India's Upset That UK-Based Sikhs Are Embracing The Khalistani Cause En Masse

The former Director General of Police in Indian Punjab is seething in response to UK-based Sikhs embracing the Khalistani cause en masse, lamenting that London rebuffed New Delhi's anti-democratic demands to censor their freedom of speech and prevent their right to peaceful assembly, which shows that the Sikhs For Justice's Referendum 2020 campaign is rapidly growing in popularity and posing a serious challenge to India.

The fiercely pro-BJP ANI news outlet from India published comments from the former Director General of Police in Punjab concerning the trend of UK-based Sikhs embracing the Khalistani cause en masse. Shashi Kant said that pro-Khalistani Sikhs "are trying to get a good foothold in Birmingham where they have been organizing rallies" and lamented that London rebuffed New Delhi's anti-democratic demands to censor their freedom of speech and prevent their right to peacefully assembly by remarking that "There have been demands from India that the Khalistani activists abroad should not be permitted to hold rallies but the British government has been taking up a different stand citing that as long as they do not indulge in violence, they are unable to take action".

He's referring to the Sikhs For Justice's (SFJ) massive rally in Trafalgar Square last August in support of their Referendum 2020 campaign to hold a plebiscite on the independence of Punjab, which the British officials refused to cancel despite heavy Indian pressure because it wasn't breaking any of the country's laws. The very fact that the self-professed "world's largest democracy" wanted the UK to suppress the rights of its own citizens exposes the anti-democratic nature of the Indian state, as well as its innate fear of the Sikhs' self-determination struggle. So acute is its phobia of this planned plebiscite that India has also taken to spreading an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory alleging that the SFJ and their legal advisor Gurpatwant Singh Pannun are "Pakistani-backed terrorists".

This desperate attempt to discredit the movement, which was predictably repeated by Kant in his recent commentary to ANI, is self-defeating after the peaceful organization's activities were curtailed in Pakistan earlier this year and provoked criticism from Pannun himself. It's therefore obviously not Islamabad that's behind the SFJ, but regular Sikhs themselves, which scares the Indian state to no end since they know that the creation of the Khalistani movement was inspired by its own political mistakes and not through any secret participation of the Pakistani intelligence services.

That's actually why New Delhi is smearing the SFJ since it wants to distract non-Sikhs from the real roots of this cause by blaming it all on the usual bogeyman next door.

The British are aware of the truth, however, which is why they refused to bend to India's demands that they stop the SFJ's Referendum 2020 rally last year. Kant and his ilk evidently expect there to be more large-scale political gatherings there in the coming future, hence why they're fearmongering once again about Khalistan's surging popularity in the UK and especially in the Birmingham area. This realization contradicts the other propagandistic infowar narrative being spread by the Indian government about the movement's supposed lack of support, which isn't true whatsoever because otherwise there obviously wouldn't be any reason for the former Director General of Police in Punjab to talk about the aforementioned.

Going forward, it's foreseeable that more such comments will be made by Indian officials pertaining to the rising level of support that the Referendum 2020 campaign has among the Sikh communities elsewhere in the UK, Canada, the US, and the West more broadly as next year's vote inches ever closer and more political rallies are held in its support, while simultaneously pretending that none of its own Sikhs are interested in it. India will probably once again try in vain to have foreign governments cancel those events too, but its failure will only speak volumes about the de-facto recognition that those states have granted to the Khalistani cause by implicitly recognizing it as a peaceful movement instead of the "terrorist" one that India falsely claims that it is.

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