According to Time Magazine’s report dated 23 November 2023, the Biden Administration has alleged that India was involved in a foiled plot to assassinate a Sikh leader, Pannun, a US citizen residing in America. Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, stated on 22 November 2023 that ‘the issue has been raised by the US Government with Indian officials, including at the highest levels.
As per the Financial Times (FT), the US President Joe Biden raised the issue of a thwarted plot to assassinate Pannun, (a key organizer of nonbinding referendum in the US calling for a separate Sikh State), in a discussion with Modi during the G20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023. Analysts said the White House’s response on 22 November 2023 that it was treating the Pannun case with the “utmost seriousness” would make the incident hard for India to dismiss.
Earlier, as per the BBC, in September 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had said Canada was looking at “credible allegations potentially linking” the Indian state to the Canadian citizen/Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s murder. Mr. Trudeau had stated in Parliament that he had raised the issue of Mr Nijjar’s killing with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 summit in Delhi. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” he told lawmakers.
The FT comments that the US allegation has come at a delicate moment for Washington and its allies, including the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network that groups the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, that are courting India as a rising military, trade and technological counterweight to China, as they will be concerned about when it comes to India’s reliability as a partner.
In the light of the above information/discussion, it must have now become quite clear to the US/its Western allies that since long, India has been sponsoring terrorism in South Asia, especially in Pakistan, to destabilize the region to establish its hegemony and carrying out its state terrorism/genocide in IIOJ&K since 1987 to crush their legitimate freedom struggle, by violating UNSC resolutions and committing endless HR violations.
And, despite clear evidence as stated in the subsequent paragraphs, due to their misperceived strategic importance of India for them, the US/Western countries never gave importance to Pakistan’s allegations of India sponsoring terrorism in IIOJ&K, inside India against the Muslims/Christians and inside Pakistan to destabilize CPEC/Pakistan to impede its economic development.
As per BBC News dated 27 February 2013, “India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan” in Afghanistan, said Mr. Hagel in a 2011 speech at the Oklahoma University. Hagel added, “India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border, and you can carry that into many dimensions”.
The arrest of a serving Indian Naval Officer Kulbhushan Jadhav from Balochistan in 2016, and his confession that he was assigned by India to sponsor terrorism in Balochistan province of Pakistan using the Iranian soil covertly, and India’s TPP sponsored ongoing terrorism in Pakistan, are a clear proof of India being a terrorism sponsoring state.
Inside India, many incidents of killing the Muslims on cow slaughtering allegations, killing/vandalizing of the Muslims/Christians for not reconverting to Hinduism, as part of Modi Government’s unwritten Ghar Wapsi policy, massacre of many Muslims in New Delhi in 2016, are evidences of India’s state terrorism.
The above discussion/stated incidents of India’s state terrorism inside India, in IIOJ&K, in South Asia and in Canada and the US, should act as an eye opener for the US/its Western allies that India is a state sponsoring terrorism in the world. In this context, they should designate the concerned Indian citizens as terrorists and sanction India by, at least, putting its name in the black list of the FATF.
Above all, the US/its allies should never trust India that it will ever confront China for them, as Mr. Ashley Tellies, one of the strongest advocates of closer US-India ties in Washington DC., also stated (published in the Wire dated 2 May 2023), that the Biden Administration’s “current expectations of India are misplaced” and it should “harbour no illusions that its support, no matter how generous, will entice India to join it in any military coalition against China”.
The Financial Times recently reported that the US stopped a plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist living in America and warned the Indian Government it was concerned about its involvement in the planned killing, citing people familiar with the matter it didn’t identify.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American and Canadian citizen, was the target of the latest conspiracy, the FT reported. Pannun is General Counsel of Sikhs for Justice, an organization which advocates for an independent Sikh State known as “Khalistan” to be carved out of India.
Pannun said, “India wants to kill me for running the referendum campaign”. “India’s transnational terrorism has become a direct challenge to the sovereignty of the United States” at the senior-most levels.
The US allegations come just two months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of involvement in the murder of a Sikh separatist leader on Canadian soil. It also puts the US in an awkward spot as the Biden administration sees India as an increasingly important strategic partner in the region as it works to counter China’s influence.
This latest development has placed renewed focus on India’s involvement in targeted overseas killings. In June 2023, Canadian Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot and killed in Vancouver. Regarding this incident, Mr. Trudeau had stated there were ‘credible allegations’ of Indian Government involvement in Nijjar’s murder, accusations that New Delhi called ‘absurd.’ After that diplomatic firestorm, Canada was forced to cut the number of its officials in the country, to which India had given a tit-for-tat response.
—The writer is also a former Research Fellow of IPRI and Senior Research Fellow of SVI Islamabad.
Email: hanifsardar@hotmail.com
views expressed are writer’s own.
