Sikh Activists See It as Freedom. India Calls It Terrorism.

Canadian and U.S. accusations of assassination plots have drawn attention to the Sikh separatist movement, which India calls a source of organized crime.

In the months since Canada and the United States accused India of carrying out assassination plots against Sikh separatist leaders on North American soil, a lingering question has hung over the accusations: Why would the Indian government take such a risk?

Inside India, the Sikh cause to carve out a land called Khalistan from the state of Punjab largely fizzled out decades ago. Yet the Indian government still frames the Khalistan movement as a threat to national security — for reasons more mundane but no easier to weed out.

India has repeatedly accused Khalistan-related activists in countries like Pakistan and, more recently, Canada of sponsoring gang warfare, drug trafficking and extortion in India. Proceeds from these crimes, according to India’s government, sustain a campaign of what Indian officials call terrorism in the name of a religious political movement.

“The government of India has sought to project the threat as a wider national security issue, casting a number of domestic political issues in Punjab within the framework of ‘terrorism,’” said Ajai Sahni, the executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi.

But Mr. Sahni and other independent security analysts said that international gangs, guns for hire and other criminals are indeed a problem in Punjab, where the Sikh religious community makes up a majority of the population.

While there are legitimate believers in the cause of a Sikh homeland, criminals have “opportunistically aligned themselves to the Khalistan cause, because in some sense it ennobles them in the eyes of people to be seen as political activists rather than criminals,” he added.