The Khalistan movement is a separatist movement seeking to create a homeland for Sikhs by establishing an ethno‐religious sovereign state called Khalistan in the Punjab region. The proposed boundaries of Khalistan vary between different groups; some suggest the entirety of the Sikh-majority Indian state of Punjab, while larger claims include Pakistani Punjab and other parts of North India such as Chandigarh, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh. Shimla and Lahore have been proposed as the capital of Khalistan.
British Punjab Province, in 1909
Indira Gandhi
Irish Naval Service recovering bodies from the Air India Flight 182 bombing
The aircraft involved, VT-EFO, seen on 10 June 1985, less than two weeks before the bombing of Air India Flight 182
Separatism is the advocacy of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental, or gender separation from the larger group. As with secession, separatism conventionally refers to full political separation. Groups simply seeking greater autonomy are usually not considered separatists. Some discourse settings equate separatism with religious segregation, racial segregation, or sex segregation, while other discourse settings take the broader view that separation by choice may serve useful purposes and is not the same as government-enforced segregation. There is some academic debate about this definition, and in particular how it relates to secessionism, as has been discussed online.
Support for Catalan independence is based on the idea that Catalonia is a nation
The former KLA leader Hashim Thaçi (left) and then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden with Declaration of Independence of Kosovo
Pro-independence rally in Iraqi Kurdistan in September 2017
Pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, April 2015