Khalistani and self-proclaimed “Sikh leader” Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who claimed Sikhs will support Pakistan, goes mute after Pakistan targeted Gurudwaras
Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which came into existence due to Islamist hatred towards Hindus, Sikhs and outright refusal to coexist peacefully with Kafirs in a united India, has even after 78 years of the bloodied partition failed to relinquish its hatred for non-Muslims and India. In demonstration of its abject hatred for the Sikh community, Pakistan targeted a Gurudwara in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch and directed its drones and missiles towards the Golden Temple in the holy city of Amritsar in India’s Punjab. While Indian Sikhs stand rock solid with Indian Armed Forces against Pakistan’s cowardly attacks, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Khalistani separatist and self-proclaimed ‘Sikh leader’ has slipped into hibernation.
Completely oblivious to the fact that India’s Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh himself is a Sikh, Pannun in a recent interview to a Pakistani propaganda YouTube channel claimed that not only the people of Punjab but also Sikh soldiers and officers of the Indian Armed Forces are with Pakistan at his call.
Pannun claimed that Sikhs would support Pakistan and asserted that the current situation is different from that of 1965 and 1971. “This is 2025,” he said, and asserted that Sikhs would stand with Pakistan like a brick wall. He emphasised that Sikhs would not allow Indian forces to attack Pakistan through Punjab. However, this would be possible, according to him, only if Pakistan openly supported the cause of Khalistan, a separate Sikh nation.
Pannun made claims that 20 million Indian Sikhs would stand “like a brick wall” with Pakistan against India in a potential war and serve langar to Pakistani troops. His rhetoric, steeped in anti-India vitriol, removed from reality, painted Pakistan, which has an opprobrious history of systematically persecuting Sikh minorities on its soil for simply existing, as a ‘friendly’ neighbour to a fantasised Khalistan.
Yet, when Pakistan, which pretends to support Sikhs only to use pro-Khalistan narrative to further division and widen religious fissures, targets the holiest site of Sikhs, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, to vent out its frustration against India’s anti-terror strikes under Operation Sindoor, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun remains silent. Otherwise, harping all the time, spewing venom against India, the Khalistan daydreamer made no video, issued no statement outraging over Pakistan’s audacious attempt to attack the Golden Temple, even though the debris from intercepted projectiles was found near the Golden Temple.
In Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch, the Sikh community came under targeted attack by Pakistani forces on 8th May. The wall of the Gurudwara Singh Sabha Poonch was damaged in heavy shelling by Pakistan. Moreover, four Sikhs died in the cowardly attack by Pakistani forces on Indian civilians. Amreek Singh and Ranjit Singh—local shopkeepers, an ex-army official and a devout Granthi Amarjeet Singh, and a homemaker, Ruby Kaur, were killed instantly when a shell exploded near them.
Amarjeet Singh used to play the tabla at the Gurudwara, while another victim, Amreek Singh, was a Raagi who sang hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib at another gurdwara in Poonch. Both of them were killed at different locations in Pakistani shelling.
Expressing shock and grief over the killing of innocent Sikhs by Pakistan, Narinder Singh from the District Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Poonch, said: “It was such a fate that not only Amarjeet Singh but also Amreek Singh died in the shelling today. They were small-time preachers for the community. We have never witnessed such heavy shelling in Poonch before. We saw the Kargil war, but civilian establishments largely remained untouched. We thought we had learned to live under shelling. Today, that illusion was broken. The damage to the gurdwara is minor, but the shock is massive.”
On 8th May, Pakistani forces launched a targeted drone attack on the holy city of Amritsar, however, the Indian Air Defence System foiled these threats. During the attack in the evening, a complete blackout was implemented in Amritsar. Missile debris was found in Makhan Windi, a border village of Amritsar. Similar missile debris was found near Jethuwal and Pandher in Punjab.
Amid heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, holy saroops of Sri Guru Granth Sahib from the Singh Sabha Gurdwara in Havelian village were taken on 9th May to Gurdwara Ramsar Sahib in Amritsar.
While Indians are not unaware of the hatred Pakistani Islamist army, government and its largely brainwashed populace harbours for Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and all other non-Muslim communities, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in his desperation to find some relevance for his secessionist dreams, mollycoddles the Pakistani establishment. Blinded by hatred for India, so much so that even the killings of Indian Sikhs, attacks on the holy city of Amritsar and on a Gurudwara in Poonch do not seem outrageous enough for the self-proclaimed ‘Sikh leader’ to call out and condemn Pakistan.
This, evidently, is sheer cowardice and a betrayal of the very Sikh community that Pannun so desperately wants to carve out a separate country for, ironically, while remaining ensconced in a comfy house in the United States. While has named his pro-Khalistan group as “Sikhs for Justice”, the Khalistani motormouth himself fails to muster courage to condemn his Pakistani ‘friends’ even as the latter’s cowardly attacks endangered the Golden Temple, the holy city of Amritsar and killed Sikh civilians in Poonch. Suddenly, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun forgets his advocacy for ‘Sikh justice’.
His deafening silence can have only two meanings, either he is complicit in Pakistan’s agenda of targeting religious sites in India, including the holy sites of Sikhs, or he is having an epiphany that his pro-Pakistan stance has spectacularly backfired since India, whom he deems an enemy of Sikhs are actually the protectors while the supposed ‘friend’ Pakistan is an attacker.
While Pakistan’s ISI has long been backing Khalistani secessionists and terrorists to break India and challenge its territorial integrity, the hostile neighbour has never had any genuine respect for the Sikh community. From persecuting Pakistani Sikhs, destroying the statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and forcibly converting Sikh girls to their Muslim abductors, Pakistan has demonstrated its anti-Sikh nature. Despite this, the ISI prefers to exploit fault lines to widen religious divides in India.
Not that Indian Sikhs care if Pannun speaks up for them, his silence, even as Pakistan’s strikes targeted Sikh heartland in India that the Khalistani separatist is more loyal to his divisive anti-India propaganda than to the Sikh faith he exploits.
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