In his many appearances in the mainstream media, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun comes off as an eminently reasonable face of the Sikh independence movement.
The Canadian-American lawyer accurately describes the global referendum he spearheads as a non-violent, democratic way to pursue turning India’s Punjab state into a separate nation. And he understandably condemns the assassination plots against him and other Sikh activists that U.S. and Canadian police have linked to the Indian government.
But in the latest chapter of a decades-long, sometimes-bloody conflict, the spokesman for the group Sikhs for Justice can present a different face online. Pannun’s fiery rhetoric in social-media posts stops just short of sanctioning violence – and is met with overt calls for bloodshed against him.
If nothing else, the productions underscore the intense passions on both sides of the dispute.
In a recent video, New York-based Pannun promised to help “balkanize” India by supporting not just the crusade to carve Punjab out of the country, but several other independence movements, too. He even encouraged Chinese president Xi Jinping to seize by force a disputed corner of Indian territory.
He’s likened Sikhs in Punjab to Palestinians, warning that “violence begets violence” and that India has a choice between his referendum and possible armed rebellion: “ballots or bullets” as he put it.
Pannun recently encouraged Sikhs to boycott Air India in November – suggesting those who fly Nov. 19 could be in danger, and raising the spectre for some viewers of 1985’s Air India bombing by Sikh terrorists. At a Calgary rally, he led a chant: “Liberate Punjab, Kill India.”
The posts simply do not align with a claim of peaceable activism, argues Ujjal Dosanjh, a former B.C. premier and federal cabinet minister. Despite being of Sikh background himself, he has long opposed the Punjab separatist, or Khalistani, movement and was once severely beaten by extremists.
Inviting a foreign power to invade India or suggesting separatists will use force if the ballot doesn’t succeed is by definition an endorsement of violence, Dosanjh contends.
“To remain somewhat viable and respectable in the eyes of the United States and Canada and Britain – the Western world – he claims to be non-violent,” the former politician said. “And if he didn’t (the media) wouldn’t give him a nanosecond of coverage. I think he has bamboozled all of you for a long time.”
Dosanjh hastened to add that India itself should be roundly denounced if allegations that it oversaw a campaign of assassination attempts against such Sikh activists are proven true.
But Pannun defends his videos and other pronouncements, saying that Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has never advocated violence and for years has pushed its agenda merely by conducting a plebiscite.
“We are just trying to tell India and the world that it’s a ticking time bomb which could detonate due to India’s constant policy of violently crushing even the peaceful initiative of a referendum,” he said via email.
“The (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi regime’s constant policy of crushing the Sikh peoples’ initiative of ballots with bullets may, against our wishes, push this purely political conflict into a cycle of violence … SFJ’s videos are not inflammatory but rather informatory.”
Pannun’s provocative words certainly pale in comparison to the allegations levelled by North American authorities against India’s Hindu-nationalist government.
Sikhs for Justice has been running a non-binding referendum asking if Sikhs in Canada, Europe and elsewhere support making Punjab an independent country, though there appears to be limited support for the idea within India itself. Modi’s government has fiercely opposed the project, with diplomats here pressing the Canadian government at one point to stop the voting.
New Delhi also asked Interpol to issue a “red notice” for Pannun’s arrest, calling him a “terrorist,” but the agency refused after deeming the request political or religious, not criminal.
Then the dispute became much more serious. Another organizer of the Khalistani referendum, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was shot and killed outside his B.C. temple in June 2023. The RCMP and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have since tied that murder and others targeting Sikh activists to the Indian government, and expelled several of New Delhi’s diplomats, including the high commissioner, over charges that they supplied intelligence on Khalistani activists to the killers. New Delhi has strenuously denied the allegations.
In the U.S., the FBI charged one man over a foiled plot to kill Pannun, saying that officials of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s spy agency, ordered the hit.
The latest developments have unfolded against a turbulent past. The Khalistani movement in Canada and the U.S. has been largely peaceful in recent years, but in the 1980s, it was blamed for various terrorist incidents, including the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight packed with Canadians.
In a post earlier this month, Pannun urged Sikhs not to fly on the airline in November as part of a “global blockade.” He warned them in Punjabi that their lives “could be in danger” on Nov. 19, and suggested Delhi’s Indira Ghandi International Airport will be renamed after the two Sikh bodyguards who assassinated Ghandi.
Pannun said his reference to danger only meant that Sikhs who support the Indian-owned carrier would be funding a regime that has repeatedly committed “genocidal violence” against their people. November marks the 40th anniversary of a massacre carried out by Hindus after Ghandi’s murder, which left thousands of Sikhs dead.
In another video last month, he announced that Sikhs for Justice was now supporting independence movements in the states of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur and Kashmir. Meanwhile, he said, the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China.
“President (Xi) Jinping, now is the time to order the Chinese army to take Arunchal Pradesh back. By 2047, the current boundaries and borders of India will be redrawn, and the current borders and boundaries will be wiped out from the world map,” he said, making a throat-slashing gesture. “2024, one India. 2047, none India.”
A year ago, Pannun used a video to liken the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to Punjab.
“People under occupation from Punjab to Palestine will react and violence begets violence. If India is going to keep occupying Punjab, there will be a reaction,” he said. “SFJ believes in ballots, SFJ believes in votes. The liberation of Punjab is on the cards. India, the choice is yours: ballot or bullet.”
In other videos, he calls North American supporters of Modi and the Hindutva ideology – which advocates transforming India into an officially Hindu nation – as enemies of America and Canada. He reserves particular scorn for Chandra Arya, a Liberal MP who has steadfastly echoed Modi’s narrative on various issues – and opposed Ottawa’s planned foreign-influence registry – saying that Arya and his Canadian followers should go back to “your motherland, India.”
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