After the brazen killing of a high-profile Canadian Sikh activist in June, FBI agents visited several Sikh activists in California this summer with an alarming message: Their lives were also at risk.
The warnings have taken on a new urgency after Canada’s bombshell revelation on Monday that it has credible intelligence pointing to Indian government involvement in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and advocate for an independent Sikh state, who was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia.
Pritpal Singh, a political activist and U.S. citizen who is a coordinator for the American Sikh Caucus Committee, told The Intercept that he and two other Sikh Americans involved in political organizing in California received calls and visits from the FBI after Nijjar was killed.
I think all these other countries only care about the fact that India has a burgeoning middle class and is going to become the next consumption led market. Everyone has too much of their own stuff to deal with at the moment, but they love the idea of huge cohort of new customers over the coming decades, regardless of who’s in charge
Not to take away from your post, which is nuanced and interesting. But I think the buck stops at the economics for most
India has a large population, that is incresingly becoming poor. We had a burgeoning middle-class. the middle-class is becoming poor, the poor are becoming poverty-stricken, and the poverty-stricken … Modi’s economic policies have pushed 80 crores of Indians to subsistence living, where they survive on 5 kgs of free rice a month. 2 weeks ago the Reserve bank of India released a report that said the personal savings & investments of Indians is at its lowest ever. Which means they’ve no money to spend.
Leaders of Western countries want India to be on their side and provide resources and bases or their fight against China. Modi is on Modi’s side and is too afraid of China to even take its name since they invaded Ladakh in 2020. That’s 3 years of India’s PM being terrified to say ‘China’. He surrendered Galwan and 20+ of India’s patrolling points to China without a fight, without even lodging a diplomatic protest. He’s that terrified of them. And Western leaders think honouring him with Le Grand Croix de Legion de l’Honneur & a WH dinner will stiffen his spine. It’s only made him more repressive inside india and a bully to the West.