On terrorism, the West is guilty of double standards
Before 9/11, the Kanishka bombing was the worst act of mid-air terrorism. Yet, US and Canada have been soft on pro-Khalistan activists who celebrate such acts
Is the West, including large sections of its media, guilty of abject ignorance or wilful hypocrisy on the issue of terrorism and India?
It has been galling to watch and read the commentary on the showdown between India and Canada and the rising friction between India and the United States (US) over the harbouring of pro-Khalistan terrorists and separatists within their jurisdictions.
At the heart of it all is a man called Gurpatwant Pannun, designated a terrorist by India but described as a “critic of the Modi government” and “Sikh activist” in official American documents concerning an alleged plot to kill him. Vikash Yadav, a former Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) official, has been named in these documents, and another Indian, Nikhil Gupta, is already in custody for the same case. Pannun is the lawyer for Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canada-based pro-Khalistan terrorist who was killed in 2023 in what was first suspected to be a case of internecine gang warfare. Since then, Canada’s Justin Trudeau government has blamed India for his death in an extremely clumsily handled response that sought to drag in India’s then high commissioner to the country, Sanjay Verma.
You could argue that this smells like an operation gone wrong. And you could argue that India won’t be able to take one approach with the US (where an inquiry panel has been set up) and another with Canada because the cases and characters overlap. You could make a case that the US-India relationship is too strategically aligned to be toppled by this one case and that the India-Canada one doesn’t quite matter at all in the same way.
But it is offensive to the collective intelligence of a nation to present Pannun as a hapless victim. A 2023 speech by Pannun should be made compulsory viewing for officials in the US and Canada. Pannun makes an open threat about “balkanising India”. He warns people against travelling by Air India on certain designated days. He says he will ensure that the name of the airport in the national capital will be changed from Indira Gandhi International Airport to the names of the men who killed her. Media reports suggest he has repeated the threat this year as well.
Threats like these are being protected in the name of free speech.
Try telling that to the families of those who died on board Air India flight 182 in 1985 when it was blown up by pro-Khalistan terrorists. Among the 329 people who were killed, nearly 90 were children. Sanjay Lazar, an Air India cabin crew member, whose family was killed in the bombing, spent years of his life seeking justice only to find a callous Canadian system unwilling to punish those responsible. Amarjit Kaur, the wife of one of the pilots of the plane, told me that she has no hope for justice. These families know that inflammatory rhetoric has dangerous, real-life consequences.
It can’t be a coincidence that these past few weeks of extreme breakdown between India and Canada have also seen more than a hundred bomb hoax calls to Indian airlines forced by caution to return to the bay. Just because an actual bomb hasn’t gone off does not make these threats innocuous. This is pure and simple aviation terrorism, designed to wreak havoc and financial loss.
Lazar says he has spent years pleading with successive governments for a Kanishka memorial in India. It is tragic, and frankly unconscionable, that we don’t already have such a memorial. Now would be the perfect time to implement this long-overdue recognition.
Before 9/11, Kanishka was the worst act of mid-air terrorism that the world had seen. If anything, India has been too muted about the bombings. Talwinder Singh Parmar, the mastermind of the Kanishka murders, has been celebrated in parts of Canada. Tableaus celebrating the assassins of Indira Gandhi have been part of mainstream parades. And Indian diplomats have a bullet on their back after posters by pro-Khalistan groups have targeted them.
Most egregious of all is the narrative in the West that uses Sikhs and pro-Khalistani groups as interchangeable nomenclatures. Not that any Indian has to prove their patriotism, but survey after survey shows what is otherwise a dead and buried issue Khalistan is in Punjab.
There are tricky and challenging issues for India to navigate in the stand-off with Canada and the US. But no Indian, irrespective of political leanings, is willing to be lectured to by nations that celebrate the elimination of their adversaries — or those of their allies (see the responses to Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, for instance) — and cast other nations like sinners in a morality play.
The much-cited “rules-based order” can’t be one that applies principles only selectively.
Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author. The views expressed are personal
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