If I get gunned down in a hail of bullets . . . well . . . who done it?
The genocidal Chinese Communist Party, furious at my new website, StoptheChinazis.org?
Perhaps. But what about the regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India?
I’m a member of the Punjab Referendum Commission, an international group advising and monitoring the non-governmental referendums being organized among the worldwide Sikh diaspora by U.S.-based Sikhs for Justice. Recently, I stood at the entrance of a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, outside Vancouver, where Canadian intelligence agencies say agents of Modi’s government assassinated Sikh leader and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, back in June, spraying him with 30 bullets.
Then, last week, U.S. prosecutors indicted an Indian national for, according to The Wall Street Journal, “working with an Indian government officer to pay a purported hitman $100,000 . . . to murder a prominent advocate” on U.S. soil.
“The court filing did not name the victim,” The Washington Post reported, “but senior Biden administration officials say the target was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel for the New York-based Sikhs for Justice. . . .”
My mouth’s suddenly a bit dry; I’ve been on the same stage as Mr. Pannun several times.
There’s a long history of political unrest and violence between Sikhs in the Punjab region and the central Indian government . . . leading today to roughly one-fourth of Sikhs living outside of India.
What can we do? Well, though I take no position on whether — YES or NO — the Punjab region should secede from India, I very much like that Sikhs for Justice is resorting to the opposite of violence — democracy — by asking Sikhs around the world to cast their vote.
If they dare.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)