On Sunday, April 23, after being on the run for five weeks, Amritpal Singh, a Sikh separatist leader, was arrested in Punjab, in northwestern India. Pointedly, Amritpal was arrested while hiding out in the village of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a separatist leader from the 1980s who was considered a terrorist by the Indian government. Bhindranwale was committed to creating a homeland for the Sikhs known as Khalistan, literally “the land of the Khalsa,” a reference to those who accept Sikhism as their faith and also specifically to the more devout who display their allegiance with outward signs like wearing a beard and covering their uncut hair with a turban. In India, Amritpal was accused of styling himself like Bhindranwale to gain credibility as a leader of Sikhs, particularly among the diaspora in the West. 

The month-long manhunt for Amritpal had led to an internet blackout in Punjab and protests outside Indian embassies in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and Australia. On social media in India, decades-old arguments about Sikh secessionists were being revived.

Last week, before Amritpal’s arrest, a video went viral across Indian social media. It featured a young woman, an Indian flag painted on her face, ostensibly being turned away from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, the most important religious site for the world’s 30 million Sikhs.

Off camera, a man asks a temple guard why the girl was denied entry. The guard, carrying a steel tumbler, says something barely audible about the flag on her face. “Is this not India?” asks the man off camera. “This is Punjab,” the guard says.