The Canadian author of the book, ‘Blood for Blood: 50 years of the Global Khalistan Project’, spoke to The Sunday Guardian.
New Delhi
With separatist Khalistani groups planning marches across a number of countries, including the US, UK, Canada and Australia on 8 July to push their propaganda, a former senior correspondent of Canada’s CBC News and author of “Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project”, Terry Milewski spoke to The Sunday Guardian, comparing the movement to a cur after a car and added that most Sikhs have no interest in it, so the movement is headed for a brick wall. However, as long as the idea remains, Pakistan will continue to wield the stick against India, no matter how feeble they get, he said, adding: “The Khalistanis are very loud indeed right now, but there may be some desperation in that. Their time is running out. Internal wars are sapping their energy.” Excerpts:
Q: Where is the Khalistani movement headed? Do you fear a new era of violent mass bloodbath?
A: No, I think the movement has pushed its luck too far and is now like the dog that caught the car. If you threaten to rain hell on the enemy, you eventually have to do it. The referendum has to conclude one day and it will pretend to show massive support, so Pannun can ride off to the UN with the wind in his sails. Or not. Because it’s not credible. A friend who’s a Sikh in London registered to vote as “Angelina Jolie.” Identity never checked. How many times did people vote? Nobody knows. Where is the independent commission that was supposed to validate the results? Vanished. Then the question is, so what? What about the great majority of the world’s Sikhs, in Punjab? Only 2.5 percent voted for Mann’s SADA last time—in a state that’s 58 percent Sikh! And the BJP got nearly three times as many votes! The election before that, in 2017, SADA got 0.3 percent. A pitiful failure.
Granted, an independent state was not the election issue—but polls on that tell the same story. Pew in 2019 found 95 percent of Sikhs in Punjab said they were proud to be Indians. No interest in a separate state. So, the movement is headed for a brick wall. As long as they are not at the final decision point, they’re relevant, in the news and raising money aplenty. But that can’t go on forever. Once they are exposed as irrelevant, interest, coverage and money dry up.
Q: Is the Khalistan movement still a stick in Pakistan hands, especially now with its rogue persona?
A: Pakistan has always been essential to the movement—but not because it wants the Sikhs to breathe free. It has its own reasons for bleeding India, Kashmir being the obvious one. As long as the Khalistan idea remains alive, Pakistan will take advantage of it. Otherwise, it will be, goodbye. Pakistan is already a client state of China and it depends whether China sees a future in the Khalistan issue. It has other issues. I don’t see Khalistan as being a Chinese vital interest. That could change, but Pakistan would remain the enfeebled stick with which to bleed India. Pakistan is broke.
Q: Despite all the misadventures rather major threats issued to envoys now, will the US, Canada, UK, and Australia still consider it an internal matter of India?
A: All four countries now being targeted by SFJ are well aware that its bark is worse than its bite. SFJ will raise money on the posters affair and western governments will find ways to make life hard for them. They’ll tell India not to interfere or to lecture them about how soft we are. India will have to say, fine, we won’t lecture if you really show resolve—and we’ll tell the folks at home how tough we were. But the UK, the US and Canada and Australia are not going to abolish freedom of speech to please India.
Therefore, India needs to be more subtle about pressing for more aggression—for example, by being unfortunately out of town when Canadian ministers come looking for better access to the Indian market.
Then the Canadians will find a way to box Pannun’s ears and the ship sails on. Jagmeet Singh will not be able to steer that ship. He doesn’t run the government, he doesn’t have the votes and may have even fewer after the next election. Canadians do not like the idea that he kowtows to the Khalistanis and that will be a liability he cannot shake off.
Q: Is it vote bank politics for Trudeau …as Canada continues to give shelter to the Punjabi population?
A: Yes, it’s vote-bank politics for Trudeau, but he is likely to lose anyway. Someone is going to notice that there are just as any Hindus as Sikhs and that the Sikhs may be louder but the Hindus vote. The Khalistanis are very loud indeed right now, but there may be some desperation in that.
Their time is running out. Internal wars are sapping their energy. It will soon emerge, I think, that Malik’s death and Nijjar’s were not about “wicked Modi” sending death squads to kill these great martyrs—men of destiny, leading their people to a new nation, blah blah….when it turns out they died in a squalid little war between rival gangsters. If you made a Venn diagram of gangsters and Khalistanis, there would be one hell of an overlap. That’s not a strategy for the long-term health of the independence struggle.