No other subject since the Emergency in India (1975–77) has commanded such attention as the recent developments in Punjab: specialists and non-specialists alike have felt the need to comment on the events that preceded and followed the Indian Army’s Operation Blue Star. The purpose of this chapter is not to add to this output, but rather to distinguish and evaluate the various explanations that have been offered for what is commonly referred to as the ‘Punjab problem’. Such an exercise is unlikely to be comprehensive or satisfactory. However given the confusion which characterizes many of the accounts, its value would appear to justify the liberties taken. In this effort I have divided the literature into five categories: Sikh nationalism, conspiracy theories, regional and national factors, and Marxist interpretations. These headings, it is stressed, are neither exclusive nor exhaustive; at best they provide questionable divisions of convenience.