Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Oct 19 & 26, 2024

Last week, a major diplomatic row erupted between India and Canada, with tit-for-tat expulsions of senior diplomats by the two countries (reminding the world of what used to happen between India and Pakistan). Trouble had been brewing over the past year ever since the Canadians pointed fingers in September 2023 at the involvement of Indian officials in a targeted killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a pro-Khalistani activist living in Canada. Indian officials and the media have openly accused Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau of whipping up sentiment against the Indian Government and in the process playing vote bank politics toward a section of the Sikh community in Canada. The Indian media is failing citizens by not asking the question as to whether illegal practices of India’s secret services abroad are acceptable. In the meantime, news has broken out of the arrest in the USA of a former operative from India’s overseas intelligence outfit —Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) on charges of an attempted assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun (also a Sikh separatist activist) based in the US. The US and Canadian investigators believe the two cases are linked and had the full approval of the Modi Govt in Delhi. Separatist groups have been targets of previous Indian governments too, but citizens are mostly in the dark about covert operations of secret services and counter-insurgency security agencies. These recent cases in the US and Canada can seriously damage India’s reputation for years to come. Canada and India must seriously engage in damage control to protect long-standing economic and social relations. There is a large Indian diaspora in Canada whose interests must be protected. The aggressive and reckless operations of the secret services emanating from Delhi need oversight and rebalancing to include the price & risks involved. Wrongdoing in the name of state security is part of widely prevalent international practices. The US, Canada, Britain, Russia, Israel, France, Brazil, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are all part of a long list of countries engaged in covert operations with murky undersides beyond public purview. That wrongdoing is widely prevalent doesn’t rationalise mimicking it by others. Ground-level democracy activists and human rights groups must educate society, lobby political parties and members of parliament to bring India’s secret services under scrutiny and demand that they function within the scope of the law nationally and beyond.

October 19, 2024 —HK