AT PENPOINT
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked India to join the investigation into the June killing of Hardeep Singh Najjar. He did so on the floor of the Canadian Parliament, which meant that while the participation of the Indian state was not yet proven, Trudeau was morally certain that India was behind the incident.
Will the world community, the comity of nations, which these days means the USA and its allies, pay any attention? It all depends on whether that comity is willing to admit India within the ranks of the big boys, those who have impunity in lesser countries. Part of the problem is that the First World is not too sure about how to handle the Indian diaspora. That diaspora started when the British exported Indians all over the empire, primarily as labour on sugar estates in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That is the reason for the presence of Indians in countries like Maldives, Mauritius and Fiji, not to forget the West Indies (with Guyana and Trindad the most profoundly affected). Some Sikhs ended up in the USA as farm labour, and it was an early centre of an anaemic Khalistan Movement. However, it was to Canada that Sikhs moved, and were already in substantial numbers when Canada relaxed its immigration policy in the hope of increasing its population. One result is that there was a large Sikh presence in Canada, and whereas Surjit Singh Sajjan became the first Sikh to command a battalion of Canadian infantry, he also became Defence Minister. He has since been shifted, but in the meantime the Free Democrat Party elected Jagmeet Singh Dhaliwal as party leader; since 2019, the party has supported the Trudeau government, which was reduced to a minority. His FDP lost half its seats, coming down to 24 from the 44 it had won in 2015.
Sikhs are not only important in Canada, but crucial to the current government. However, Canada has managed to become a hotbed of the Khalistan Movement. Nijjar was the alleged chief of the Khalsa Tiger Force, itself founded by Jagtar Singh Tara, a onetime member of the Babbar Khalsa, whose chief, Talwinder Singh Parmar, was accused of the 1985 blast on an Air India flight from Montreal to New Delhi, that killed 329 passengers. Nijjar had migrated from India in 1997, when he was 20, on a false passport, and claimed asylum, which was denied. However, he got citizenship in 2007. He had been identified as a terrorist by India to Canada, a claim which he strongly denied. Also, it seems that he carried on his plumbing business in a law-abiding manner. He had become a prominent activist in the Sikh community, where he had been elected head of the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia.
The problem that India is posing is that it seems to want impunity to take out those it perceives as enemies of the state. One problem is that it wants the right to deal with those who have been given citizenship by the c countries they reside in. In short, they want to be able to override the protections given by other states to their citizens.
Let it be clear. Hardeep Najjar had carried with him an essentially Indian issue, despite being a Canadian citizen. Canadian citizens like Surjit Sajjan and Jimmy Dhaliwal may take an interest in Indian affairs, so long as they do not actively intervene, the Indian state would have no problem. But the expression of views, the raising of funds, the hatching of conspiracies, that was not to be allowed.
The ‘big boys’ claim that impunity. The invasion of Afghanistan by the USA is probably the best recent example. The USA showed the Taliban that it would not allow it to give Usama Bin Laden a place from which he could attack US soil, and kill US citizens. Earlier, it has bombed Khartoum, Bin Laden’s sanctuary then.
Accepting large numbers of Indians on one’s oil does mean importing Indian problems along with them. The host countries can perhaps not do anything to stop the new migrants use their new-found freedom of speech on the Indian government, but they can ensure that RAW doesn’t go around killing people.
Back in 1985, French intelligence had put a bomb on the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, New Zealand, stopping that ship from leading protests against French nuclear tests in the Pacific, and killing a Portuguese-Dutch photographer. The New Zealand police carried out a massive investigation, which led to the arrest of two French intelligence agents, who were tried and imprisoned.
It was clear that the French had overstepped a line by undertaking an operation in an allied country. India has also overstepped a line, though it might be worse for other countries, because India is not white. It is also worth remarking that vital interests should be involved.
India sees the Khalistan Movement as a threat to its integrity, but its problem is that it faces such a large number of movements, all of which are represented in the Diaspora. Indeed, they may be disproportionately represented, because while most Indians migrate for economic reasons, many migrants go abroad to escape discrimination or even prosecution at home.
Those engaging in assassinations in recent times have been powers that are not entirely certain of their place in the world. The episodes of Russian ex-agents being assassinated in the UK, with Aleksandr Litvineko assassinated by polonium poisoning in 2010, and an attempt with novichok nerve gas on Sergei Skripal, which killed a neighbour, showed that Russia considers loyalty a vital interest. The assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s brother Kim Jong-Nam in 2017 in Malaysia by nerve agent, was another example of unpunished assassination.
Is it merely a coincidence that so far all assassinations have been carried out by nuclear states? The USA, the UK, China and Pakistan so far do not have any assassinations ascribed to them, though both the USA and UK have got coups and political manipulation attributed to them. The USA are supposed to have been singularly inept, with humorous attempts on Cuban leader Fidel Castro having failed. India has been joining clubs, with an unmanned moon landing the month before.isations
China has beaten India in the space race so far, but has so far avoided the murder stakes. As a repressive regime with a diaspora abroad, it is as good a candidate as India for this. Pakistan is also well qualified, and indeed the death of Baloch nationalists abroad has been ascribed to the Pakistani state, basically on the ground that it had a motive.
Pakistan has not just to worry about the temptation of imitation, but of becoming a target. India has long ago draw the links between extremist Sikh organisations and Pakistan. How does Pakistan react to a similar assassination? The temptation to take revenge will be strong. On the fac e of it, there is a very strong downside to doing so, but there was a strong downside to acting in Canada.
One would have thought assassination would be more common during history, but states seem to have been concerned with keeping enemy heads of state alive. Assassination is a terrorist weapon, and it is worth noting that it was used only by the Taliban to assassinate Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader on 9 September 2001. That preceded what the modern terrorist seems to prefer: the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
If the world community does not express its disapproval now, it will only encourage India in its bad behaviour. The manipulation of the diaspora for its own ends is the means by which India will throw its weight about. The Holy Grail seems to be to assassinate US citizens on US soil. The FBI has already been obliged to warn several Sikhh Americans that they could be assassinated.
Accepting large numbers of Indians on one’s oil does mean importing Indian problems along with them. The host countries can perhaps not do anything to stop the new migrants use their new-found freedom of speech on the Indian government, but they can ensure that RAW doesn’t go around killing people.
