DEAD HORSE OR MAD DOG?
“Khalistan has no ground support in Punjab today,” said a senior Indian security official, but some prominent separatist leaders abroad “are involved in drugs, gun-running, crime syndicates and have links to Punjab too”.
A recently retired top Indian security official called Khalistan a “dead horse” but insisted “you have to act to pre-empt” as they are raising money abroad, training people and agitating for India’s division.
India “has to be careful”, he said, because issues are “boiling under the surface”, including unemployment and rampant drug use in Punjab, which borders on India’s archrival Pakistan.
Both officials asked not to be named given the current sensitivity of the issue.
India has not publicly released any recent evidence of Sikh separatist involvement with overseas crime, but New Delhi says it has repeatedly shared such evidence with foreign capitals.
An aggressive national security posture is an important element of Modi’s cultivated strongman image, built on actions including air strikes against Pakistan, ending special privileges for the disputed Kashmir region and targeting left-wing activists the government says are linked to Maoist militants.
Kanwarpal Singh, political secretary of the Punjab-based Dal Khalsa group, which lobbies for a separate Khalistan, rejected links to drugs or crime. Modi’s government is seeking to “defame, isolate and eliminate” Sikh separatist leaders, he said.
The policy is to “call the dog mad and shoot him”, he said.
Other critics of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has failed to make political inroads among Sikhs, accuse it of exaggerating the Khalistan problem for political gain.
“It is exploiting whatever limited Khalistani element there is in the country or in the diaspora to mobilise the Hindu population,” said security expert Ajai Sahni.
Dal Khalsa’s Singh said that after the year-long 2021 farm protests by mostly Sikh farmers and activists bruised the BJP politically, “they are taking revenge on the Sikh community”.
Source: CNA
