sach Khand Sri Darbar Sahib in Punjab Amritsar, which is the Sikh's holiest Shrine.”
Decades after the armed conflict of the 1980s, the issue of Khalistan is still hugely contentious in the West Midlands. One anonymous responder emailed me describing the Khalistan movement as an “archaic, backwards, bloodthirsty movement that seeks to supplant the somewhat harmonious atmosphere of Punjab.” Another, replied to me stating that: “the collective desire for Khalistan, as is the case with other repressed minorities, comes from the brutalisation faced by the [Indian] far-right government. For Sikhs, it has been constant since India’s inception.” Indeed, in Birmingham, the issue is seen as so toxic that many sources from within Sikh communities refused to talk to me on the record for fear of harassment, death threats and stalking from both Khalistani activists and Hindu nationalists.
Clearly there is a need for an open discussion to be had about what is, now, transforming into an international geopolitical conflict between India, Western governments tasked with protecting the Sikh diaspora and Khalistan activists themselves. What Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer thinks about links between Khalistan supporting Gurdwaras like GNG Smethwick and Labour politicians is also an open question.
Gurinder Josan MP, Parbinder Kaur and The Indian Consulate were all asked for comment. As of Saturday 19 October, we’ve received no reply.
Addition: We have added the Sikh Federation’s response to Lord Singh’s claim that the organisation instructed Preet Gill to hold the 2017 APPG meeting. The Sikh Federation told us the meeting was called by Pat McFadden and they did not instruct him to do so.
Correction: The manifesto in the 2023 photo of Preet Gill and Keir Starmer at GNG, Smethwick is titled ‘Sikh Manifesto,’ not ‘Khalistan Manifesto.’ However, despite its title, the manifesto supports the concept of Khalistan.
Great piece, learned a lot
Excellent article Samuel. Be good if you could provide updates on this issue. It's an issue being widely pushed in Europe, Australia and North America. I'm not sure there is much appetite for Khalistan by the average person in Punjab. They are more concerned with other pressing issues such as poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, high suicide and cancer rates the list goes on.
Makes you think if Khalistan became into being, would Preet Gill and others outside of Punjab give up their comforts to go live there?