The following information was provided to the DIRB in a 9 September 1997 telephone interview with a professor of anthropology at the University of Maine in Orono and a specialist on Sikhs and Sikh militants. This information adds to that previously provided in Responses to Information Requests IND26046.E of 27 January 1997, IND11717 of 23 September 1992, and IND4739 of 29 March 1990.

The source stated that Nirankari Sikhs do not live only in Punjab; for example, there is a neighbourhood in Delhi called Nirankari Colony. Nirankari Sikhs do not call their places of worship Gurdwaras as do orthodox Sikhs, but call them Nirankari Bhavans. The source cited a book by the Indian human rights worker and writer Ram Narayan Kumar (The Sikh Unrest and the Indian State, 1996) in which Nirankari sources claimed that in 1976 there were six million Nirankaris in India and abroad. Citing the same book, the source stated that the Nirankari flag is different from the flag of orthodox Sikhs; it is red, both as a sign of self-differentiation and to mark their revolutionary role in society. The source stated that the current leader of the Nirankari Sikhs is Hardev Singh, the son of Gurbachan Singh, and that Hardev Singh visited the United States a few years ago to meet with Nirankari Sikhs there.

For additional information on Nirankaris, please see Contemporary Religions: A World Guide, available at Regional Documentation Centres. Please also see John C. B. Webster, The Nirankari Sikhs (Delhi: MacMillan, 1979), an excerpt of which is been attached to Response to Information Request IND4739 of 29 March 1990. There is a reference to Nirankaris in the December 1992 DIRB Question and Answer paper India: Sikhs Outside Punjab. Please also see the attachment below from The New Encyclopaedia Britannica.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the DIRB within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum. Please find below the list of additional sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Professor of anthropology specializing in Sikh militants, University of Maine, Orono. 9 September 1997. Telephone interview.

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1989. 15th ed. Vol. 8. Edited by Philip W. Goetz. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 722.

The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of India, 1989.

Country Reports 1996.

India Today [New Delhi]. 31 December 1995-1 September 1997.

DIRB Subject file: Sikhs.

Electronic sources: DIRB Databases, Global News Bank, LEXIS/NEXIS, REFWORLD

(UNHCR database), World News Connection (WNC).

Three oral sources contacted did not provide information on the requested subject.