Will Nijjar come to haunt India?

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused the Indian government of killing Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. Ever since, the Indian attack dogs such as Major Gaurav Arya and others have been on a relentless attack against the Canadians. What is mind boggling about the Indian Hindutva crowd’s rhetoric is that they are denying the murder for the western audience consumption while at the same time indirectly justifying it for the domestic lunacy driven Hindutva crowd appeasement.

Many might not pay attention to a little discussed fact about India, which is that India started out as a terrorist state. The very definition of terrorism is the use of violence for achieving goals that are religious and political in nature. They had used violence in order to avoid the creation of Pakistan in those days. Scores of people were killed. It got so extreme that when Gandhi finally agreed to recognise the creation of Pakistan, he was killed by one of their own. His name was Nathuram Venayak Godse. He was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the political wing of which is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The only thing new about the Nijjar killing is that it happened on a foreign soil. The rest is nothing different than a typical Indian terrorist act.

Many Pakistanis analysts argue that this act would bring problems for India because the western society cares about such issues and that they wouldn’t let this one go without making India go through a tough time. Some even went so far as to suggest that this would become a diplomatic nightmare for India. Some also argued that the noise about this murder would publicise the Khalistan issue and give more credence to the struggle.

I very politely disagree with these opinions. I actually believe that killing Nijjar is perhaps the best thing India did in a while for their national interests. It sounds crude and weird but I have reasons to argue this. One, the entire focus of any political leader is to win the hearts and minds of the domestic audience. Don’t forget that Modi was elected the second time around with an ever larger majority. The killing of a man who was an ardent advocate of the creation of Khalistan only drives home further the idea that Modi is the man looking out for the Hindutva ideology of India. It reinforces the idea that he is the man for India.

Two, Washington DC absolutely does not care about issues of human rights and other such nice sounding causes. Trump danced with the Saudis and signed deals selling weapons worth $110 billion after the Khashoggi murder. Biden called Saudi Arabia a pariah state and then turned around and begged them to drill for more oil and now they are buddies. Similarly, Israel killed 34 American sailors in the spyship Liberty in 1967. Notice that that is twice the number of the American sailors killed by Al Qaeda in the USS Cole bombing off the coast of Yemen in the year 2000. We only hear about Al Qaeda terrorism.

Canada is a strong US ally and one of the Five Eyes member states. However, the main American foreign policy goal is to contain China and for that India is the local cop on the beat in the region, not Canada.

As for the argument about Khalistan gaining some fame and legitimacy because of the noise about the Nijjar assassination, well, the west doesn’t usually need to know about the presence of something when it wants to act on something such as the invasion of Iraq. Likewise, the west doesn’t act even when it knows about some wrong happening somewhere in the world such as the issue of Kashmir, Palestine, Western Sahara, and so forth.

This is about selfish national interests and it gets about as cold as it can get.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2023.

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