"if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen
the side of the oppressor." - Desmond Tutu.
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Gurpreet Singh

Cofounder and Director of Radical Desi

A renowned UK-based author and scholar who was recently deported from India has received unanimous support of the Punjab Press Club of British Columbia (PPCBC).

Nitasha Kaul was detained at Bengaluru airport and forced to leave the country, in spite of valid travel documents, merely because of her criticism of policies of the right wing Hindu nationalist BJP government in New Delhi.  A Kashmiri Hindu woman herself, she has been opposed to growing repression of Muslims and other minority communities in India, and is known for her advocacy for secularism.

Kaul, who has been visiting India frequently, was invited by a non-BJP government in Karnataka for an event to promote pluralism. However, she was denied entry to the country by the central government.

In one of the four resolutions passed by PPCBC, the members condemned the mistreatment meted out to Kaul at an Indian airport. “This reflects very badly on the world’s so-called largest democracy. And we strongly denounce what Indian establishment has done to a respectable person like Kaul,” the resolution read.

The members emphasized that this is an assault on the right to free expression, and that if freedom of speech is allowed to be stifled, press freedom cannot survive either. They also condemned the banning of books from public display by a Quebec writer, for her opposition to the Israeli aggression in Gaza. Elise Gravel has written several picture books and graphic novels for children. Her books were removed from public display by a Jewish Library in Montreal.

In another resolution, the PPCBC endorsed an open letter to the Israeli government by more than 50 journalists asking for access to Gaza, and expressed their condolences to the families of a dozen journalists killed during Israeli attacks.

The fourth resolution welcomed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and BC Premier David Eby for taking a stand against Bell Company which is laying off journalists and selling radio stations for maximizing profits, but also called upon the two leaders to give the media industry necessary support to ensure its long term survival and job protection for its workers.

 

Dear Prime Minister,

I believe you are deeply saddened by the death of a critic of the Russian President while being incarcerated. Please accept my condolences and stay strong. 

While I do understand that you carry the burden of being a self-styled leader of human rights in the world, and have an obligation to stand up for alleged repression of political dissidents in Russia, I fail to fathom why you never display such passion when it comes to state violence in other parts of the globe.

I don’t think I need to remind you that India is a neighbour to Russia, and that the country you aren’t unfamiliar with has a poor record on civil rights. After all, you recently acknowledged that they could be behind the murder of a Canadian Sikh activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, and yet you have a tendency to forget.

Following the recent death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian jail, your government not only announced more sanctions against Russia, but you called the country’s president Vladimir Putin, a monster. Wow . How brave. Applause. 

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to note that you never dared to call Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi just that, despite the fact that he has Muslim blood on his hands. He was instrumental behind the 2002 massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat province of India. Before being elected as Prime Minister in 2014, he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, and was denied visa by several countries for that reason. How can you overlook such an important historical fact? Not very long ago, in 2021, political prisoner Stan Swamy died in custody of the brutal Indian state. You never uttered a word. Swamy was a Christian preacher who worked among the indigenous communities of India and was locked up under trumped up charges for merely defending their right to the lands being appropriated by the extraction industry. Well, what can be expected from the Prime Minister of a country built on stolen lands of the First Nations? If Putin is a monster, then Modi is a devil who deserves to be punished for his crimes against humanity. The story does not end there. Sikh groups started a petition asking for sanctions against India in the light of Nijjar’s murder. But nothing came out of that. You need to come clean on this. Either act against India with a similar zeal, or stop pretending. Unfortunately, that’s what you have been doing in the garb of human rights advocacy. You don’t see the sufferings of the Palestinians under the repressive Israeli government, but you are obsessed with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You even failed to make the Israeli state accountable for the genocide of people of Gaza, but chose to call pro-Palestine activists "anti-semitic", whereas Modi is the real anti-semite whose Hindu supremacist organization RSS glorified Hitler and justified the Jewish holocaust. Kindly learn something from South Africa, which has taken the lead on social justice, and stop fooling yourself. 

Gurpreet Singh

Independent journalist and broadcaster.

 

Gurpreet Singh

 

This Sunday brings back the ugly memories of two separate incidents of terrorism and bloodshed perpetrated against Muslims in India.

The first occurred on February 18, 1983, in Nellie, Assam where over 2,000 Bangladeshi Muslims were slaughtered in 14 villages by mobs; the second happened years later. In 2007, on the same fateful date in Panipat, Haryana, the Samjhauta express train, mainly carrying Pakistani Muslim passengers, was hit by bombings, leaving 70 people dead.

 

In both instances, Hindu supremacists were involved, while the Indian state either remained complicit or failed to deliver justice.

The Nellie massacre had its roots in the regional chauvinist movement started by those seeking exclusion of so-called outsiders from Assam. It was instigated by the Hindu groups who owe allegiance to the currently ruling right wing BJP government in New Delhi. The 2007 blasts were orchestrated by the same forces, who wanted to stop the rail service between India and Pakistan and terrorise Muslims.

 

During the years in between, the victims of some other notable tragedies, such as the 1984 Sikh Genocide or the 2002 Gujarat violence against Muslims, have received global attention and a very few convictions, however insignificant and insufficient this closure might be. But in the February 18 tragedies two decades apart, no justice has been served.

 

In the Samjhauta blast case, several arrests were made following the brave efforts of a handful of police investigators, including the late Hemant Karkare of Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad, but the suspects were acquitted under the BJP regime that used every tool in its toolbox to weaken the prosecution. They have openly indicated their intentions ever since they came to power with a brute majority under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. Not only had Modi accused the previous government of wrongly blaming Hindus for the Samjhauta blasts, but other ministers in his government had declined to file an appeal when the suspects were exonerated.

 

What links the two stories is the fact that since the victims were not Indian nationals, there has hardly been any outrage within the broader Indian community, let alone any reaction from the Hindu majority. Narrow nationalism is the only explanation why calls by human rights activists for justice to these victims have remained unheard in the mainstream media. Nor could the governments of Bangladesh and Pakistan do anything to expose the Indian establishment internationally.  

 

The victims of February 18 fall perfectly into the category of "unworthy victims" defined by Noam Chomsky in his book, Manufacturing Consent. Let’s keep them in our collective memory this Sunday and mark February 18 as another black day inworld history.  

Gurpreet Singh 

This February 14 was no different. Unmindful of wars, repression and marches for missing and murdered indigenous women across Canada, privileged couples in their comfort zone expressed love to each other. After all, Valentine’s Day has been marked as a romantic occasion for years.

Many in the West may not be familiar with the name of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a towering progressive Urdu poet of Pakistan, but his birthday falls on February 13, a day before people are busy ordering roses and chocolates for their loved ones.

As Faiz prophetically said in one famous verse addressed to his sweetheart, please don’t expect the love I once had for you, as there is so much misery in our world to deal with. 

Known for his leftist ideology, Faiz was critical of the system that discriminated against the poor and marginalized. What he stood for remains relevant today, due to growing social disparity not just in his own country, but neighbouring India, besides North America.

Ironically, Valentine’s Day has become popular in South Asia too, where Faiz is losing charm in spite of the history of colonialism. In India, the situation is worse under a right wing Hindu nationalist BJP government, whose supporters despise both Faiz and Saint Valentine. Not surprisingly, the attacks on Muslims and Christians have grown, as BJP supporters are known for their hatred against Islam and Christianity, let alone their dislike for anything they consider alien to the Indian culture. The bigots conveniently ignore their own heritage that once allowed polygamy and encouraged both erotic art and literature, such as Kama Sutra.

In a more ideal situation like the one in Canada, where all this is welcomed in the name of free choice and consumerism, the masses are least bothered about other pressing issues. Here Valentine’s Day and the annual marches for missing and murdered indigenous women happen around the same time. Obviously, not every Canadian is on board to march along with those pained by systemic racism indigenous women face in this country.

This year, the world is also facing many other challenges, like the ongoing attacks on Palestine by Israel, and the Russian-Ukraine war which has impacted the global economy, making the life of the less privileged more difficult.

We probably need to hear and feel what Faiz told his beloved. Yes, the greetings and roses can wait until there is peace and justice. Saint Valentine’s legacy should not be reduced to tokenism either. He laid down his life for the right of the couples to marry in defiance of the Roman Empire. Considering how interracial or same sex couples are being hounded in socially conservative countries, and how human rights defenders are incarcerated all over the world, we need to celebrate Valentine’s Day differently by spreading more humane and spiritual love which have become a rare commodity.

 

 

Gurpreet Singh

A news item from India published in the National Post on Thursday, February 8 left me amused.

Right on top of page four, the headline of the story screamed, “India frees pigeon wrongly accused of spying for China”.

After reading the dispatch credited to The Washington Post, I thought of a comedy Hindi movie titled Lucky Kabootar, and a song with similar lyrics which means a fortunate pigeon.

The story goes on to tell how the Indian police became suspicious of a pigeon that strayed into its territory, and took the bird into custody for eight months. The metal rings on its leg had something they believed to be written in Chinese. Since India and China have long-standing issues and hostile relations, the Mumbai police couldn’t take a chance. However, it was later revealed that the bird was from Taiwan and had lost its way. 

The investigation did not find any material to suggest espionage, and the pigeon was eventually released, bringing a happy ending to the tale.

What is really interesting to note here is how a Canadian daily picked the story and displayed it. This has not been the case for scores of political prisoners cooling their heels in Indian jails for years under trumped up charges. Among them is former Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba, a wheelchair bound scholar, who is disabled below the waist, and is grappling with several ailments. There have been a series of protests for him in Canada, and thousands of people signed a petition asking for his release on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.  No Canadian daily ever took pains to share his story.

Saibaba was convicted for life in 2017 after being branded as a Maoist sympathizer, merely because he has been advocating for the rights of the tribal people whose lands are being acquired by the extraction industry with the backing of the Indian state. As Maoist insurgents have been active in those areas, Saibaba was labelled as anti-national and thrown behind bars.  He wasn’t given an opportunity to see his dying mother for the last time or to attend her last rites, whereas right wing Hindu extremists, in spite of being involved in mass murders, have been given bails and paroles on medical grounds. Notably, attacks on religious minorities and political dissidents have grown in India under the current Hindu supremacist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Saibaba is just one instance, while many other scholars, human rights defenders, and political activists from minority communities, are being incarcerated under draconian laws and inhuman conditions.  

The Taiwanese pigeon is surely lucky to have been freed after eight months and to capture headlines across the globe.

It’s a shame that the Canadian media has chosen to avoid looking at the way the world’s so-called largest democracy is treating its people. Such empathy and interest in the story of a bird, over the brutal experiences of human beings in India, reflects very poorly on the fourth estate of our society. How different is it than the approach of a Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi towards humanity? While the supporters of Modi continue to attack Muslims suspected of carrying beef in their tiffin boxes in the name of cow protection, the western media is enamoured with the story of a bird over jailed political activists.

***

 

 

Honourable Commissioner Hogue,

 

Thank you for opening an inquiry into the growing foreign interference in Canada, which is home to people from almost all the countries across the globe.

I, being a journalist of Indian origin, who came to Canada in 2001, have been following these developments very closely.

It’s good that you are looking into an issue which has deeply impacted my compatriots residing in this country for a very long time.

It gives us hope that you aren’t just focusing on China, Russia or Iran, but also on how the government of the world’s so-called largest democracy in New Delhi has been spreading its tentacles in Canada through its spies to suppress any voice of dissent in the diaspora.  

Since I have covered the Air India tragedy, and have interviewed the families of the victims of the worst incident in the history of aviation terrorism before 9/11, I call upon your inquiry commission to look into the circumstances that led to the bombings that left 331 people dead. Radical Desi, an online magazine which I started, has already launched a petition asking for a focused inquiry into the whole episode. We will continue to gather signatures both online and on physical petitions, until Vaisakhi in April.

Community members are signing the petition with a desire to see justice being served. There has been a feeling out there that the Indian agencies could be involved behind the crime that has largely been blamed on Sikh separatists, leading to only one conviction.  

This has become even more necessary after the murder of Surrey-Delta Gurdwara President Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June, 2023. The events leading up to his assassination demand a fresh investigation into the role of Indian spies behind the Air Indian blasts.  

Let’s take a quick look at some of the facts.   

331 people died in two bombings on June 23, 1985. This included the mid-air blast of Air India Flight 182 that killed all 329 people aboard. While the incidents were blamed on Sikh separatists seeking revenge from the Indian government, community activists continue to believe that this was the handiwork of Indian intelligence to discredit the movement for a Sikh homeland of Khalistan. They have pointed to a flawed investigation, destruction of surveillance tapes, and facts such as the last minute cancellation of travel plans by some people known to be close to the Indian consulate, and the proximity of some of the suspects to Indian officials.

Two of the persons charged were acquitted. Inderjit Singh Reyat was the only individual to be convicted for manslaughter and perjury, for concealing the identity of another potential suspect.

Among the acquitted was Sikh millionaire Ripudaman Singh Malik, who was not only given visa to visit India in 2019, but was allowed to meet the head of the Indian spy agency R&AW. Malik was shot to death under mysterious circumstances in July 2022. A section of the Indian media speculated that he was killed by the supporters of Khalistan.

Nijjar was portrayed as a suspect, raising apprehensions of retaliation within the community. He had been facing threats to his life, and had been on the radar of the Indian government that was seeking his extradition. A month before his murder, he told me during a radio interview that he is on the Indian watch list and could be eliminated through contract killers. So much so, I was labeled as a provocateur against Malik by the same media group, as I have been questioning Malik’s meeting with the R&AW chief and his growing loyalty towards right wing Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A dossier made on me by the Indian government accused me of indulging in anti-India activities around the same time, even though I have been critical of Khalistan movement and had received threats for criticising Malik and others charged in the Air India case. 

The Indian government was outraged over Nijjar’s support for a referendum on Khalistan and for glorification of the late Talwinder Singh Parmar, a militant leader who is widely accused as a mastermind behind the Air India carnage. Notably, while Parmar was never convicted for the crime, he was killed by the Indian police in cold blood in 1992, giving credence to the conspiracy theories. Many believe that his killing was a part of the cover up.  

In June, 2023, Nijjar was murdered near the gurdwara parking lot, despite the fact that he was repeatedly cautioned by Canadian authorities about the danger to his life.

The Canadian Prime Minister acknowledged in the House of Commons that the Indian government could be behind the murder. Later, US authorities unearthed a plot to kill Nijjar’s colleague Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, and indicted Nikhil Gupta, who hired an undercover police officer for the job on behalf of an unidentified Indian government official.

The series of events has made the demand for another Air India inquiry even more relevant than before. Previous investigations mainly looked into the hand of Sikh separatists in the bombings and have remained unresolved, so let’s go beyond and try to look into other possibilities with an open mind.

I urge you to kindly examine this question urgently and bring closure that is much needed before it is too late. Not only the victims’ families deserve that, but also the Sikh community that remains under a microscope because of this ugly affair.

 

Gurpreet Singh 

An independent journalist and the author of Fighting Hatred With Love: Voices of the Air India victims' families 

 

 

 

 

 

To mark the beginning of the Black History Month, the Vancouver-based online magazine that covers alternative politics has picked the President of South Africa for the title, in recognition of his government’s initiative to make Israel accountable for Palestinian genocide in the International Court of Justice, something which the western democracies, like Canada and US, have failed to do.

Through this historic action, South Africa has proved itself to be a true human rights leader in the world.

Prominent columnist and author Anand Teltumbde, who was arrested and thrown behind bars by the Indian government under trumped up charges for questioning the power, recently received an award in the name of Basavaanna, a great reformist and philosopher of Karnataka. Currently on bail, he had to obtain permission from the court in his native state of Maharashtra to travel to Bengaluru to receive the honour from  the Karnataka government. Teltumbde had been to Canada before being framed at the behest of right wing Hindu nationalist forces, and was declared "Person of the Year 2020" by Radical Desi while being incarcerated. The Karnataka government award was in recognition of his work for an egalitarian and just society, and for standing up for the poor and marginalized. He happens to be the grandson-in-law of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a towering Indian scholar and the architect of the Indian constitution. Below are the speech made by Teltumbde on this occasion, and a congratulatory letter sent to him by his co accused from inside the jail:

 

Dr Anand Teltumbde on the Conferment of Basava Rashtriya Purashkar by the Government of Karnataka

[Speech prepared to be delivered in the Award Function on 31 January 2013. Its fraction was however spoken out due to paucity of time]

I am extremely happy to be honoured by the conferment of this prestigious award of the Government of Karnataka. I am especially happy to be in your midst to receive the award in person. It’s my first travel out of the jurisdiction of the Bombay High Court after my coming out on bail, with the permission from the court. In the context of my condition, the honour being done to me here is not really my personal honour but it is the honour of those countless and faceless activists who have been making huge sacrifices to make this world a little better place to live. Unfortunately, they are being targeted by the present regime at the centre as the enemies of nation.

I am thankful to the Government of Karnataka and particularly its honourable chief minister Shri Siddharamiah and his honourable cabinet colleague Shri Shivaraj Tangadagi, Minister of Kannada and Culture for doing this honour. Within the constraints of real politik, they deserve our complements for keeping alive the legacy of Basavanna. 

I may also express my appreciation to the Selection Committee that found in my jumbled bio data something that deserved it. But most of all I thank the people of Karnataka, who have been bestowing their love and affection and treating me as one of their own. It is Karnataka that honoured me with my first honorary doctorate and it is Karnataka’s Ambedkar Habbba that not only stood in solidarity with me but conferred its highest Bodhisattva Award while I was made an accused in an UAPA-case.  These are significant honours Karnataka did me besides many minor ones. Yesterday, one of my Kannadiga friends proudly said, “People of Karnataka love you so much that they wanted to honour you before your own state did it”. Unbeknownst to him, my state had already done me the greatest honour by putting me in jail.    

I highly value the spirit behind this award that Basavanna’s legacy is not bound by the artificially drawn boundaries of states and nations.  I greatly appreciate the acknowledgment that I do not belong only to Maharashtra but to the entire India, nay the world. I consider myself belonging to the multitude of the downtrodden people of the world who are engaged with incessant struggle just for their survival. This sense of belonging gives me the motive force to carry on my struggle in face of all odds. 

It is an honour to receive the award in the name of Basavanna, whom I hold in highest esteem as one of the greatest humanist philosophers.  When I read his Vachanas in English some two decades ago, I was stunned to note refreshing progressive tone and modernist flavour in his words. It was incredible that they flowed from twelfth century, some half a millennium before even the dawn of European renaissance. He was not a saint who renounced the samsara and acquired enlightenment in forest through penance. He was a human quite like us and rather beyond us, in being the chief minister of the Kalyani Chalukya/ Kalachuri kingdoms. He rejected every kind of social discrimination, temple worship, Brahminic rituals, and concepts of papa and punya (sin and merit). Instead, he propagated love and compassion. I read secondary literature on him by some western scholars who saw him in the lineage of Lokayata, Buddha down to Marx of our times, who considered human emancipation here and now and not in the speculative heaven or of the next birth or in the next birth. He valorized labour and condemned exploitation. As a civil rights activist for more than four decades, I may say that Basava’s Vachanas contained the essence of all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by UNO in 1948, which inspired all post-colonial states to incorporate fundamental rights into their respective constitutions.  It is amazing that in the thick of feudalism, he could promulgate such a humanist vision.    

He would stand as beacon to our politicians who hold the reins of the state that flaunts as democracy. The kings then despite being the sovereign seem to be carrying the sense of responsibility towards their praja, the people. But today our rulers, who hold power as representative of people, live in a style that would embarrass even the most extravagant of the kings, without any concern to the people. They have transformed the framework of liberal democracy into an illiberal monstrosity. In relation to Basaveshwara’s Vachanas, we have fast traversed in opposite direction. Our Constitution, carrying an imprint of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s vision of liberty, equality and fraternity is trampled upon with impunity day in and day out at the altar of Hindutva politics. People have been turned into zombies to follow the leader. This republic is reduced to be a zombie nation singing requiem to the rationality, scientific temper and all that goes with the spirit of India’s constitution.

In such depressing times this award brings me blessings of Basaveswara to carry on my struggle to fight for civil rights of people.     

I thank you all for your patience. 

I am glad that the present chief minister of Karnataka , who within the contsraints of real politics that engulfs him, is trying to carry the legacy of Basaveshwara in his state. 

 

A Congratulatory Letter from the Accused in Bhima-Koregaon Case to Dr Anand Teltumbde on his being given the Karnataka Government’s Highest Award, Basava National Award

Dear Anand,

We all felt overjoyed hearing about the conferment of Basava National Award of the Government of Karnataka on you on 31 January 2024. You have exposed the sanatan disease of caste system inflicting this country in the context of fast changing reality before the people; showed them the practical roadmap of annihilation of the caste system. While the emancipation-icon of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar was getting deified and brahminised, you have re-presented the comprehensive thought, practice and life struggle of Dr Ambedkar and pushed forward the wheel of democratic revolution of annihilating the caste system. 

With this scarce and unique contribution of yours the movement of ending the caste-class-and gender slavery became profound in ideological terms and at the same time, it became more accurate, more precise and deeper at the plane of understanding and practice.  Your analyses resolved not only the entanglements in individual contemplation but also the ideological contradictions in collectives. Those who honestly want to bring about fundamental change in the extant system have taken a serious note of your analyses. And those who wanted to run their businesses played games of besmirching your image with various stamps and labels. The Fascist regime has persistently tried to defame you calling some time Maoist and some other times ‘Mayawi Ambedkarwadi’ (Mayawi translates as ‘illusive’ but it is used in the sense ‘monsterous demon’ that deserves to be destroyed as in the Hindu epics) and also incarcerated you with its oxymoron, Urban Naxal. However, your words and deeds never paid heed to such repressive assaults in your life. Your words could never be suppressed. On the contrary, they became increasingly sharper, resolute and fearless. These razor-sharp formulations, ironclad logic, profound analyses, accompanied by practical life-struggle have transformed you into a real public intellectual. 

While the fascist regime in your own state has incarcerated you by labelling anti-national and terrorist, soon after your release on bail the Government of Karnataka unanimously selected you for its highest national award, the ‘Basava Rashtriya Puraskar’, being conferred at the hand of its Chief Minister. This incident can be seen as a small streak of light in the present era fraught with darkness.  The award in the name of Basaveshawara, the humanist philosopher who had rejected the Brahminic system of caste-and gender slavery and propounded the value of compassion and fraternity in the twelfth century, being given to you, the one who has been imprisoned for over two and half years under the charges of terrorism, in itself is an unprecedented incident. The award is given to you as an ideal legatee of Basava, the prophet of daya (compassion), ahimsa (nonviolence) and samata (equality). It indicates that a small section of the ruling class is slowly emerging that wants to stand steadfastly against the Brahminic Hindutva fascism. The award function that took place in Bangalore leads us to such an optimistic inference. This function has awakened an expectation that the forces fighting against caste-class-gender slavery and fascism may turn into a deluge in not so distant future. Therefore, we feel great importance of your getting this award.

You have been honoured with several national and international awards so far in your life.  We have seen people getting excessively over-joyed and strayed away from their ideological stand with awards or willingly adjusting their stance for seeking awards. However, you have never let your own existence whose roots have been well entrenched in the soil of struggle for the annihilation of the caste-class-gender slavery get shaken with awards or the latter going to your head. You have never adjusted your ideological stand or the radical and revolutionary profundity of your analyses. Therefore, we the prisoners accused in the Elgar Parishad case wish to send our revolutionary congratulations and good wishes to our own co-accused Dr Anand Teltumbde who has been unstintingly and persistently working inside as well as outside the prison on his getting the Basava National Award.   

Yours

BK-7

   

 

It’s you who needs to repent, Mr. Amit Shah

 

Hello Mr. Shah,

I was amused to see your video the other day, in which you were telling an Akali Dal MP from Punjab that Balwant Singh Rajoana, a jailed Sikh militant, does not deserve amnesty.

You were apparently outraged at her statement asking to free him and other Sikh political prisoners who have already served their time. Your anger might be also because Akali Dal once used to be the alliance partner of your party in power, before they fell apart when your own government brought a bill that was anti-farmer. Only you would know the real source of your annoyance.

Your piece of advice, that Rajoana should not expect any compassion or leniency, as he doesn’t regret his action of being involved in terrorism and the assassination of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, left me laughing.

First of all, you have no moral right to make that kind of suggestion to any political extremist, considering that your party has itself been involved in terrorism.

We can begin with the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. His killer was a part of RSS, the mother organization of Hindu supremacy to which you and your Prime Minister belong. The story does not end there. You have MPs who glorify his murderer, one of whom, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, had been involved in bombings in a Muslim locality. You yourself had once mocked Gandhi by calling him a cunning Baania.

Let’s fast forward to December 6, 1992 when your party folks razed an ancient mosque in Ayodhya, after which you targeted Muslims for years through mob violence, including the one in Gujarat in 2002. Modi and you were the leaders of Gujarat back then, and we all know about your complicity. Then you both allowed Muslims to be killed in staged police shootouts in the name of war on terror.

Ever since you both formed a majority government in New Delhi, Hindu extremism has become a new norm and attacks on religious minorities have grown. All those self-styled cow vigilantes going after beef-eating Muslims are no less than Taliban.

Even a child can make out that the Supreme Court under your government humiliated Muslims by allowing the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Modi, who has inaugurated the temple just now, has marked another black day in our history. Until now you have been claiming that the Muslim rulers destroyed the birthplace of Lord Ram to build the mosque in Ayodhya. For the sake  of argument, if one believes what you have been saying, your party in power is a mirror image of those Muslim emperors who have already gone down in history as tyrants.

With so much baggage of your own, how can you single out Rajoana and others like him?

Rajoana was responsible for the death of a controversial political figure who had given a free hand to the Punjab police to crush an insurgency for Khalistan, as a result of which many innocent Sikhs were also abducted and killed in state violence. This is not to defend the wrongdoings of the supporters of Khalistan, but to be fair, most of them were killed through extra-judicial means, even while your party people continued to indulge in terrorism with impunity. Unfortunately, the majoritarian media did not even dare to call you terrorists, and neither were your men tried and convicted under anti terror laws.

Just because you are in power does not make you a lesser evil. If asking for Khalistan is a crime, so is turning India into a Hindu state which you have already done.

Lastly, today is the 25th anniversary of the gruesome murders of Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, who were burnt to death in 1999 by the right-wing Hindu goons who have been getting their oxygen from hate-mongers like you.

It’s time that you repent your actions and do some penance, instead of lecturing others.

May Lord Ram bless you.

 

Gurpreet Singh

An independent Canadian journalist of Indian heritage

January 23, 2024.    

 

An online magazine that covers alternative politics wants another probe into the role of Indian agencies behind the worst incident of aviation terrorism before 9/11.

On Thursday, January 11, Radical Desi cofounder Gurpreet Singh launched a signature campaign on a petition from the spot where Surrey-Delta Gurdwara President Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed in June, 2023.

According to Singh, the events leading up to Nijjar's assassination demand a fresh and focused investigation into the role of Indian spies in the Air Indian episode.  

It is pertinent to mention Mewa Singh was executed on January 11, 1915 for murdering controversial immigration inspector William Hopkinson.

Hopkinson was instrumental behind the killings of two community leaders, Bhaag Singh and Badan Singh, at the Vancouver gurdwara in September, 1914. Bhaag Singh led a campaign against racism and colonialism, and was targeted by the agents of Hopkinson.

Since the history of those killings has been repeated by the Indian state, Singh said that it was appropriate to launch the petition on Mewa Singh’s martyrdom day.  

331 people died in two bombings on June 23, 1985. This included a mid-air blast of Air India Flight 182 that left all 329 people aboard dead. While the incidents were blamed on Sikh separatists seeking revenge from the Indian government, community activists continue to believe that this was the handiwork of the Indian intelligence to discredit the movement for a Sikh homeland of Khalistan. They have pointed to a flawed investigation, destruction of surveillance tapes, and facts such as last minute cancellation of travel plans by some people known to be close to the Indian consulate and the proximity of some of the suspects to Indian officials.

Two of the persons charged were acquitted, while Inderjit Singh Reyat was the only person to be convicted for manslaughter.

Among the acquitted was Sikh millionaire Ripudaman Singh Malik who was not only given visa to visit India in 2019, he was allowed to meet the head of the Indian spy agency R&AW. Malik was shot to death under mysterious circumstances in July 2022. A section of the Indian media speculated that he was assassinated by the supporters of Khalistan.

Nijjar was portrayed as a potential suspect, raising apprehensions of retaliation within the community. He has been facing threats to his life since then, and he has been on the radar of the Indian government that was seeking his extradition. Also, the Indian government was outraged over his support for a referendum on Khalistan and for glorification of the late Talwinder Singh Parmar, a militant leader who is widely accused as a mastermind behind Air India. Notably, while Parmar was never convicted for the crime, he was killed by the Indian police in cold blood in 1992, giving credence to the conspiracy theories. Many believe that his killing was a part of the cover up.  

In June, 2023, Nijjar was murdered near the gurdwara parking lot, despite the fact that he was repeatedly cautioned by Canadian authorities about the danger to his life. The Canadian Prime Minister acknowledged in the House of Commons that the Indian government could be behind the murder. Later, US authorities unearthed a plot to kill Nijjar’s colleague Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, and indicted Nikhil Gupta, who hired an undercover police officer for the job on behalf of an unidentified Indian government official.

The series of events has made the demand for another Air India inquiry even more relevant than before. Previous investigations mainly looked into the hand of Sikh separatists into the bombings and have remained unresolved.

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