New Delhi: Reacting to reports of a so-called ‘Khalistan referendum’ planned in Canada, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Friday reiterated that New Delhi strongly condemns all anti-India activities.
“We strongly condemn all anti-India activities,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said during a bi-weekly media briefing in New Delhi while responding to a question about the Khalistani event planned in Canada.
The MEA spokesperson’s remarks came as reports claimed that the banned radical outfit Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) plans to hold a so-called Khalistan referendum in Canada’s Edmonton October 18.
In August, a report highlighted terrorist and SFJ founder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun’s announcement to form a Khalistan Army and Sikh Homeland Security force. The report mentioned that videos showing Sikh men training with semi-automatic rifles on Canadian soil were deeply alarming and could have catastrophic consequences for the Sikh community itself.
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Pannun released a video calling on diaspora Sikhs to participate in a so-called Khalistan “Referendum” in Indianapolis, the capital of the US state of Indiana, while also floating the idea of a “Sikh Homeland Security” force, or Khalistan Army, according to a report in ‘Khalsa Vox’.
“These are not abstract political arguments. They are calculated provocations aimed at restless young men already navigating the pressures of migration, identity, and easy money. The result is visible and ugly: a small minority of Sikh youth in the United States and Canada drifting into drugs, illegal guns, and gang life, damaging their own communities and the cities that host them,” the report detailed.
“Pannun’s messaging does not create every troubled youth, but it supplies a ready-made narrative that romanticizes defiance and externalizes every failure onto India. When a young man already exposed to street culture hears that the real war is against the Indian state and that arming or ‘securing’ the community is legitimate, the leap from online rhetoric to real weapons becomes shorter,” it stated.
According to the report, Canadian intelligence has previously identified Khalistani extremists as a national security concern, while the pattern of inflammatory videos followed by displays of force is not a coincidence.
