HAF Media Guide

Who is behind the recent spate of Hindu temple vandalism?

In the past three years there have been a number of incidents of vandalism at Hindu temples on both coasts of the United States, with mandirs in California, New York, in Canada, and Australia all targeted.

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These incidents share similar messaging and methodology: spray-painting temple signs, exterior walls, and sometimes the ground outside the facility with anti-Hindu and anti- India graffiti, as well as messaging vilifying Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi or other senior members of his government. Very often graffiti has used the phrase ‘Murdabad’ to urge ‘death to the Land of Hindus’ or ‘death to’ various Indian officials. In some instances explicitly pro-Khalistan messaging has also been used. And in one of the incidents, alongside the hateful graffiti, in an act of sabotage, the water line to the temple was cut.

Perpetrators of these acts have at times posted video footage on social media broadcasting the vandalism from different angles. Some of these videos feature dramatic music and pro-Khalistani rhetoric. Almost all have been shared and amplified by pro-Khalistan social media handles. Ahead of one of the temple attacks which was recorded and video later posted to social media, pro-Khalistan activists also posted video footage where an effigy of Prime Minister Modi wrapped in an Indian flag was kicked and beaten with poles donning Khalistan flags and then tied to the back of a truck and dragged in a parking lot just a few miles from the temple that was attacked.

Though mandirs from multiple Hindu organizations have been attacked, BAPS mandirs in particular (an abbreviation for Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha) have been targeted in the past year.

These recent incidents accompany ones in 2023, where Khalistani separatists attacked or staged violent protests at the Consulate General of India in San Francisco and India High Commision in London.

In light of this, HAF is producing this media guide on what we know, and don’t know, about these incidents, and how they are connected.

How many incidents have there been?

Since 2022, there have been at least 19 temple vandalism incidents sharing similar anti-Hindu, anti-India, pro-Khalistan graffiti in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

The most recent ones include:

  • March 2025: BAPS temple; Chino Hills, San Bernardino County, California
  • September 2024: BAPS temple; Mather, California (Sacramento area)
  • September 2024: BAPS temple; Melville, New York (Long Island)
  • July 2024: BAPS temple; Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
  • February 2024: Sri Sai Temple; Pleasanton, Alameda County, California
  • January 2024: SMVS Shri Swaminarayan Temple; Newark, Alameda County, California
  • December 2023: Sherawali Mandir; Hayward, Alameda County, California
  • December 2023: SMVS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir; Newark, Alameda County, California

In addition to temples themselves, in one incident outside a Queens, New York temple a statue of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi was smashed. The vandal was later arrested.

Who is behind these incidents of vandalism and how do we know this?

Though no one group has explicitly claimed responsibility for these attacks on Hindu temples, the nature of the graffiti and timing of them — some occurring just prior to symbolic referendums in support of Khalistan, or in two cases, coinciding with Prime Minister Modi’s official visit to the United States and a public community event hosting him in New York — indicate that Khalistan activists are behind them, with Khalistan social media accounts sometimes celebrating the incidents.

In some cases it has been alleged that the vandalism has been a false flag operation of some sort to discredit the movement for Khalistan. No evidence whatsoever has been put forth to support this position and such an assertion is plainly contradicted by the evidence available at each crime scene.

What is Khalistan and who is advocating for it?

Khalistan is the proposed theocratic Sikh state its supporters would like to carve out of northwest India, from the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, and in some maps parts of Himachal Pradesh and even the National Capital Region of New Delhi.

Some groups supporting the creation of Khalistan are designated banned terrorist groups in India, as well as in the United States. Indeed, the largest act of aviation terrorism prior to the 9/11 attacks was the bombing of Air India flight 182 by Khalistani terrorists, which occurred 40 years ago this June. All 329 people on board, including 268 Canadian citizens, 27 British citizens, and 22 Indian citizens, were killed.

The Khalistan movement has been largely dormant in India itself over the past decades. In the 1980s and 1990s it was responsible for civil unrest in Punjab that killed tens of thousands of Sikhs and Hindus alike, and ultimately led to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and anti-Sikh riots in the aftermath. In the diaspora, however, the separatist movement is resurgent and supporters of the movement in the US, Canada, and UK continue to ramp up their anti-India activities.

Most Sikhs either in India or elsewhere want nothing to do with the Khalistan movement and have good relations with the Hindu community. The majority of deaths during the Khalistan insurgency were themselves Sikhs who opposed the separatists.

In response to this resurgence of support for Khalistan, India has been accused of targeting its leaders in both Canada and the United States.

The killing in June 2023 of a Canadian Khalistani activist, designated a terrorist by the Government of India and who was on Canadian no fly-lists, as well as targeting of a US-based supporter of Khalistan, himself affiliated with groups banned as terrorists in India and previously arrested in the UK for his alleged ties to terrorism, were both done, the Canadian and US governments allege, at the behest of India.

In response, a number of organizations and individuals sympathetic to the Khalistan movement, have proposed bills to oppose “transnational repression” at the state and federal levels, specifically naming India. These bills not only minimize and shift the focus away from extremists committing hate crimes against Hindu targets, but would empower law enforcement and emergency management personnel to criminally prosecute diaspora groups and community organizations who merely speak out against terrorism and extremism, by accusing them of engaging in “transnational repression” on behalf of a foreign country.

Why is BAPS being singled out?

While temples from a number of Hindu organizations have been vandalized, BAPS mandirs have been targeted six times in the past three years, with many of the most recent attacks occurring at BAPS temples. It’s not entirely clear why this is the case. Speculating, though,  there are a few possible reasons:

  • Historically, BAPS originates in the Indian state of Gujarat. Prime Minister Modi was formerly the Chief Minister of Gujarat and thus BAPS is indirectly associated with him personally. Thus, an attack on a BAPS temple is an attack on Modi and the Indian state, even though BAPS is an independent organization with no more affiliation with the Government of India than any other Hindu organization of its size.
  • BAPS temples are often particularly elaborate and prominent symbols of Hinduism within their local area. They often draw local politicians and prominent persons of many faiths to them for visits and thus are symbols of interfaith Hindu outreach and goodwill. In this way they undermine the message of Khalistani supporters that Hindus are an oppressor class and become obvious targets.
  • BAPS mandirs are some of the few Hindu temples in a number of Muslim countries, thus serving as interfaith bridges in those countries. This is admittedly a perhaps second-tier motive, but shouldn’t be overlooked, considering that Pakistan has allegedly provided material support for some Khalistani groups. Symbols of Hindu-Muslim cooperation and coexistence undermine Pakistan’s very reason for being, as well as undermine the message that Hindus are oppressors more broadly.

What does the words ‘murdabad’ and ‘zindabad’ mean?

In a number of the incidents the Urdu word ‘murdabad’ has been spray-painted. This word means ‘death to’, though it is sometimes softened in translation to ‘down with’. It is contrasted with the use of the word ‘zindabad’, which means ‘long live’ and is used in the same way the ‘vive’ or ‘viva’ is used in French or Spanish. So the Urdu phrase ‘Hindustan murdabad’ means ‘Death to Hindustan (the land of Hindus)’, whereas ‘Khalistan zindabad’ means ‘Long live Khalistan (the land of the pure)’. Worth noting is that in some cases the word ‘Hindustan’ was hyphenated as ‘Hindu-stan’, emphasizing the anti-Hindu aspect of the vandalism.

In one instance a journalist misread the word ‘murdabad’ as being a misspelling of a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Reporters should be clear about what the word ‘murdabad’ means: It is an explicit and direct call for the death or destruction of the person or place being mentioned.

So what are its history, aims and methods of Khalistani separatists?

The following is an excerpt from HAF’s brief Land of the Pure: The Khalistan Movement in India.

Starting in the early 1980s, radical separatists spearheaded a bloody campaign to carve out an independent, theocratic Sikh state known as Khalistan (Land of the Pure) in Punjab and other parts of Northern India.

The roots of Khalistan lie in the British colonial policies of the late 1800s and early 1900s that sought to divide Sikhs and Hindus. Sikhs were recruited into the British army in large numbers to use against Hindu rulers that rebelled against the British Raj.  Subsequently, after Indian independence in 1947, tensions between the state of Punjab and the central Indian government surfaced, leading to grievances amongst many Sikhs against the Indian government.

Punjab, for instance, was trifurcated into the states of Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh in 1966, along linguistic lines (Punjab as a Punjabi speaking state, and Haryana and Himachal Pradesh as Hindi speaking states), which created resentment amongst many Sikhs that the historic contours of Punjab were being further divided after it has already been divided between India and Pakistan in 1947.

Many Sikhs in Punjab also resented sharing the joint capital of Chandigarh with Haryana, and viewed water sharing agreements with Haryana as unfair and favoring farmers there to the detriment of those in Punjab. Sikh religious leaders were additionally apprehensive of the community losing its identity and culture, and wanted greater state powers for Punjab.

Although these types of issues often mark normal state-federal government relations in newly independent countries such as India, they were perceived by many Sikhs as religiously motivated policies of discrimination against them and were exploited by radical leaders, who built a narrative that Sikh interests would only be safe in an independent Sikh country of Khalistan. This was further compounded by an “incendiary mix of unprincipled politics and the manipulation of religious identities and institutions” that brought radical Sikh forces to the forefront of politics in the state of Punjab.

Violent clashes between radicalized Sikh groups led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and the Nirankari sect (considered heretical by the former) in April 1978 is considered the beginning of the Khalistan movement. And in 1980, Bhindranwale and his supporters started targeting Hindus and murdered Lala Jagat Narain, the publisher of Punjab Kesri, a vernacular newspaper, and a vocal critic of Bhindranwale. This was soon followed by large scale violence against civilians across the state.

The Khalistan movement peaked in the 1980-90s and the violent campaign included bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and selective killing and massacres of civilians.  The movement resulted in nearly 22,000 deaths of Sikhs and Hindus alike, including approximately 12,000 civilians. The violence took on an international dimension in 1985 when Khalistani separatists based in Canada exploded a bomb on an Air India flight enroute from Toronto to New Delhi, killing all 329 people on board, including 82 children under the age of 13. That incident remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Canadian history.

In response to the movement, and in an attempt to end militancy in the state, Indian security forces and local Punjab police responded with force, at times committing human rights abuses. Moreover, the Congress Party led central government contributed to problems in the state by undermining democratic institutions and interfering with elections, and failing to adequately address local/state issues and relations between the state and the central government.

It is important to note, however, that the majority of the police, security forces, and politicians in Punjab were and are Sikh. In fact, the police captain credited for ending the Khalistan insurgency, KPS Gill, was himself a Sikh. Moreover, Sikh politicians, such as former Chief Minister Beant Singh, were themselves assassinated by militants.

The majority of the victims of the militant violence were innocent Sikhs who were killed by separatists for opposing the Khalistan movement. In 1990-1991, for instance, Sikh civilians comprised over seventy percent of the victims of militant attacks. Moreover, Mazhabi Sikhs (so called lower caste Sikhs in Punjab) were frequently the victims of militant attacks.

Hindus were also targeted in large numbers as part of a strategy to ignite communal tensions and force Hindus to flee Punjab in fear. Along with systematic violence, posters often appeared in villages threatening Hindus to leave and those Sikhs that sought to help Hindus were similarly threatened by militants. As a result, thousands of Hindus fled their homes in Punjab and lived as refugees in neighboring states and New Delhi.

The horrific violence in Punjab was accompanied by virulent anti-Hindu rhetoric and propaganda that demonized and intimidated the state’s minority Hindu community, and encouraged and celebrated violence against Hindu civilians.  This was part of an attempt by militants, led by Bhindranwale, to disrupt the social fabric of the state and create divisions between Hindus and Sikhs, who had historically enjoyed strong relations, shared religious traditions, and frequently intermarried.

Bhindranwale, the most prominent Khalistan leader, frequently used anti-Hindu rhetoric in his speeches. Noted Sikh journalist, Kushwant Singh, described Bhindranwale as a “hate monger” who routinely used hateful and inflammatory language against Hindus and exhorted every Sikh to “kill 32 Hindus to solve the Hindu-Sikh problem.”

As the Khalistan movement expanded and violence escalated, Bhindranwale and his heavily armed followers occupied the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, in Amritsar. Starting in 1982, Bhindranwale used the Golden Temple as a base of operations and stored arms and ammunition there. He openly declared that he was directing attacks and violent acts from the sacred Temple. There were also reports of the militants committing atrocities on pilgrims and devotees inside the sacred space.

On June 6, 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered an army operation — code-named Operation Bluestar — to flush out Bhindranwale and the militants holed up in the Golden Temple, the holiest of Sikh temples.

According to an academic study of the Khalistan insurgency:

“…thousands of pilgrims were in the Golden Temple grounds when the [army] assault began, and the insurgents used many of them as human shields. Bhindranwale and many of his associates were killed – but there were a very large number of civilian casualties as well.”

The fallout from Operation Bluestar resulted in the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the subsequent anti-Sikh pogrom in New Delhi in October 1984 in response to Prime Minister Gandhi’s assassination. The pogrom took the lives of over 3,000 innocent Sikhs.

While the Indian government and judiciary have taken some positive steps to prosecute and convict those leaders involved in planning and carrying out the violence, several individuals and high level government leaders have still not been brought to justice more than 30 years later. Collectively, Operation Blue Star, and the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 and lack of justice thereafter have left a deep psychological wound in the minds of many Sikhs, and have further fueled the Khalistan militant movement or support for it.

In both its heyday and today, the Khalistan movement has received financial and logistical support from pro-Khalistan separatists based in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Agency.

In particular, according to Indian defence analyst, Ajai Sahni, Pakistan’s ISI spy agency provided refuge, training, arms, and funding to Khalistani terrorist organizations and coordinated “their activities with Islamist terrorist organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, as well as with organised crime operators, and drug and weapons’ smugglers who have assisted in the movement of men and materials across the border into Punjab.”

Moreover, according to foreign affairs analyst Christine Fair, “[t]he involvement of the diaspora was an important dimension of the Sikh insurgency. Not only was it a source of diplomatic and financial support, it was also a factor in enabling Pakistan to get involved in fueling the Sikh separatist efforts. Sikhs in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States played important roles in arranging for cadres to travel to Pakistan, where they received financial and military assistance.”

Khalistan supporters in the West have actively used American, Canadian, and British soil to lobby their respective governments against India, while raising funds for Khalistan terror groups, often using informal hawala networks (often used by criminal and terrorist organizations in South Asia) for transferring money.

There have further been a number of investigations into the activities of pro-Khalistan extremists in the US, including by the FBI, DEA, and United States Customs Service (USCS).

In March 2017, for instance, a Khalistan extremist and US resident, Balwinder Singh, was convicted of providing material support to Khalistani terrorist groups in India and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. He had been arrested by the FBI in 2013 on “charges of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to murder or otherwise harm persons in a foreign country” and for falsifying an asylum claim. Singh was providing support to BKI and another group, Khalistan Zindabad Force, to commit acts of terrorism in India.

And previously, an undercover USCS sting operation of a Khalistan activist in California, Bhajan Singh Bhinder, revealed that he attempted to purchase military grade weapons, such as “M-16s, AK-47s, detonators, night-vision goggles, mobile communications equipment, remote-control equipment, grenade and rocket launchers,” for Khalistan groups committing terror attacks in India. The investigation was later abandoned after Bhinder backed out of the deal. Bhinder has since gone on to found several other organizations, most notably Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI), which engages in anti-India and anti-Hindu activities.

Another US-based organization, Sikhs for Justice, has become the most prominent pro-Khalistan group in the West and reportedly enjoys the support of the ISI. It purportedly peacefully advocates for a referendum on Khalistan, but has openly associated with convicted Khalistan terrorists and those suspected of being involved in large-scale terror plots in India. It funded the legal defense of Jagtar Singh Tara, for instance, a leader of Indian designated terrorist group Khalistan Tiger Force, who assassinated the Chief Minister of India’s Punjab state in 1995.

SFJ and its legal advisor, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, also have close links with Paramjit Singh Pamma, a BKI fundraiser wanted by Indian authorities for his material support of terrorism. Mr. Pannun himself was reportedly arrested by police in the United Kingdom in 2000 after receiving terrorist training in Pakistan and was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his involvement with BKI, a banned terrorist group in the UK, although he denies the allegation.

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