New York, Dec 19th, 2023: When The Washington Post broke the story on an alleged Indian plot to assassinate Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on US soil, it not only shed light on a potential threat but also exposed the intricate dance of geopolitics and economic interests.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/29/india-us-assassination-plot-sikh-pannun/
Daniel Markey, a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, cautioned against overestimating the possibility of holding India accountable for targeting a dissident simply because he happened to be an American Canadian citizen.
 | "There’s little to be gained diplomatically from attempting to shame this Indian government and lots to lose," Daniel Markey, a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace Markey remarked, emphasizing shared interests rather than shared values between the US and India. His observations echo the longstanding struggle of the Sikh community to have its voice heard on the global stage |
His observations echo the longstanding struggle of the Sikh community to have its voice heard on the global stage.
SIKH AUTONOMY ON DEAF EARS, GLOBALLY, SINCE 1947
Going back to the partition of Punjab in 1947, the Sikh community's plea for autonomy fell on deaf ears.
Not just the United States, no other world power ever held India to account for denying the Sikhs their well-deserved autonomy after their heartland of Punjab was divided into Islamic Pakistan and a Hindu-majority India in 1947.
The bloody partition, during which an estimated 200,000 to 2 million were killed, impacted the Sikhs the hardest.
Rewind to the year before the British transferred power to what became two sovereign countries in the Asian subcontinent.
In the spring of 1946, then British Prime Minister Clement Attlee sent a cabinet mission comprising Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps, and A.V. Alexander to New Delhi to discuss Indian independence. The Sikh representatives were unambiguous in presenting their case.
In his book, “A History of the Sikhs (Volume II),” one of India’s best-known authors and historians, Khushwant Singh, mentions that the Sikh side told the cabinet mission that if Pakistan was conceded, they were for a separate Sikh state.
One of the four Sikh representatives, Giani Kartar Singh, described the proposed territory as “a province of their own.”
Another member of the Sikh delegation which met the British mission, Baldev Singh, the then development minister in the Punjab government, defined “the Sikh state, Khalistan, in somewhat the same terms as consisting of ‘the Punjab excluding Multan and Rawalpindi divisions’,” notes Khushwant Singh in the chapter titled “Prelude to the Partition of India” (page 255).
A footnote on the same page quotes civil servant V.P. Menon as recording in “The Transfer of Power in India” that the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Sikh political party, passed a resolution on March 22, 1946, stating “Sikhistan” to be its political objective.
But the less numerous British, who had annexed a sovereign Punjab in 1849 after two wars with the Sikhs, were more inclined to address the demands of the Hindu-majority Indian National Congress and the Muslim League than give any serious consideration to the Sikh community in the cradle of their faith.
So when the new international borders were drawn, the Sikhs bore the maximum brunt.
“The one community to which no boundary award could have done justice without doing injustice to others were the Sikhs. Their richest lands, over 150 historical shrines, and half of their population were left on the Pakistan side of the dividing line,” Khushwant Singh writes on pages 274-275 of his book.
ELITE UPPER-CASTE MINDSET DRIVES INDIAN STATE POST 1947
LINGUISTIC BIAS, BRAHMIN RULE, MEDIA EXPLOITATION
A TRUNCATED PUNJAB WITHOUT CAPITAL
UNDERMINING SIKH CALLS FOR REAL FEDERALISM, STATE AUTONOMY
INDIAN STATE TURNS PUNJAB INTO LAB FOR DIVISIVE POLITICS
UNLEASHING MACHIAVELLIAN POLICY AGAINST SIKHS
GENOCIDAL ORGIES AGAINST SIKHS
STAGED SHOOTINGS, POLICE TORTURE, ABDUCTIONS, SECRET CREMATIONS
GLOBAL LIP SERVICE TO HUMAN RIGHTS EMBOLDENS INDIA
A CALL FOR GENUINE RECOGNITION – NOT EMPTY RHETORIC