The book is a diligent, dense narrative of the insurgency in India's state of Punjab from the 1970s to the 1990s. An essential aspect of the book is captured in the Foreword, where Paul Wallace writes of “Jugdep's meticulous research—originally presented in a 1,000 page dissertation …” (p. xiv). In its present form, the book is 290 pages of 10-point text—more than 130,000 words. It is based on Indian periodicals, particularly that remarkable daily newspaper, The Tribune, of Chandigarh. The author also cites a few interviews in the U.S. with former activists or their relatives. It does not appear that he was able to do research in India; interviews with politicians or officials are not a feature.

The author offers a theoretical framework, which he italicizes and repeats five times: “patterns of political leadership,” defined as the dynamic interaction between and amongst state and ethnic elites, significantly affect the trajectory of ethnic subnationalist movements by defining the political relationship between an ethnic group and the central state (pp. 5, 8, 16, 263, 290). To illustrate the proposition, the book has twenty-three tables showing how up to two dozen organizations and individuals lined up in Punjab at particular moments under four headings—Moderates, Radicals, Extremists/Militants and Militants/Separatists. The groups move around. In nervous 1978, the author identifies only six players and they line up, two each, under Moderates, Radicals and Extremists (p. 45). By the bloody days of mid-1990, there are 19 players, only one under the Moderate heading and 11 under Militants/Separatists (p. 191). The large number in the Militants/Separatists category feeds into the author's argument: when ethnonationalist elites are divided (e.g., eleven organizations), they are ripe to be subdued by central-state elites if the latter are united.

The trigger for the beginning of the Khalistan insurgency, the author argues, was the competition among 1) Sikh politicians in the Congress Party, 2) “increasingly intense and unprincipled competition” between the Congress and the rival Sikh-based party, the Akali Dal, and 3) the equally intense rivalries inside the Akali Dal (p. 75). Desperate politicians were ready to fish in dangerous religio-political waters and to set aspiring religious warriors on each other.

The argument that vicious political rivalry provided the trigger for the Khalistan insurgency is strong and well established. But where did the gunpowder come from? And what was the fuel that kept the fire burning? The author does not weigh up the international considerations—the support from Pakistan and the Sikh diaspora, for example. He quickly passes over the peculiar historical circumstances of Punjab and the social and economic circumstances produced by the partition of 1947 and the Green Revolution of the late 1960s (pp. 5–6). The “patterns of political leadership,” he argues, provide the key variable and have the advantage of explaining the “demise” of the insurgency in the 1990s (p. 7). The lesson is that when central leaderships manage to paper over their differences, they can defuse ethnonationalist movements if the latter break into factions. He attempts to apply these propositions to insurgencies in Chechnya, Northern Ireland, Assam and Kashmir in a final chapter. Maps would have helped readers, both in the discussion of Punjab and in this comparative chapter; there are none.

The book provides a valuable compilation of detail about the Punjab insurgency—a narrative that goes year by year and almost month by month at some junctures. I think, however, that readers will find the book's overall treatment of what happened in Punjab leaves them craving a more incisive yet multi-faceted interpretation.