Ganga Singh Dhillon

Ganga Singh Dhillon, a Sikh of Washington, DC, gave the presidential address at the 54th All-India Sikh Educational Conference at Chandigarh in March 1981. Khushwant Singh writes that the Chief Khalsa Diwan, which organised the conference, invited him to speak, and that he described the Sikhs as a nation apart from other Indians.

Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles prints part of the address. Dhillon defined a nation as a people with common descent, language, culture, heritage and historical tradition, argued that the Sikhs meet each test, and concluded that they are a nation "by any definition". Gurmit Singh says the conference resolved that the Sikhs are a separate nation and asked for consultative status with the non-political bodies of the United Nations on the lines of the Palestine Liberation Organisation; Khushwant Singh says it asked the United Nations to accord them Associated Status. The resolutions were greeted with cries of "Khalistan Zindabad".

Key moments

• 13 to 15 March 1981: the conference at Chandigarh, by Gurmit Singh's dates; the Home Ministry's note says 17 and 18 March.
• March and April 1981: The Home Ministry's note, which Gurmit Singh prints as an appendix, describes him as "a U.S. based travel agent" who came to India in about mid-March 1981 with passports, official seals, letterheads, maps and postage stamps of Khalistan and handed the material to the Dal Khalsa. The note adds that his visa was cancelled, and alleges "Pakistani and American connections" with him and with Dr Jagjit Singh. These are the state's allegations, and the sources opened give no reply from Dhillon to them.
• 16 April 1981: the Chief Khalsa Diwan, by Resolution No. 246, disowned any demand for a Sikh state or for membership of the United Nations, without disowning the resolution that the Sikhs are a nation, Gurmit Singh writes.
• July 1981: replying to Dr Gopal Singh, who held that the Sikhs are a qaum and not a nation, and to Khushwant Singh, who said they are no different from Hindus racially or ethnically, Dhillon wrote that nationhood is not decided by blood line or ethnic stock alone.

Khushwant Singh later named Dhillon's Nankana Sahib Foundation among the small Sikh organisations abroad that he said existed mainly in names printed on their letterheads.

Remembered for: the 1981 address that put the claim of Sikh nationhood before the Chandigarh conference, and the state's account of his part in the Khalistan demand of that year.