Canadian Sikh's Murder: How Long Will Modi Continue to Escape Accountability?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused the Indian government of involvement in the murder of a Canadian Sikh leader on Canadian soil. Trudeau announced this week that Canada was "actively pursuing credible allegations" that Indian intelligence agents had potentially been involved in the murder of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June, 2023. Canada, a member of the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance with Australia, New Zealand, UK and the US, is reported to have shared intelligence on the incident with Washington. The US and UK say they are "deeply concerned" and encourage Indian officials to cooperate in any investigation. There have been similar "mysterious" assassinations of Sikh leaders in Pakistan and the UK this year. Can the West afford to ignore these assassinations? Will Modi government be emboldened to continue its campaign of murder of more leaders of the significant Sikh diaspora in the West if the US fails to hold Modi to account now?
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| Three Sikh Leaders Assassinated in 2023 |
Since the 2020-21 farmers' protests in Delhi, the Sikh diaspora has staged massive rallies at Indian diplomatic missions across western capitals. These rallies were followed by systematic, and near-simultaneous, killings of various Sikh leaders in Canada, Pakistan and UK. On May 6, 2023, Paramjit Singh Panwar was killed in Lahore, Pakistan. Avtar Singh Khanda was assassinated in Birmingham, England. on June 11. On June 18, Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada.
Reacting to the report of Trudeau's allegation against the Indian government, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Syrus Qazi said: “We are aware of the nature of our eastern neighbor, we know what they are capable of … so it is not a surprise for us. “We caught [one of their] serving naval intelligence officers on our soil. He (Kulbhushan Jadhav) is in our custody and admitted that he came here to create instability and spread evil,” he added.
Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said her country remained a “target of a series of targeted killings and espionage by (Indian Intelligence Agency) RAW". “In December last year, Pakistan released a comprehensive dossier providing concrete and irrefutable evidence of India’s involvement in the Lahore attack of June 2021. The attack was planned and executed by Indian intelligence,” she said, adding that in 2016, a high-ranking Indian military officer Kulbhushan Jadhav confessed to his involvement in directing, financing and executing terror and sabotage in Pakistan.
Narendra Modi has a long history of murdering minorities in his country. After the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002, Narendra Modi made the cover of India Today magazine with the caption "Hero of Hatred". Modi was denied a visa to visit the United States. The US visa ban on Modi was lifted in 2014 after he became prime minister. Since then, Narendra Modi's image has been rehabilitated by the West as the US and Western Europe seek allies in Asia to counter the rise of China. However, Modi's actions on the ground in India confirm that he remains "Hero of Hatred" and "Divider In Chief" at his core. A recent two-part BBC documentary explains this reality in significant detail. The first part focuses on the 2002 events in Gujarat when Modi as the state chief minister ordered the police to not stop the Hindu mobs murdering Muslims and burning their homes and businesses. The second part looks at Modi government's anti-Muslim policies, including the revocation of Kashmir's autonomy (article 370) and a new citizenship law (CAA 2019) that discriminates against Muslims. It shows the violent response by security forces to peaceful protests against the new laws, and interviews the family members of people who were killed in the 2020 Delhi riots orchestrated by Modi's allies.
Having been caught by Ottawa in the act of murdering one of its citizens, the Indian government has reacted angrily, calling the Canadian allegations "absurd". In fact, India has labeled victims of assassination campaign "terrorists". The Indian response will only force Canada to publicly share evidence of wrongdoing by New Delhi. Such public disclosures will expose India's links to similar recent "mysterious" murders in Pakistan and the UK. It will also force London and Washington to confront the issue because the UK and the US also have hundreds of thousands of Sikh citizens whose leaders will be vulnerable to potential assassinations by the Modi government.
Here's Indian National Security Advisor on how to use Taliban to attack Pakistan:
https://youtu.be/eYRuk8H5M9E?si=ZB1c7Dd8ntQdKeFi
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Karan Thapar Dismantles Official Indian Narrative on Kulbhushan Jadhav
Why is India Sponsoring Terror in Pakistan?
Indian Agent Kubhushan Yadav's Confession
Has Modi Stepped Up India's Covert War in Pakistan?
Ex India Spy Documents Successful RAW Ops in Pakistan
London Police Document Confirms MQM-RAW Connection Testimony
India's Ex Spooks Blame Kulbhushan Jadhav For Getting Caught
Ajit Doval Lecture on "How to Tackle Pakistan"
Mohan Lal Bhaskar: An Indian Raw Agent in Pakistan
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sikh-nijjar-india-canada-trudeau-modi-1.6974607
The Canadian government has amassed both human and signals intelligence in a months-long investigation of a Sikh activist's death that has inflamed relations with India, sources tell CBC News.
That intelligence includes communications involving Indian officials themselves, including Indian diplomats present in Canada, say Canadian government sources.
The intelligence did not come solely from Canada. Some was provided by an unnamed ally in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
In a diplomatic crisis that unfolded progressively behind the scenes, Canadian officials went to India on several occasions seeking co-operation in the investigation of Hardeep Singh Nijjar's death.
The Sikh leader was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., on June 18 and reportedly had been warned by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that he was at risk.
Canada's National Security and Intelligence Adviser Jody Thomas was in India over four days in mid-August, then again for five days this month.
That last visit overlapped with a tense meeting between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Canadian sources say that, when pressed behind closed doors, no Indian official has denied the bombshell allegation at the core of this case — that there is evidence to suggest Indian government involvement in the assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.
"I can assure you that the decision to share these allegations on the floor of the House of Commons … was not done lightly," Trudeau said Thursday in New York after attending the United Nations General Assembly.
"It was done with the utmost seriousness."
The Canadian government has not released its evidence and has suggested it could emerge during an eventual legal process.
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-national-security-adviser-says-we-are-contact-with-india-canada-about-2023-09-21/
"I firmly reject the idea that there is a wedge between the U.S. and Canada. We have deep concerns about the allegations and we would like to see this investigation carried forward and the perpetrators held to account," he said.
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Asked whether U.S. concern over the incident could disrupt that process, Sullivan said the United States would stand up for its principles, regardless of what country is affected.
"It is a matter of concern for us. It is something we take seriously. It is something we will keep working on, and we will do that regardless of the country," Sullivan told reporters at the White House.
"There's not some special exemption you get for actions like this. Regardless of the country, we will stand up and defend our basic principles and we will also consult closely with allies like Canada as they pursue their law enforcement and diplomatic process."
The government in New Delhi may well be the sort that will do anything to silence dissent.
By Daniel Block
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/09/canada-nijjar-killing-india-trudeau-sikh/675383/
On September 18, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood before his country’s Parliament and leveled a dramatic charge: Ottawa had “credible evidence” that the Indian government had assassinated a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. The citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, had been gunned down outside the Sikh temple where he served as president. Trudeau declared the killing “an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty” and “contrary to the fundamental rules by which free, open, and democratic societies conduct themselves.”
The prime minister’s claim made headlines around the planet, but it shouldn’t have been altogether surprising. Nijjar was a prominent activist who called for Sikhs—a religious group mostly concentrated in northern India—to break away from New Delhi and form an independent nation. As a result, New Delhi had labeled him a terrorist. The Indian government has denied involvement in the killing, but under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it has become illiberal at home and bellicose abroad, such that assassinations on foreign soil are no longer an unimaginable part of its agenda.
Trudeau’s accusations suggest New Delhi’s intelligence operatives could lead it down a dark path.
By Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University and a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in India.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/22/india-canada-trudeau-accusations-nijjar-sikh-separatism-security-intelligence/
When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week accused the Indian government of involvement in the fatal shooting of a Canadian Sikh activist, it was perhaps the first time a liberal, Western democracy had made such a claim about New Delhi. Trudeau was backed by the Canadian opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre, who called the alleged actions an “outrageous affront” to Canadian sovereignty. India has rejected the accusations, but on Tuesday, Trudeau doubled down: “We are not looking to provoke or escalate. We are simply laying out the facts as we understand them,” he said.
Earlier this month, senior Canadian intelligence officials visited India before the G-20 summit in New Delhi to share the evidence they had gathered about the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June. Trudeau raised the issue with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a meeting on the sidelines of the summit. Afterward, New Delhi issued a brusque statement noting its concerns about “continuing anti-India activities of extremist elements in Canada.” That likely gave Trudeau a sense about how India intended to treat the allegations once they were made public.
This week, Canada expelled a senior Indian diplomat, Pavan Kumar Rai, who represented India’s foreign intelligence agency in Ottawa. In response, India threw out the head of intelligence at Canada’s embassy in New Delhi. On Thursday, India suspended visa services for Canadian citizens until further notice, marking a serious escalation in the clash.
India and Canada’s shared values and people-to-people ties should make them natural partners, but that has not been the case under Modi and Trudeau. Bilateral relations have been frayed for some time, in part because India believes that Canada has been sympathetic toward the Sikh separatist movement, while Canada has said India was interfering in its domestic politics. Trudeau’s allegations this week caused the two countries to reach a breaking point. Anticipating the geopolitical effects, Trudeau briefed Canada’s closest allies about the case before his announcement, including the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom. The two countries issued a statement of concern about the incident.
In New Delhi, concerns about the return of Sikh separatism have long fed insecurities about India’s sovereignty, and those anxieties have grown under Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Hindu nationalist regime. Modi’s top security czar is a former intelligence chief, Ajit Doval, who led a successful campaign against violent Sikh separatists in the 1980s. Canadian Sikh support for the 2020 farmers’ protests against Modi’s government no doubt stoked Doval’s own fears. Many of the demonstrators were Sikhs. India’s security establishment has allegedly violated international law in a few high-profile cases abroad. None have taken place in a country like Canada, a treaty ally of the United States and the United Kingdom.
Trudeau’s allegations could help Modi domestically by feeding into a nationalist narrative that takes pride in him as a strong leader, but wasting diplomatic energy containing the fallout of this fracas will only distract India from other major challenges—namely the one posed by its rival China. If India continues to look at the world through the lens of its intelligence operatives rather than holding them accountable for their failures, it runs the risk of going down a very dark path.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/22/india-canada-trudeau-accusations-nijjar-sikh-separatism-security-intelligence/
By Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University and a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in India.
Simmering tensions between India and Canada had already come to the fore before Trudeau’s public accusations. At a press conference in New Delhi in June, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said, “If anybody has a complaint, we have a complaint about Canada … the space they are giving to Khalistanis and violent extremists.” A few days later, he added that New Delhi had made it clear that if activities in Canada threatened Indian national security “we will respond.” This veiled threat came 10 days after Nijjar was shot dead as he left the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia.
At the time, Nijjar’s name was relatively unknown in India or Canada. He moved to Canada from India’s Sikh-majority state of Punjab in 1997 and became president of the religious body that runs the Sikh gurdwara in Surrey in 2020. That November, India declared Nijjar a terrorist. Its federal counterterrorism agency accused him of trying to radicalize the Sikh diaspora in the service of creating an independent Sikh state known as Khalistan. In India, Sikh separatism peaked in the 1980s, losing steam after Indian security forces crushed a violent insurgency, which was supported by Pakistan. In Punjab, the movement no longer has a support base, although New Delhi occasionally hypes it as a threat.
A vocal backer of Khalistan, Nijjar upset India’s government last fall when he organized a campaign in Brampton, Ontario, to hold a symbolic referendum on the Khalistan issue. Canadian laws do not prohibit nonviolent support for Sikh separatism, while India has wide-ranging laws on sedition and against terror that make it very difficult. In India, the ideology of the BJP’s parent organization also considers Sikhs to be Hindus—an assertion rejected by Sikh leaders, whose community has politically opposed and democratically defeated Modi’s party in Punjab. To explain why Sikhs oppose the ruling party, India’s regime has turned the pro-Khalistan movement as a bogeyman.
India’s security establishment, meanwhile, is still grappling with the memory of the long-dead pro-Khalistan insurgency. Doval, whose career highlight was leading security operations against Sikh separatists in the 1980s, still harbors apprehensions about their revival. The external response to the monthslong farmers’ protests in 2020 has shaped India’s attitude toward Canada and the United Kingdom: that they are soft toward Sikh separatists. BJP leaders tried to discredit the protesting farmers as pro-Khalistan activists. When the Canadian government issued a statement against some of the harsh policing against the farmers, New Delhi accused Ottawa of meddling in its internal affairs.
Aside from Nijjar, three other prominent Sikh separatist activists have died under mysterious circumstances abroad this year: Avtar Singh Khanda in the United Kingdom and Paramjit Singh Panjwar and Harmeet Singh in Pakistan. Sikh separatist groups allege that Indian intelligence operatives were responsible for their deaths. Under Doval, the security establishment has recently been in the spotlight over two high-profile cases. The first was the capture and rendition of Sheikha Latifa, the daughter of the ruler of Dubai, by Indian special forces off the coast of Goa in March 2018, returning her to her family against her will. The second the attempted abduction of fugitive businessman Mehul Choksi in Antigua in May 2021.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/22/india-canada-trudeau-accusations-nijjar-sikh-separatism-security-intelligence/
By Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University and a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in India.
Modi’s party has decried previous governments for making India a “soft state” and for not emulating the example of Israel—or its imagination of the country—of taking the war to the adversary through spectacular covert action abroad. It is not clear if the mythology of the Mossad, Israel’s successful and infamously ruthless national intelligence agency, is driving Indian action today, but many Hindu nationalists have framed these alleged actions as evidence of a strong state under Modi. Perhaps they forget that Israel undertakes such operations in countries such as Iran, which have little international credibility and few allies. By contrast, Canada is a member of the G-7, a NATO founder, and part of the exclusive Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States each issued dutiful statements of concern over Trudeau’s recent allegations. However, India’s importance as a partner in countering China in the Indo-Pacific means that these other Western countries will remain soft on Modi. Despite mounting criticism, the Biden administration has overlooked credible evidence of democratic backsliding and poor treatment of religious minorities under BJP rule under Modi. The United States has decided that its convergent interests with India against China take precedence over its professed values. When it comes to Trudeau’s allegations, those interests are bound to trump the United States’ shared values with Canada.
India and Canada share historical ties dating to India’s colonial era. Canada is home to one of the largest diasporas of Indian heritage in the world, at nearly 1.4 million, and is India’s second-biggest overseas study destination. Sikhs now form a larger share of Canada’s national population (2.1 percent) than India’s (1.7 percent). If the two countries have reached a new low in their relationship, it is because India has changed its direction under Modi, whose vision of a Hindu majoritarian state has emboldened nationalists abroad.
In Australia, Queensland state police released documents this week that suggest that Hindus defaced a Hindu temple wall to divert attention toward pro-Khalistan activists. Last year, riots against Muslims in Leicester, England, were blamed on right-wing Hindu nationalist groups. An Indian government statement condemned the “violence perpetrated against the Indian community in Leicester and vandalization of premises and symbols of Hindu religion” without acknowledging violence against Muslims. According to a U.S. lawsuit, a Hindu sect closely associated with Modi trafficked workers from India and forced them into labor at Hindu temples in five U.S. states.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/22/india-canada-trudeau-accusations-nijjar-sikh-separatism-security-intelligence/
By Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University and a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in India.
In hushed tones and classified documents, Canadian officials have also complained of Hindu nationalist overreach. A 2018 report prepared for Canadian deputy ministers attending a national security retreat warned that Indian Canadians were among those at risk of “being influenced, overtly or covertly, by foreign governments with their own agendas.” Canada’s Sikh community forms part of the senior leadership of every political party. Sikhs in Canada have historically supported Trudeau’s Liberal Party, and the prime minister’s minority government now survives on the support of the New Democratic Party, headed by Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh. In 2013, India denied a visa to Singh in 2013 for pursuing an “insidious agenda of disturbing the social fabric of India.” New Delhi also sees Trudeau himself as soft on Sikh separatists because of his continuing focus on catering to their grievances.
Domestic politics in India play an equally important role in shaping New Delhi’s stance toward Ottawa, as Modi’s government heads into a national election next year. The Indian leader has always campaigned on a tough national security agenda, and Trudeau’s allegations could favor his strongman image. If so, the diplomatic effort spent containing the fallout of the accusations—while it would be better used to deal with China—would be a small price to pay for Modi.
However, intelligence agencies and operatives have an important role in ensuring a country’s national security. India’s have made tragic blunders in recent years, failing to warn about China’s sudden ingress into Indian territory in 2020 and failing to prevent a suicide bomber from killing 40 security personnel in 2019. It is high time they are held accountable for these failures. India can no longer approach the world through the eyes of its intelligence agents. Not changing course could be more costly and consequential than the kerfuffle with Canada.
In recent years, Russian President Vladimir Putin remains the only leader known to order an assassination in a Western democracy, when Russian operatives fatally poisoned a Russian defector in London in 2018. Pakistan’s intelligence agencies were allegedly behind the mysterious killings of Baloch separatist leaders in Sweden and Canada in 2020. Canada has not made its evidence public, but it has brought unwanted attention to India’s audacious approach toward its foes. Whatever the predilections of India’s security establishment, Modi cannot afford to be seen in the same league as Putin and Pakistan’s rogue generals—certainly not as he proclaims India to be a Vishwaguru, or a teacher-master to the world.
Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
India stops processing visa for Canadians!
In 2022, 80000 Canadians (mostly Indian origin) visited India as tourists.
On the other hand, 320,000 Indian students went Canada to study, 118,000 Indians permanently migrated and 60,000 Indians became Canadian citizens in 2022.
https://x.com/ashoswai/status/1704819639530729721?s=20
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-raised-issue-canadian-sikhs-murder-with-modi-g20-ft-2023-09-22/
Sept 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders expressed concern to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 summit this month about Canadian claims that New Delhi was involved in the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.
Several members of the Five Eyes — an intelligence-sharing network that includes the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — raised the June killing in British Columbia of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader, with Modi, the newspaper said, citing three people familiar with the discussions at the summit.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the FT report.
The summit was held in India days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his allegations public in an address to the Canadian parliament earlier this week.
The leaders intervened at the G20 summit after Canada urged its allies to raise the case directly with Modi, the newspaper reported.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier on Thursday that the U.S. is in touch with Indians at high levels following Ottawa's claims about the murder of the Sikh separatist leader in Canada, and Washington is giving India no "special exemption" in the matter.
India has rejected Canada's allegations and called them "absurd." The crisis has put a further dent in Canada-India ties. India on Thursday suspended new visas for Canadians and asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence in the country.
The situation has put some Western nations in a tough position as Canada has been a long-standing partner and ally while those countries are also seeking to build strong ties with New Delhi to counter the influence of China in the Asia Pacific region.
@AudreyTruschke
India's disregard for Canadian sovereignty and international norms is bringing additional attention to its steps away from democracy under Modi's leadership.
https://x.com/AudreyTruschke/status/1706077121720848556?s=20
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The Observer view on Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s killing: Narendra Modi’s hubris is ill-judged
Observer editorial
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/24/the-observer-view-on-hardeep-singh-nijjar-killing-narendra-modi-hubris-ill-judged
In dismissing concerns over the death of a Canadian Sikh activist, India’s prime minister raises more questions over his commitment to democracy
Political assassination is a practice as old as human society, although the term itself derives from the 12th-century Persian Order of Assassins, first described by Marco Polo. Julius Caesar, Thomas Becket, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Leon Trotsky, John F Kennedy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Olof Palme and Yevgeny Prigozhin were victims of notorious political assassinations. They had one thing in common: all were high-profile targets.
That is not a description that may be accurately applied to Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen shot dead in June by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia. If Nijjar had any claim to fame, it was as a campaigner for Khalistan, a notional Sikh homeland in the Indian Punjab fiercely opposed by India’s government. His activism provides the only plausible motive for his murder. Little-known though he was, Nijjar’s death was a political assassination, too.
After failing to obtain a private explanation, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, went public last week, declaring that there were “credible reasons” to believe agents of the Indian government were behind the murder. His statement was immediately rejected by Delhi, which called the allegation “absurd”. That was a poor choice of word. A moment’s reflection should have told the prime minister, Narendra Modi, that it’s a very serious matter indeed.
Although Trudeau did not provide evidence for his claim, he would not have made it, in the formal setting of the Canadian parliament, unless he had firm grounds for believing it to be true. It has emerged that the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network – comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – may have provided Ottawa with incriminating information that allegedly points to the complicity of Indian officials and diplomats in Canada. If so, it would not be the first time India has been implicated in extra-territorial killings.
A less haughty, quicker-thinking figure than Modi would also have understood that Nijjar’s murder, appalling in itself, raised significant matters of state that Trudeau could not ignore. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Trudeau said. After the poisonings by Russian agents in Salisbury, Britain knows how that feels.
Observer editorial
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/24/the-observer-view-on-hardeep-singh-nijjar-killing-narendra-modi-hubris-ill-judged
Public expressions of concern by the US and UK governments were followed up in person when Joe Biden and other western leaders met Modi at the recent G20 summit in Delhi. This, too, should have persuaded Modi that, whatever the truth of the matter, he faced a damaging diplomatic row. Yet, unwisely, he escalated, expelling a Canadian diplomat and suspending visa services and trade talks. At this point, it is unclear where righteous indignation ends and purblind arrogance begins.
It’s true, as Indian critics say, that Trudeau faces domestic political complications. Canada’s sizeable Sikh minority wields significant influence. It’s also true that India has long regarded the Khalistan movement as a destabilising separatist force supported by terrorism. Yet Modi, an authoritarian populist who tends to treat any opposition as a betrayal akin to treason, faces political complications of his own, principally a general election next year. Confronting Canada, a fellow Commonwealth country associated by some with the British imperial era, serves his Hindu ultra-nationalist agenda.
India is a rising power on the global stage that ostensibly shares western values. Britain and the US view it as an important ally in the wider contest with China. But the Modi government’s behaviour at home and abroad raise doubts about its commitment to democracy and India’s reliability as a partner. Nijjar’s assassination, like that of the Saudi dissident, Jamal Khashoggi, leaves a bloody stain that will be hard to wash away.
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@dhume
India’s per capita income is less than 1/5th of China’s, and Beijing is busy unilaterally grabbing chunks of territory that India claims. Yet, somehow, in the Indian imagination the West needs India more than India needs the West.
https://x.com/dhume/status/1705664824254840896?s=20
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Interview: India’s exaggerated value and the danger of S Jaishankar’s ‘new world order’ posturing
https://scroll.in/article/1049569/interview-indias-exaggerated-value-and-the-danger-of-s-jaishankars-new-world-order-posturing
“the US already has other military partners like Japan and Australia, whereas India doesn’t really have anyone else that can help balance against China. Our value to the US is being partly exaggerated”
Interview: India’s exaggerated value and the danger of S Jaishankar’s ‘new world order’ posturing
Rajesh Rajagopalan, author and professor of International Politics at JNU, says we are living in a bipolar age and it is dangerous for India to think otherwise.
Rohan Venkataramakrishnan
“I think the economics of the world, the politics of the world, and the demographic of the world is making the world more multipolar.”
“The world is moving towards greater multi-polarity through steady and continuous re-balancing.”
“The Indo-Pacific is at the heart of the multipolarity and rebalancing that characterises contemporary changes.”
“The United States is moving towards greater realism both about itself and the world. It is adjusting to multipolarity and rebalancing and re-examining the balance between its domestic revival and commitments abroad.”
Those are all comments by Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar over the last few years. Indeed, Jaishankar is a big votary of the concept of multipolarity – the idea that the world is not dominated by just one power (the United States), or two (the US and China, just as it was the US and the United Soviet Socialist Republic during the Cold War), but is instead now seeing a global order with a number of powers that are somewhat equally matched in terms of economic and military capacity and influence.
Jaishankar sometimes speaks of the need for establishing a multipolar world. And sometimes his comments seems to suggest the world is already multipolar or will soon be there.
Not everyone agrees. Stephen G Brooks and William C Wohlforth, in a Foreign Affairs article in April , argued that multipolarity is a “myth”.
Brooks and Wolworth argue instead for “partial unipolarity”, in part because Chinese military power remains “regional”.
Rajesh Rajagopalan, professor of International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University and author of Second Strike: Arguments about Nuclear War in South Asia, thinks the answer is clearer: We are living in a bipolar age. And it is dangerous for India to think otherwise.
I spoke to Rajagopalan about multipolarity vs bipolarity, why he thinks that Jaishankar describing the world as multipolar is problematic even if it is a purely rhetorical tactic, and what he made of Ashley Tellis’ much discussed piece from earlier this month – with the controversial headline, “America’s Bad Bet on India” – which argues that the US should not expect India to side with it in a military confrontation with China, unless its own security is directly threatened.
https://apnews.com/article/india-canada-killing-united-nations-d4e5dbd2acbca4f34ad003f673655eb0
NEW DELHI (AP) — The Group of 20 Summit, hosted by India earlier this month, couldn’t have gone better for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His pledge to make the African Union a permanent member became reality. And under his leadership, the fractured grouping signed off on a final statement. It was seen as a foreign policy triumph for Modi and set the tone for India as a great emerging power.
Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was expected to seize on India’s geopolitical high in his speech at the United Nations on Tuesday. But circumstances have changed — quite abruptly — and India comes to the General Assembly podium with a diplomatic mess on its hands.
On Monday, Canadian leader Justin Trudeau made a shocking claim: India may have been involved in the killing of a Sikh Canadian citizen in a Vancouver suburb in June.
Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” of links to New Delhi, which India angrily rejected as absurd. It has been a free fall since: Each expelled a diplomat, India suspended visas for Canadians, and Ottawa said it may reduce consulate staff over safety concerns. Ties between the two once-close countries have sunk to their lowest point in years.
“In the immediate term, this will bring New Delhi back down to Earth. It has a crisis that it needs to work through, quickly but carefully,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute.
TENSIONS WERE ALREADY SIMMERING
On the last day of the G20 summit, Trudeau posed and smiled with Modi as world leaders paid respects at Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial. Behind the scenes though, tensions were high.
Trudeau skipped an official dinner hosted by the Indian president, and local media reported he was snubbed by Modi when he got a quick “pull aside” instead of a bilateral meeting. To make things worse, a flight snag saw him stranded in New Delhi for 36 hours. Finally back in Canada, Trudeau said he had raised the allegations with Modi at the G20.
As India heads to the United Nations, the allegations have “thrown cold water on India’s G20 achievements,” said Happymon Jacob, founder of the New Delhi-based Council for Strategic and Defense Research.
India has long sought greater recognition at the United Nations. For decades, it has eyed a permanent seat at the Security Council, one of the world’s most prestigious high tables. But it has also been critical of the global forum, partly because it wants more representation that’s in line with its rising soft power.
“The U.N. Security Council, which is the core of the United Nations system, is a family photo of the victors of the Second World War plus China,” Jacob said. India believes “it simply does not reflect the demographic, economic and geopolitical realities of today,” he added. Others in the elite group include France, Russia, Britain and the United States.
In April, Jaishankar said India, the world’s most populous country with the fastest growing economy among major nations, couldn’t be ignored for too long. The U.N. Security Council, he said, “will be compelled to provide permanent membership.”
The United States, Britain and India’s Cold War-era ally Russia have voiced support for its permanent membership over the years. But U.N. bureaucracy has stopped the council from expanding. And even if that changes, China — India’s neighbor and regional rival — would likely block a request.
INSTEAD OF THE UN, INDIA MAKES SOME END RUNS
Kept out of the U.N.’s most important body, Modi has made sure that his country is smack at the center of a tangled web of global politics. On one hand, New Delhi is part of the Quad and the G20, seen as mostly Western groups. On the other, it wants to expand its influence in the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where Russia and China dominate.
The deft juggling of the West and the rest has come to define India’s multipolar foreign policy.
https://apnews.com/article/india-canada-killing-united-nations-d4e5dbd2acbca4f34ad003f673655eb0
Its diplomatic sway has only grown over its reluctance to condemn Russia for its war in Ukraine, a stance that resonated among many developing countries that have also been neutral. And the West, which sees an ascendant India as crucial to countering China, has stepped up ties with Modi. By doing so, it looks past concerns of democratic backsliding under his government.
In the immediate aftermath, the first reaction from Canada’s Western allies — including its biggest one, the United States — was tepid. But as the row deepens, the question likely worrying Indian officials is this: Will the recent international fiasco jeopardize its surging ties with the West?
After an initial muted response, the White House has intensified its concerns. “There’s not some special exemption you get for actions like this, regardless of the country,” security adviser Jake Sullivan said. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was deeply concerned about the allegations and that “it would be important that India work with the Canadians on this investigation.”
While there’s been no public evidence, a Canadian official told The Associated Press that the allegation of India’s involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist, is based on surveillance of Indian diplomats in Canada — including intelligence provided by a major ally. On Friday, the U.S. ambassador to Canada confirmed this, saying information shared by the intelligence-sharing ‘Five Eyes’ alliance helped link India to the assassination.
At the United Nations, where he held a news conference and meetings but will not be speaking for his nation on Tuesday, Trudeau told reporters that he doesn’t want to cause problems but said his decision was not made lightly. Canada, he said, had to stand up for the rule of law and protect its citizens.
For New Delhi, the U.N. meeting may present a possible opportunity. Indian and Canadian diplomats could meet on the sidelines to try to lower temperatures with a potential assist from Washington, Kugelman said. Canada’s delegation chair, Robert Rae, is delivering the country’s remarks 10 spots after India.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-09-25/india-canada-fight-doesn-t-make-the-west-s-modi-problem-any-easier?embedded-checkout=true
The backlash against Canada reveals a hyper-masculine new national identity, forged out of old feelings of humiliation, helplessness, and insecurity.
By Pankaj Mishra
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has yet to make public any evidence supporting his sensational allegation that India was behind the killing of a Canadian citizen this June. But strident counter-accusations by the Indian government, and ferocious denunciations of Canada and its Western allies in India’s civil society, already point to an extremely volatile factor in geopolitics today: Narendra Modi’s India.
Only a fortnight ago, Modi, India’s prime minister, was leading barefooted Western leaders to lay wreaths at Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi’s memorial in New Delhi. At the G-20 summit, he presented India as the torchbearer of peaceful co-existence, harmony, and inclusivity — “one earth, one family.....
https://www.dawn.com/news/1781292
Indian media have reported that the slain man, Mohammad Shahid Latif, was suspected by New Delhi of having facilitated the attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in 2016.
However, there seems to be little evidence to substantiate this allegation, and no link was ever made public tying Latif to the Pathankot incident.
Indeed, the murders of Latif and the others before him would seem, on the face of it, to be part of an international campaign that also saw the high-profile killing of Sikh nationalist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, Canada, in June this year. The Canadian government has said it has evidence of Indian involvement in the murder; and now Pakistan is claiming the same.
It would seem as if New Delhi wants anyone whom it suspects has played a role in any one of the nationalist movements active within the territories under its control killed. But India cannot go around murdering people in other countries with impunity. There must be severe consequences imposed on it.
It is also pertinent to ask our own authorities how they could let so many individuals be murdered on Pakistani soil before a network apparently being run by an enemy power was finally busted.
Pre-empting such attacks is a core task for counter-intelligence officials responsible for the nation’s security, and as such, it is their responsibility to ensure that Pakistan’s enemies do not use its soil to carry out vendetta killings.
Nothing can be more embarrassing for them than the enemy managing to infiltrate the country while they are busy dealing with domestic issues they legally and technically have no business being involved in.
https://www.newindiaabroad.com/news/3059-indians-held-while-attempting-to-enter-us-from-canada-in-september
Among those arrested were four unaccompanied children, four other children accompanied by family members.
In September of this year, a total of 8,076 individuals of Indian origin were apprehended by United States law enforcement agencies as they attempted to enter the country illegally through various routes. Notably, 3,059 of these individuals were detained at the U.S.-Canada border, according to data provided by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Indian arrests at the U.S.-Canada border mark the highest monthly total between October 2022 and September 2023.
According to The Times of India, a source said, “Many illegal immigrants, primarily from Gujarat, have either settled in Canada or are awaiting an opportunity to enter the US. In August, 2,327 illegal immigrants were caught trying to cross over to the US. This number rose to 3,059 in September.”
Among those arrested were four unaccompanied children, four other children accompanied by family members, and 530 children with their parents and siblings. Additionally, a total of 2,521 single adults were apprehended. It's worth noting that Indians attempting to enter the U.S. unlawfully typically do so via the U.S.-Mexico border. According to official data, between February 2019 and March of this year, U.S. law enforcement agencies arrested a total of 190,000 individuals of Indian origin.
Efforts by Indians to engage in illegal migration to the U.S. persist, even though there have been numerous tragic incidents in which several families lost their lives during these hazardous journeys.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
London: Two senior Research and Analysis Wing officers were asked to leave their stations in major Western cities earlier this summer, ahead of a decision by United States prosecutors to initiate criminal charges in the wake of the spy agency’s alleged role in an assassination campaign targeting pro-Khalistan activists, intelligence sources have told ThePrint.
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The officers were the head of the RAW station in San Francisco and the second-in-command of its operations in London, the sources said. These are mutually disclosed positions and are not undercover.
The officers are of senior and mid-senior levels in the Indian Police Service (IPS). ThePrint is withholding their names as both remain in service with RAW.
In addition, the Government of India was denied permission to post an officer to replace RAW’s station chief in Washington, DC, who returned home earlier this year. The new officer, in line with long-standing RAW convention, was to have taken charge before the scheduled retirement of the organisation’s former chief, Samant Goel, on 30 June.
The shuttering of RAW’s stations in San Francisco and Washington DC, coming on the back of the publicly-declared expulsion of its station chief in Ottawa, Pavan Rai, has left the organisation unrepresented in North America for the first time since it was founded during the tenure of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1968.
Government sources pushed back against claims that the removal of the three officers was driven by Western pressure. Instead, they attributed them to a series of “unfortunate coincidences of personal, family and administrative issues”.
“The third case, the long pause in assigning someone to Washington, is simply due to administrative factors,” one RAW officer said, adding that it “will be addressed soon”.
The murder ‘plot’ itself, the officer insisted, did not involve RAW and while the inquiry will show if any or some individuals acted “on an unauthorised basis”, the organisation can’t be blamed.
Prosecutors in the United States have claimed that ethnic-Punjabi alleged drug dealer Nikhil Gupta was offered up to $150,000 by an individual claiming to work for the Indian intelligence services to arrange the murder of an unnamed Khalistan lawyer and activist.
Though the indictment does not name the purported victim or the Indian intelligence service, government sources have told ThePrint that US officials told interlocutors in New Delhi that RAW conspired to assassinate top Khalistan activist and lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
Following the gangland-style killing of alleged Khalistan terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June, The Washington Post revealed Wednesday that US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns had met with their counterparts in India earlier this year to demand accountability in the case.
The expulsion of the RAW officer in San Francisco, Indian government sources said, was intended to underline their message that the US would not cooperate with Indian intelligence if the agency continued offensive operations in the West, an Indian intelligence officer familiar with the case said.
Even though national security officials in the UK gave no reasons for asking for the removal of the RAW officer from London, a second officer noted, the action seemed to be of a symbolic nature, since it targeted the junior of two so-called “disclosed” positions at the High Commission of India in the city, whose status as intelligence officers is known to the host government.
https://time.com/6342873/india-sikhs-persecution/
By Simran Jeet Singh and Gunisha Kaur
India began its nation-building project, bringing the immense challenge of forging a common identity among large and religiously, linguistically, and culturally diverse populations. What a majority of the total population shared, though, was a Hindu identity, and this religion became the center around which political leaders decided to coalesce Indian national identity, much to the dismay of India’s minority populations.
Indian leadership came to see religious minorities as a threat to their nation-building project, viewing Sikhs with particular suspicion and disdain, recognizing they catalyzed anti-colonial efforts and played a leading role in them. They were also aware that Sikhs still had recent memories of political autonomy in Punjab. Indian elites worried about Punjab becoming a majority Sikh state that would gain in political power and threaten the stability of young India. This led Indian leadership to deny Punjab and its Sikhs consequential rights that were afforded to other states, including official language status for Punjabi and its own state capital. India also weakened Punjab’s political power by carving out territory from it for other states, such as Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Moreover, contravening riparian law, an international norm, India diverted Punjab’s river waters to other states and regions, a massive economic blow to the state long-known as the breadbasket of India, and a threat to the livelihood of Punjab’s agrarian society.
Punjabi Sikhs soon began agitating against the Indian government, protesting the erosion of its cultural, economic, and political rights. In 1978, Sikh leadership drafted the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, which laid out a list of demands to safeguard the rights of Sikhs in Punjab and other minorities around India.
A charismatic Sikh leader from a religious seminary emerged during this period, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, whose ascent caught the eye of the Indian government. Bhindranwale spoke adamantly against the infringements of the Indian state, which by this stage had escalated to include gross human rights violations. He called on Sikhs and minorities everywhere to stand up against oppression. Citing him as an anti-national who threatened India’s stability, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi launched a military assault against him and his followers at the Golden Temple of Amritsar—the most significant site for Sikhs—on a major religious holiday. Bhindranwale was killed in the assault, along with thousands of other Sikh pilgrims who were worshipping there.
The global Sikh community was furious about the government’s attack and demanded justice. In this moment, the movement for a separate Sikh homeland was reborn. Bhindranwale had stated openly that he neither supported nor rejected the idea of Khalistan – but that if the Indian government ever invaded the Golden Temple complex, the foundation for an independent Sikh homeland would be laid.
Later that year, Ms. Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, presumably to avenge her assault on the Golden Temple. In the days that followed, the ruling Congress Party, utilizing state agencies and infrastructure, organized violent anti-Sikh pogroms across North India, focused primarily on the Indian capital of New Delhi. The pogroms left thousands of Sikhs dead, thousands more displaced, and all Sikhs wondering if they could ever have a home in India.
https://time.com/6342873/india-sikhs-persecution/
By Simran Jeet Singh and Gunisha Kaur
Bhindranwale’s prediction came true. The anti-Sikh violence of 1984 made many Sikhs feel like the pattern of abuses under Indian leadership would not end, and it fueled a new movement for Sikh self-determination. In July of 1984, Sikhs gathered in Madison Garden in New York City and announced their commitment “to support the struggle of Sikhs in the Punjab for self-determination and the preservation of their distinct and religious identity.” Less than two years later, thousands of Sikhs gathered at the Golden Temple in their political tradition of Sarbat Khalsa and announced a resolution to recognize Khalistan.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Punjab was enmeshed in a violent struggle. A segment of the Sikh population took up armed resistance, with the aim of winning an independent Sikh state, free from the tyranny of India. This period of insurgency is often what westerners mean when they are referring to the Khalistan Movement.
While India accused militants of targeting politicians and civilians, Indian security forces employed widespread and systematic abuses for over a decade, including torture, murder, and enforced disappearances, targeting anyone it suspected of being involved in the insurgency or political movement for self-determination. In the years since, human rights defenders and researchers have uncovered the extent of India’s atrocity crimes. In 1995, human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra released official records demonstrating Punjab Police had abducted, killed and secretly cremated thousands of Punjabi Sikhs. Punjab Police subsequently abducted, tortured, and killed Khalra for refusing to retract his findings. In 2017, new evidence demonstrated more than 8,000 additional extra-judicial killings, bringing total estimates to 25,000.
Although the violent conflict subsided by the mid-1990s, the culture of impunity for gross human rights violations and extra-judicial violence continues to grip Punjab. None of the chief architects of the crimes against humanity have been brought to account, nor have survivors and their communities been given reparations. Moreover, the government continues to use the specter of terrorism to target its critics, and the central issue of the denuding of Punjab’s river waters serves as a continuing flashpoint.
This tension was evident over the last couple of years, when India attacked Sikhs during the 2022 Farmers Protests by calling the protestors “Khalistanis and “Anti-nationals.” The accusations fell on deaf ears, with global recognition that Sikhs and others were organizing to protect their agrarian livelihoods. The government used these same tactics this past spring during their manhunt for Sikh leader Amritpal Singh—again, using the threat of national security to violate human rights, targeting journalists and community organizers in dragnet operations. Sikhs have become desensitized to these spurious accusations, well accustomed to the cynical nationalist playbook: demonize minorities to galvanize the Hindu majority. That this strategy is being deployed in the midst of an election year is no coincidence. Modi and his BJP regime have used this program diligently for two decades.
And yet, the Indian government’s alleged attempts to kill foreign nationals on foreign soil indicate a shifting approach. Modi’s India is now willing to engage transnational repression and murder of his critics, joining the ranks of China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia with these practices.
https://thewire.in/security/us-drone-sale-sky-guardian-pannu-killing-investigation
New Delhi: The US government has held back delivery of 31 MQ-9A Sea Guardian and Sky Guardian drones to India until New Delhi carries out a “meaningful investigation” into the conspiracy to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, The Wire has learned.
Pannun, who hold dual US and Canadian citizenship, is a New York-based Khalistan activist accused by India of terrorism.
The proposed $3 billion purchase includes 15 Sea Guardian drones for the Indian Navy, while the Indian Air Force and Army are supposed to get eight Sky Guardian drones each.
Also held back by Washington are smaller Indian acquisitions, including a proposal to buy six Boeing P-8I long-range maritime patrol aircraft. These are to supplement 12 P-8I Poseidon aircraft that the Indian Navy already operates.
Ironically, the Indian Ministry of Defence’s internal approval for the now-stalled drone procurement came in June 2023, a week before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington. This was also the time when the conspiracy to kill Pannun – allegedly set in motion by an Indian security official named CC1, according to a federal indictment made public last November – shifted to high gear.
Today, “the purchase is stuck in the US Congress because of anger over the brazen attempt to assassinate Pannun. US representatives have frozen the legislative movement needed for proceeding with the sale,” a highly-placed source in Washington told this reporter. The source, who operates at the top layer of US policymaking, cannot be identified as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
Explaining the delay in delivering these lethal, long-range weapons to India, the Washington-based source says that Indian-American lawmakers in particular are deeply concerned about the fallout from the indictment of an Indian named Nikhil Gupta. He has been formally charged with conspiring to kill Pannun, and is currently in detention in the Czech Republic pending his deportation to the US.
In a joint statement on the Pannun plot last December, five US Congress members of Indian origin – who received a classified briefing from the Biden administration on the federal indictment – said that it is critical for India to “fully investigate [and] hold those responsible, including Indian government officials, accountable, and provide assurances that this will not happen again”.
US federal prosecutors allege that Gupta had promised $100,000 to an FBI agent posing as a hitman to kill Pannun in New York. Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic on June 30 at America’s request.
On November 29, US federal prosecutors charged Gupta with murder-for-hire, which carries up to 10 years in prison; and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which has a maximum sentence of a 10-year jail term.