Canada’s Evidence Came from Surveillance of Indian Diplomats; How Kashmir's Free Press Reported Mirwaiz's First Sermon in Four Years
BJP MP uses communal slurs in Parliament, Will Khalistan issue aid or hinder Modi in 2024, Pak election in Jan, Chandrayaan-3 to wake up tomorrow, minister cancels tickets after Chinese visa kung fu
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | With inputs from Kalrav Joshi and Anirudh SK | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal
Snapshot of the day
September 22, 2023
Pratik Kanjilal
“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,” reports the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. CBC’s report says the intelligence “includes communications involving Indian officials themselves, including Indian diplomats present in Canada, say Canadian government sources” , and that some of this was given to Canada by a major ally.
After attending the UN General Assembly, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau said that the decision to go public was not taken lightly. 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 for the G20 meet, where Trudeau apparently confronted Modi. The Associated Press said that evidence was found by the surveillance of Indian diplomats, and some intelligence was provided by a Five Eyes nation.
The Financial Times reports that the Canadian allegation was raised by US President Joe Biden in his meeting with PM Modi in Delhi earlier this month. And in a moment of unusual candour, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said: “There’s not some special exemption you get for actions like this.” He also noted an attempt in the US press to “drive a wedge between the US and Canada”, and said that the two countries are on the same page, and wish to see “the perpetrators held to account”.
https://x.com/Geeta_Mohan/status/1705049198281027885?s=20
Canadian pension funds are invested in six major Indian brands, says the Economic Times, including PayTM and Zomato. The newspaper dismisses fears about a lentil (masoor) shortage in India following the diplomatic scrap with Canada, which accounted for almost two-thirds of imports until recently. The import basket is now diversified and duties on US lentils have been withdrawn.
A portrait of Hardeep Singh Nijjar has been added to the gallery of slain Punjab separatist leaders in the gurdwara outside which he was shot dead in June, reports the New York Times from Surrey, British Columbia. “Mr. Nijjar had taken over leadership of the temple in 2019, and his ascension steered the temple in a far more strident and political direction, likely rousing the suspicion of India, which labelled him a terrorist the following year.”
Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker speaks to the scholar Gurharpal Singh, Emeritus Professor of Sikh and Punjab Studies SOAS University, London, about the Indian government’s concern about Sikh separatism, the development of the Sikh political identity in the West and whether Western governments are doing enough to protect their own citizens.
On Wednesday, the NIA included pictures of the slain Sukha Duneke, victim of a gang war, among pictures it posted of wanted Sikhs in Canada. Within hours, a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang took credit for his shooting. The killing of the rapper Sidhu Moose Wala also happened in the course of the war. Bishnoi is in custody in Ahmedabad.
In Bhar Singh Pura, Nijjar’s home village in Jalandhar district, BBC Hindi finds that his family believes that the Indian government was involved in his killing. They also found a court notice asking a family member to attend, for the seizure of Nijjar’s immovable property.
At an education fair in Hyderabad, representatives of Canadian universities cautioned about possible student visa delays ahead, and asked candidates to seek courses in the next fall.
With the Modi government focused on its great war with Canada, the Chinese government stopped three Indian sportspersons from travelling to China for the Asian Games in Hangzhou. Why? Because they are from Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its own territory. India has ‘retaliated’ by canceling the visit of sports minister Anurag Thakur the games.
Talk about House-warming: a BJP Delhi MP used communal slurs in New India’s new Parliament, in the special session.
https://x.com/MahuaMoitra/status/1705084449342525611?t=CnFuN-qZWVyrmyhSOIjKfg&s=08
After the event, Rajnath Singh, deputy leader in the House, apologised and the remarks were expunged ― a quaint and pointless Parliamentary ritual, when everything is on video. The new parliament building clearly has terrible acoustics. A senior BJP leader seen grinning as Bidhuri turned full communal now says he couldn’t hear what his colleague was saying.
“The [Women’s Reservation] Bill is a distraction from the caste census demand,” said Rahul Gandhi as he promised the census and demanded immediate implementation of the reservations announced, without waiting for a census and delimitation.
Pakistan will have its general election in January, interim PM Anwaar ul Haq Kakar said. Due in November, the vote was delayed by a delimitation exercise. Imran Khan cannot contest. Pakistan’s benchmark index KSE100 rose 550 points following Kakar’s announcement.
India’s crude oil imports declined to a 10-month low in August, primarily due to production cuts by Russia and the closure of refineries for maintenance. Imports were 18.73 million tonnes in August, 4% lower than in July and the lowest since November 2022. However, imports last month were higher on an annual basis by 6%. Ural imports from Russia to India in August slipped to their lowest levels since January this year.
The Modi government is worried by the dip in foreign direct investment and is trying to figure out how to kickstart it.
At 87th, India has slid one place down in a rating of economic freedoms by Canada’s Fraser Institute, in association with the Centre For Civil Society. But in the region, its standing remains OK.
In Imphal district, the Meira Paibis have tried to storm police stations to liberate five youths who were arrested recently for being illegally clad in police uniforms and carrying automatic weapons. The women claimed that they were not “armed miscreants” but “village volunteers” who tried to defend Meitei villages from attacks by Kuki “narco terrorists”. Kuki groups claim that such “armed miscreants” are targeting the Kukis, supported by the police and Meira Paibis.
Last year, India had withdrawn its entire wushu (kung fu) team from the World University Games in Chengdu because they were issued stapled visas. This year, three of India’s leading women wushu practitioners from Arunachal Pradesh could not travel to Hangzhou for the upcoming Asian Games because they got no visas. While the rest of their team has reached China, Union sports minister Anurag Thakur cancelled his visit to the country.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s daughter Saima Wazed, who is chair of Bangladesh’s National Advisory Committee on Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, is up against Nepal’s Shambhu Prasad Acharya, a senior WHO official, for election as director of the WHO South East Asia Regional Office in Delhi. Both candidates seek India’s blessings.
The Uttarakhand High Court has said it sees “no reason” why official scientific reports on Joshimath’s subsidence must be kept under wraps. The state government had submitted the reports in a sealed cover. Earlier this month, the court had reprimanded the government for not complying with its order to include more experts in studies on the town’s sinking.
In Sindh and Turin, the New Humanitarian reports on the world’s third major hunger crisis in 15 years, a cumulative result of the pandemic, climate change and food inflation. In Sindh, the catastrophic flooding of farmlands brought on a season of want.
It’s sunrise at the lunar south polar region where Chandrayaan-3 landed, and ISRO is waiting for solar panels to charge up the lander and rover. Reactivation is planned for Saturday.
How Kashmir’s ‘free media’ reported Mirwaiz’s first sermon in four years
Freed from an unacknowledged and illegal house arrest after four years, a tearful Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq finally got to lead the Friday sermon at the Jamia Masjd in Srinagar today. The cleric, who is also a leader of the Hurriyat Conference, called for the resolution of the Kashmir issue and reunification of the state, which he said was split between India, Pakistan and China. He spoke of human rights abuses and how, after August 5, 2019, the people of Kashmir had been left “weak and powerless”.
https://x.com/mirwaizmanzil/status/1705152949033533630?s=20
Within Kashmir, media reporting of his remarks has been sparse. Greater Kashmir was content to quote the Divisional Commissioner’s sanitised summary: “The role of every citizen is equal in the society, in the present situation related to the drug menace, everyone including religious leaders have a role to play.” Rising Kashmir’s website, which led with the earth-shattering story, ‘Indian Air Force is a glowing symbol of strength, bravery and dedication: LG Sinha,’ buried the Mirwaiz story on its home page with the headline, ‘Friday prayers led by Mirwaiz conclude peacefully at Jamia Masjid: Div Com Kashmir’.
Canadian Punjabi rapper’s tour axed for cartographic cuts
The India tour of Canada-based Punjabi singer and rapper Shubhneet ‘Shubh’ Singh has been cancelled amid an uproar over his Instagram post in March showing a distorted map of the country. Singh ‘Still Rollin India Tour’ was to play in 12 cities. The Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, accused Singh of being a Khalistan supporter. It said that Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast were omitted in the map, and Punjab lay in shadow. He captioned the image ‘Pray for Punjab’. However, The Quint finds that the popular singer has no history of supporting the Khalistan movement.
“India is my country too,” Shubh said on Instagram in a post after the cancellation of his tour was announced. “I was born here. It is the land of my GURUS and my ANCESTORS, who didn't even blink an eye to make sacrifices for the freedom of this land, for its glory, and for the family. And Punjab is my soul, Punjab is in my blood.”
Bipartisan move in US Congress against Sri Lanka rights violations
In a bipartisan move, 12 members of Congress have called on the Biden administration to hold Sri Lanka accountable for its long-standing human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law ― decades of torture, military misconduct and grave crimes against the Tamil minority. Led by Rep Summer Lee (D-Pa) and Rep Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), they urge the State Department to follow Article 30 of the UN Convention Against Torture, emphasizing that Sri Lanka’s impunity has contributed to its economic and political crises.
Independent commissions have failed to conduct criminal investigations into the Sri Lankan Civil War that began in 1983, which including deadly attacks on civilians, the sexual abuse of Tamil women and girls, and the forced disappearance of thousands of Tamils.
Bihar withdraws school DBT programme
Bihar’s long-standing educational challenges have been compounded by the implementation of a Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) programme to provide financial assistance for uniforms and textbooks directly to students attending government schools. Previously, the schools themselves used to supply them. Five years after it replaced free school textbooks with cash transfers in 2017, Bihar has withdrawn the scheme, reports Scroll. Parents are relieved because the money never came in, not even to beneficiaries with Aadhaar and bank accounts. The study noted that “the present arrangement of DBT does not serve the interest of the child, whose right to education is the main objective here.” Nevertheless, the Centre wants other states to adopt the scheme.
Meanwhile, in Murshidabad
In a heartwarming display of communal harmony, Muslim neighbours in Rejinagar, Murshidabad, West Bengal, a minority-dominated pocket without communal discord, a Muslim family extended a helping hand to a poor Hindu family. When 82-year-old Kanai Mondal died, his family couldn’t afford his cremation. Residents of the minority-dominated village, which has only four Hindu families, promptly raised funds for his last rites. They provided a hearse and chanted mantras. “We don’t believe in differences in religion. We don’t think we have done anything special as it was our duty to help a neighbour,” says Babar, one of the people who bore the body to the crematorium.
The Long Cable
Will Khalistan issue aid or hinder Modi in 2024?
Faraz Ahmad
As the general elections for the 16th Lok Sabha near, Canada has hurled at India the sensitive Khalistan issue, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau going public on the differences between the two governments over their respective perceptions of the anti-Modi agitation among the influential and numerically strong Sikh community in Canada.
Will this Khalistan issue aid Modi’s bid or hinder his ambition to recapture power in 2024? Either way, Khalistan, which had died a rather quiet death by the beginning of this century as the people of Punjab became exhausted after two decades of Sikh militancy, appears to be snowballing into a bigger issue, with international ramifications this time. Besides, within days of the Modi extravaganza in the name of G20, Trudeau seems to have taken some of its shine off.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara Sahib, Surrey, British Columbia also led the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) claims NIA which had announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh for information leading to his arrest. In June this year, two men gunned down Nijjar outside the gurdwara.
After India, Canada has the largest Sikh population and Sikhs enjoy financial and political influence there. Nijjar’s killing led to widespread protests and street demonstrations by the Sikh community and human rights activists, who accused Indian intelligence of Nijjar’s killing.
Trudeau, who arrived in Delhi on October 8 to attend the G20 summit, told the Canadian Parliament on September 18 that he had taken up with Indian PM Modi allegations of the involvement of Indian agencies in Nijjar’s killing. During the three-day meet, this rather sour note was kept away from the media. But Trudeau was forced to stay back for 36 hours due to a technical snag in his official plane, while he skipped the official banquet in honour of foreign delegates. He declined the offer of an Indian VIP plane to fly him home and waited for the release of his own plane.
For quite some time now, a section of the Sikh diaspora, not just in Canada but also in USA, Britain and Australia, has been mobilising support for Khalistan. India has been raising this through official channels. But that has not helped much, insofar as this section of the diaspora has been holding protest demonstrations against Modi, accusing him of majoritarianism and undermining the interests of all minorities, including Sikhs. They are throwing cold water on Modi’s and his alma mater, the RSS’s, attempts to project Sikhism not as a distinct religion but as a panth (subsidiary) of Hindus, causing indignation and outrage among the Sikh community.
There are also economic implications from the current standoff. 16 lakh people of Indian origin constitute 3% of the Canadian population. Additionally, 2.3 lakh Indian youth are studying and looking for work in Canada. India’s total trade with Canada is worth US$11.68 billion, which includes 30% of the pulses imported in the last fiscal. Canadian pension funds have invested $55 billion in India. On September 15, the Canadian government announced that it has put on hold the proposed October visit of a high-level trade delegation to Delhi.
Of course, Modi’s immediate concerns are political. The BJP presence in Punjab is negligible, except in alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal or piggybacking on Bollywood stars ― earlier Vinod Khanna, and now Sunny Deol. So the Nijjar controversy will not weaken an already weak BJP in Punjab much further. However, Modi might be looking at reaping the Khalistan harvest in adjoining territories like Jammu, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, where the BJP appears a bit shaky. The BJP had labelled the year-long farmers’ dharna on Delhi borders and their Republic Day entry into the national capital as a Khalistani conspiracy. But it had serious repercussions for Modi, who eventually capitulated on the three anti-farmers laws. Will the Khalistan issue win him political dividends this time?
(Faraz Ahmad is a senior journalist based in Delhi)
Reportedly
Amid the ongoing Canada-India diplomatic crisis, the Union government on Thursday issued an advisory to private television channels to refrain from interviewing people facing charges of serious crimes or terrorism. “It has come to the notice of this Ministry that a person in a foreign country against whom there are serious cases of crime including terrorism, belonging to an organisation which has been prescribed by law in India, was invited for a discussion on a television channel wherein the said person made several comments/remarks which were detrimental to the sovereignty/integrity of the country, security of India, friendly relations of India with a foreign state and also had the potential of disturbing public order in the country,” the I&B ministry advisory stated. The Hindu had reported that “a news channel had given a platform to a wanted terrorist [US-based Gurpatwant Singh Pannu], following which the I&B Ministry has advised television channels to refrain from giving any platform to reports/references about and views/agenda of persons of such background.” However, the advisory does not specify a channel or guest.
One channel, ABP News, did interview Pannu, but the interview, according to one media critic, did more to discredit the man that promote him.
Deep dive
Khalistan has no traction in Punjab. Even the recent protests led by Amritpal Singh of Waris Punjab De petered out in days. So it’s wrong to conflate political opposition to the BJP with support for Khalistan. That’s just a BJP ploy. Kusum Arora connects the dots that matter.
Prime number: 10 < 10
Talk about shrink-wrapping! Nestlé’s Maggi is back at the old Rs 10 price point in rurban markets, but there’s a cheat involved ― the pack, which has always been 100 gms, is now 40 gms. The price for the 100 gms pack was hiked to Rs 12 in 2014 and Rs 14 last year as food inflation rose.
But the number that really matters is nine. Cloud Nine, and no pushing at the back, please.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
Noting that Canadian parties have pulled together behind Trudeau in an information vacuum, The Toronto Globe and Mail says that he must come out with the evidence to validate his actions.
In The Telegraph, Sushant Singh questions the prevalent narrative of a highly successful G20 summit for India, based on tangible outcomes – in dealing with China, reducing economic dependency on Beijing, helping contain joblessness or inflation and pacifying Manipur and Kashmir.
Delhi wants to be seen rubbing shoulders at the high table with the G7 even as it claims the leadership of the global South. Greater influence brings a higher bar and more scrutiny, writes Nirupama Subramanian.
“You hold your nose and shake hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi because you need him in the trenches against Xi Jinping.” Tunku Varadarajan says that in the new cold war against China, the West must again deal with deeply flawed allies. “For geopolitical reasons, we may not want to know” who killed Nijjar.
The Indian State comes across as sloppy and incapable of playing the super spy role that reverberates in many a dream. When the tools are inadequate, it is far better to look within and improve the conditions at home rather than chase a script that may never thrill, writes Manvendra Singh.
“In going public, Canada has emboldened a vast reservoir of silent India sceptics in the Western power corridors,” writes Avinash Paliwal in the Hindustan Times. “And India’s response to the Canadian allegations is fuelling, not abating, these concerns.”
India’s reputation burns internationally as Modi fiddles, says Jessica Karl in Bloomberg. Despite the male fascination with the Roman Empire, nobody wants to be remembered as a modern-day Nero.
In Slate, Nisha Pahwa writes about California’s historic anti-caste-discrimination bill, the bad faith backlash it received from Hindu nationalists, and why US media is maddeningly ill-equipped to cover their growing influence in domestic politics.
“Many are waking up to the reality that they don’t get rich, or even comfortable, by simply working hard: they get rich by being born rich. The social mobility myth is dying – now we must demand an economic settlement that works for all,” writes Faiza Shaheen in The Guardian.
Priya Ramani reviews Aakar Patel’s new story of the Big Man.
Listen up
Will India take America’s side against China? Ashley J Tellis – one of the closest observers and shapers of the US-Indian relationship – on The Foreign Affairs podcast, examines the relationship between the US and India – and the divergence between Washington’s and New Delhi’s interests when it comes to US-Chinese competition.
Watch out
USCIRF discusses religious freedoms in India. “Indian state governments have implemented legal restrictions on religious conversion, dress, educational curriculum, interfaith marriage and cow slaughter that negatively impact Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and the indigenous population,” said Commissioner Frederick Davie, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Over and out
Europeans colonised India in its quest for black pepper ― Christ was by the way. The Juggernaut looks at the democratisation of pepper down the centuries, from an embalming chemical used by the ancient Egyptians to the condiment that is now on every table.
“Meet Shah Rukh Khan: If you haven’t heard of the Bollywood superstar, it’s about time you did.” The Los Angeles Times’ cheat sheet on SRK.
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.