Parneet Virk
April 21, 2026 | 5 min. read | Opinion

I have been going to the Surrey Nagar Kirtan since I was a kid. For many Sikh kids from Surrey, it is one of those days you grow up with. You remember the crowds, the food, the floats, the feeling of being part of something much bigger than yourself. There is a real sense of pride in seeing half a million people come together to mark Vaisakhi and the creation of the Khalsa.

That pride is still there. But the event does not feel the same.

The Nagar Kirtan has always been political in a real sense. The creation of the Khalsa was itself revolutionary, and the diaspora has long used this space to reflect on issues that matter to the panth. You see it in the memorials for 1984, in conversations around Khalistan and self-determination, and in the many other Sikh causes that people choose to highlight. That is not a problem. It is part of what makes the event meaningful.

But what feels different now is who else is showing up, and why.

When I went this year, the first thing I noticed was the scale of everything around the margins. Police presence was significant, including departments from outside Surrey. Political parties were out in full force, trying to start conversations while people were just walking through. There were corporate booths, branded setups, recruitment tents, and even people trying to pitch Costco memberships and services. At one point, it felt like you could not walk more than a few steps without being approached by someone selling something, promoting something, or trying to extract something.

It gave the event a different energy. Not hostile, but gentrified in a way that is hard to ignore once you see it.

There is a difference between being present and taking advantage.

The Nagar Kirtan is built on seva. It is one of the few large-scale events that is entirely organized, run, and cleaned up by volunteers in a matter of days. It reflects values like humility, equality, and collective care. Langar is served to everyone without question. That openness is part of what makes it powerful.

But openness should not mean that anything goes.

When corporations treat the event like a marketing opportunity, or when political actors treat it like a convenient place to engage voters, something is lost. It starts to feel less like a community gathering and more like a space that others are trying to tap into for their own purposes. Representation on its own is not enough if it is not grounded in respect for what the event actually represents.

That same lack of respect showed up online.

A recent visit by streamer N3on, alongside a Sikh content creator, Parmveer Singh Panesar (parmvsthewrld), was a clear example of how quickly things can go wrong. What should have been an opportunity to learn about the significance of the Nagar Kirtan turned into content that was built on misunderstanding and reaction. Repeated references to the event as an “Indian festival” and other dismissive comments made it clear that there was no real effort to understand what was taking place.

The problem does not end there. Clips from that stream are now circulating on platforms like TikTok and Twitter, often picked up by accounts that push anti immigration and anti Sikh narratives. In that context, what might have started as careless commentary becomes something more harmful. It feeds into a broader pattern where Sikh spaces are misrepresented by people who do not understand them and are not invested in getting it right.

We have seen this before. Whether during the Farmers’ Protests or in other moments, there have been clear efforts, both coordinated and organic, to distort how the Sikh community is perceived. That makes it even more important to be aware of who is speaking about us and how.

The Nagar Kirtan is one of the most visible expressions of Sikh life in Canada. It carries the weight of history, memory, and identity. It is not just a large event. It is something that has been built over decades through the effort of people who care deeply about what it represents.

So it is worth asking some uncomfortable questions.

Who is benefiting from this space? Who is shaping how it is understood by others? And what responsibility does the community have in setting boundaries around that?

None of this is about closing the event off. The Nagar Kirtan should remain open. It should continue to welcome people from all backgrounds. But there has to be some level of discernment. People and organizations that choose to be part of this space should do so with an understanding of its meaning and with a level of respect that reflects that.

At the same time, the community needs to take more ownership over its own narrative. Too often, the story of Sikh spaces is told by outsiders. If we are not intentional about how these stories are shared, we leave room for misrepresentation to fill the gap.

The Surrey Nagar Kirtan is not a place to cash in. It is not a backdrop for content. It is not a marketplace.

It is a reflection of the Sikh community, its values, and its history.

And it deserves to be treated with that level of care.

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Parneet Virk holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Arts in Social and Public Policy from the University of Leeds. Her academic work, including her graduate dissertation, has focused on the Punjabi Sikh diaspora and its social and political dynamics.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jasveer Singh
April 2, 2026 | 5 min. read | Opinion

If public and political Sikh representation is a reflection of the state of the Panth, then the selection of a Singh on Donal Trumps’s Board of Peace is an indicative moment.

Through his position as head of the World Bank, Ajay Banga will help oversee the transition from devastation to commercial revival in Gaza in the aftermath of what many have described as genocide.

At the same time, Sikh “representation” across the West coincides with a period marked by growing vulnerability and insecurity for Sikh communities globally.

In the United Kingdom, Sikh women were subjected to unprecedented acts of sexual violence in hate crimes twice in a single year. In the United States, Sikh imagery is increasingly deployed in anti-immigrant political messaging. In Canada, anti Sikh hate has become a national concern. In New Zealand, even Nagar Kirtans no longer consistently feel safe.

And yet, by conventional measures, Sikh representation has never been stronger.

There are record numbers of Sikh MPs in the United Kingdom, senior appointments in the United States, and nearly twenty elected MPs across parties in Canada, including cabinet-level leadership. Sikhs occupy prominent roles across policing, business, academia, and public life. From political ceremonies to corporate boardrooms, Sikh visibility is widespread and often celebrated as a marker of diaspora success.

But visibility is not influence.

If representation was once understood as a pathway to or an indication of power, today it increasingly appears to be symbolic. Representation to be seen, not to be heard. This distinction is not theoretical. It is reflected in ongoing issues affecting Sikh communities.

The Free Jaggi Now campaign has pointed out that the United Kingdom government, with the highest number of Sikh MPs, has nonetheless regressed on the case of a British Sikh political prisoner. In the United States, even as a Sikh occupies one of the highest-ranking legal positions, policies impacting Sikh truckers and military personnel continue to raise serious concerns. In Canada, despite a significant Sikh political presence, communities continue to struggle to secure meaningful prioritization of safety concerns amid broader geopolitical considerations.

This raises a fundamental question. What is Sikh representation actually delivering?

It may be that representation, as currently understood, is an incomplete solution to problems that require deeper, community-driven approaches. Or it may reflect the structural reality of minority participation within majority-led political systems.

Either way, the assumption that representation alone equates to influence deserves scrutiny.

Political success for Sikhs in the West has often depended on conformity. On fitting within existing systems rather than transforming them. Beyond symbolic gestures and seasonal acknowledgments, Sikh political representation is rarely rooted in advocating Sikhi’s principles or its transformative potential.

Ajay Banga’s presence on a global platform, for example, is not framed through the lens of Sarbat Da Bhala.

This reality is not lost on panthic organizations, many of which derive their legitimacy from representing grassroots sangat. Historically, Sikh influence has not been strongest in formal political office, but in collective action, whether through coordinated voting blocs or organized protest.

The continued emphasis on representation within Western institutions may also reflect a diminishing confidence in panthic frameworks themselves. Yet Sikh history consistently demonstrates that organized sangat retains a unique and often underutilized form of power.

In 2019, Sikh organizations in Canada compelled the government to retract a harmful and inaccurate claim regarding Khalistan support not through parliamentary channels, but through coordinated community action, including gurdwara-based pressure. Similarly, during the Farmers’ Protest, the global mobilization of Sikh communities had an impact that far exceeded the efforts of individual political representatives.

This is not to suggest that representation is inherently negative. Sikh presence across sectors reflects resilience, integration, and success despite persistent barriers. But in a time of rising anti-immigrant sentiment and increasing scrutiny of minority communities, it is necessary to critically examine both the potential and the limitations of representation.

Today, the Sikh diaspora faces a paradox. Unprecedented levels of visibility alongside rising levels of hostility.

That contradiction demands reflection.

Because the question is no longer simply whether Sikhs are represented.

It is whether that representation is meaningful.

And if it is not, then perhaps the future does not lie in seeking more Sikh representatives in the West, but in offering the West a clearer representation of Sikhi itself.

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Jasveer Singh hails from Southall, UK, and is the Senior Press Officer of The Sikh Press Association, a position he has held since 2015. In this role, Jasveer works across all sectors of media supporting Sikh organisations and individuals on Panthic endeavours. Jasveer previously worked as a freelance journalist, which included stints with Sky News, Super Fight League, and more. You can find Jasveer on Twitter at @Jazzthejourno.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jaskaran Sandhu
March 18, 2026 | 3.5 min. read | Original Reporting

A 22-year-old Sikh man has been killed in a brazen daytime shooting on Highway 2 near Leduc on March 14, in what witnesses describe as a sudden and unprovoked attack.

Alberta RCMP officers responded to reports of a shooting at approximately 2:50 p.m. near Township Road 490 along the QEII Highway.

Police say a white or grey pickup truck approached a black Honda Civic before gunfire was discharged at the vehicle. The truck then fled the scene at high speed, while the Civic pulled over.

The driver died as a result of his injuries.

While the RCMP have not publicly released the victim’s name, Baaz has learned that the victim is Birinder Singh, a Sikh man who had recently moved to Edmonton.

According to information shared with Baaz, Singh had arrived in Edmonton in October after studying at Conestoga College and was working in construction. He had received his work permit just days before the incident and had celebrated his 22nd birthday on March 12.

He is described by those who knew him as the only son in his family.

A survivor of the shooting, Gurbhej Singh, who was in the vehicle at the time, told Baaz the attack unfolded within moments and without any provocation.

According to Gurbhej Singh, the group was travelling on Highway 2 between approximately 2:40 p.m. and 3:10 p.m. when a pickup truck carrying two white males, believed to be around 24 to 25 years old, approached their vehicle.

“The two white men waved at us, and we waved back,” he said, adding that moments later the truck moved behind them and “opened fire” before fleeing the scene.

Gurbhej Singh emphasized that there was no interaction or incident that could have triggered the attack.

“There was nothing — no road rage, nothing at all,” he said, adding that they were simply minding their own business and thought nothing of the initial interaction.

He further stated that any suggestion that the shooting was instigated or provoked is false.

The surviving occupants have also expressed frustration with what they describe as limited information being publicly released to assist in identifying those responsible.

According to Gurbhej Singh, the vehicle contained a dash camera that captured both interior and exterior footage of the incident.

Despite this, no additional identifying details about the suspect vehicle or occupants beyond a general description of a white or grey pickup truck have been publicly released.

Witnesses say they are also concerned that no detailed description of the two suspects has been shared, which they believe could help advance the investigation.

In response to questions from Baaz, the RCMP confirmed only that the victim was “a 22-year-old male resident of Edmonton” and declined to confirm his identity.

Police also stated they are unable to share further details about the suspects at this time.

“I need to be aware that any information I share publicly with regards to suspects would be informing potential suspects the same information and could be detrimental to the success of our investigation,” said Cpl. Troy Savinkoff in an email to Baaz.

At this time, RCMP say they have not determined a motive and have not confirmed whether the shooting was targeted.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada says the incident comes amid growing concern about rising anti Sikh sentiment across the country.

In a statement to Baaz News, spokesperson and legal counsel Balpreet Singh said there has been a noticeable increase in anti Sikh hate in Canada, driven by multiple online and ideological forces.

“We are seeing a troubling rise in anti Sikh hate, fueled in part by white nationalist groups pushing anti-immigrant rhetoric, as well as Hindu Nationalist networks amplifying disinformation targeting the Sikh diaspora,” he said.

Singh added that one of the community’s growing concerns has been the potential for this rhetoric to translate into real-world violence.

“One of the greatest fears with this rise in anti Sikh hate is that it could lead to unprovoked acts of violence against members of our community,” he said. “Incidents like this are deeply alarming and must be taken seriously.”

The Alberta RCMP Major Crimes Unit continues to investigate and is asking anyone who was travelling on the QEII Highway near Leduc between approximately 2:40 p.m. and 3:10 p.m. on March 14 and who may have dashcam footage to come forward.

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Jaskaran Sandhu is the co-founder of Baaz. He is a lawyer and previously served as Executive Director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada and as a Senior Advisor to Brampton’s Office of the Mayor. You can find Jaskaran on Twitter at @JaskaranSandhu_

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jungfateh Singh
January 28, 2026 | 10 min. read | Opinion

“In Surrey, I spoke with local media about the Liberal extortion crisis that puts families and small businesses in harms way. After years of soft on crime Liberal policies, criminals are emboldened and communities are left less safe. Crime is up 55%. Extortions are up 330% nationwide and up 500% in Surrey alone.”

This is the kind of statement that should make every Sikh in Canada pause, not because it is the most outrageous claim in the current political circus, but because it is the clearest window into a deeper betrayal. Jasraj Hallan calls it a “Liberal extortion crisis,” as though what our community is living through can be contained inside a tidy partisan frame, as though a foreign-directed terrorism campaign can be reduced to a domestic morality play about “soft on crime” policy.

That is not a diagnosis. That is evasion dressed up as certainty. It is the comfort of party language replacing the responsibility of naming the truth.

There is a reason this framing is so poisonous. It trains the public to misunderstand the nature of the violence. It turns a community under sustained intimidation into a prop in a parliamentary argument. It directs anger toward the nearest political opponent while refusing to identify the actor that sits at the crux of this crisis, the Indian state, alleged by public reporting and law enforcement assessments to be directing and enabling this intimidation through criminal networks.

If you refuse to name that, you are not merely missing context. You are protecting the architecture of the threat. You are helping it survive.

More than enough evidence has been brought to the forefront to justify a far more pointed and concerted finger at India. Yet MPs like Jasraj continue to obfuscate the issue, because party scripts are safer than political truth.

It is safer to chant “Liberals” than to say “India.” It is safer to talk about “crime” than to talk about foreign direction. It is safer to posture about sentences and bail than to admit that Canada is facing a form of state-sponsored terrorism on its own soil. There is not only an extortion crisis in this country. There is a profound moral crisis being perpetuated by those who claim to represent the community in these political theatres, people who know exactly what they are not saying.

The numbers alone should strip the room of its appetite for games.

Nine hundred plus extortions. Forty-five shootings. Multiple deaths possibly attributed. Those are not statistics you recite for outrage clicks and then move on from. Those numbers describe a community being conditioned through fear. They describe violence used not simply to steal money, but to shape behaviour, to impose silence, to establish control. When that kind of intimidation becomes sustained, the line between organized crime and state-sponsored terrorism begins to dissolve. At that point, it is not enough to say “public safety.” It becomes a question of sovereignty, of whether Canada can admit what is happening and respond accordingly.

Instead, we get this performance, repeated across levels of government, repeated across parties, repeated across social media posts that pretend volume equals courage.

Harman Bhangu begins with the illusion of naming the problem, then pivots to the safest scapegoat available. He writes:

“Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke is calling on Ottawa to appoint an ‘Extortion Czar’ as shootings linked to Indian mafia networks climb toward 1,500 cases nationwide.” The phrase “Indian mafia networks” is placed on the table, and then immediately abandoned.

The real target appears right after: “This isn’t a failure of police. It’s a failure of immigration control and enforcement, where fake documents circulate, deportations stall, and organized crime exploits gaps the government refuses to close.”

He adds, “Officers are doing EVERYTHING they can, but they’re being asked to clean up a mess created by policy.”

Then he delivers the partisan punchline: “The NDP lost control long ago, and now they can’t put the cat back in the bag.”

This is not leadership. This is narrative laundering. A foreign element is mentioned just long enough to sound informed, then the audience is marched back into a domestic culture war frame where immigration can absorb the anger and opponents can be blamed. It is a form of politics that is always eager to be seen as decisive, while remaining structurally harmless to the real source of the threat. It produces heat, not clarity. It produces a crowd, not a solution.

Bhangu repeats the same posture in another statement. He writes: “David Eby now says the head of the anti extortion task force should step aside for lacking URGENCY.” Then he turns it into an internal blame ritual: “But Eby appointed the leadership. NIKI SHARMA, as Attorney General and Deputy Premier, oversees the justice system. This happened on THEIR watch.” He escalates the drama: “When homes are shot at and victims fire back, that is a CRISIS caused by political failure.” And then the slogan that pretends to be strategy: “Fix the system. Restore CONSEQUENCES. End the chaos.”

The rhythm is familiar because it is designed to be familiar. It is designed to sound like action without forcing confrontation. It is designed to keep the audience inside a domestic argument where the Indian state never has to be named, and where the crisis can be treated as proof that the opposing party is incompetent. It is politics as spectacle, and spectacle is always easier than truth.

Steve Kooner offers a slightly different performance, but the same avoidance. He states: “BREAKING: Realtors fear becoming extortion targets for their success in BC.” He says a brokerage postponed an awards gala because realtors feared being targeted, then declares: “I’ve been sounding the alarm for months: this extortion crisis is not just a public safety failure, it’s an economic threat.” He warns that “jobs, investment, and livelihoods are at risk,” then asks the predictable question: “Why has the NDP government failed to support victims and their businesses?”

In another statement, he reaches for the language of social breakdown: “The NDP provincial government was warned that public safety under their leadership was deteriorating and that communities were beginning to talk about vigilante justice.” He then offers bureaucracy as a substitute for political clarity, calling for “a dedicated BC Crown Counsel Extortion Team working hand in hand with the BC Extortion Task Force,” and demanding that the federal government “urgently expedite and deploy maximum resources and funding.”

None of this touches the heart of the problem. It is an administrative motion arranged around a political silence. Teams can be formed, units can be announced, resources can be deployed, and yet the crisis will continue to be misdiagnosed if the alleged foreign direction is treated as unsayable. You cannot arrest your way out of a problem you refuse to name properly.

Then we arrive at the federal Conservative messaging, where the crisis is not merely misframed but exploited as a ready made weapon. The party statement declares: “Extortion is up 330 percent since the Liberals took power as their soft on crime, catch and release laws unleashed a crime wave right across our country.” It insists, “Canadians are terrified, and they want action,” then pitches mandatory minimums as the proof of seriousness, along with bail changes, self defence rhetoric, and deportation posturing. It adds an incendiary claim about “18,000 known criminals with convictions” being let into the country. It concludes by scolding the Prime Minister for optics, saying he walked on a pier instead of meeting victims.

Arpan Khanna compresses the entire script into a blunt checklist meant for applause. “Catch and release? Federal. Mandatory sentences stripped from extortionists? Federal. RCMP? Federal. CBSA? Federal. Criminal Code? Federal. Importing 17,800 known criminals? Federal.” Then he concludes, “Do your job.” In Parliament, he repeats the same rhythm, framing the issue as the result of “soft on crime policies,” claiming extortions have “more than tripled,” and asking why the Liberals voted against a Conservative bill “to fight extortion.”

This is the political script in its purest form. It invites the country to understand what is happening as a Liberal morality tale, a story about domestic weakness and partisan blame. It trains the public to look in the wrong direction. It offers punishment theatre, talking points, and a convenient villain inside Parliament, while refusing to identify the true perpetrators of the crime as they have been described in law enforcement-linked reporting and public national security discussions. The refusal to say India is not incidental. It is the entire strategy. It keeps the crisis safely inside party conflict, and it keeps the alleged state driver insulated behind silence.

It needs to be said plainly. If Sikh politicians are unwilling to identify the alleged perpetrator driving the intimidation, the Indian state, then their outrage is performative. If they are willing to amplify fear while refusing to confront the alleged source of that fear, then they are not protecting the community. They are helping to normalize the crisis as just another crime story, just another partisan fight, just another reason to vote for their side.

That normalization is not harmless. It shapes what the public thinks is happening, and therefore what the public demands as a response. If people are taught that the crisis is caused primarily by “soft on crime” policy, they will demand harsher policy. If people are taught that the crisis is fundamentally an immigration problem, they will demand immigration crackdowns. If people are taught it is simply a matter of “urgency,” they will demand resignations and new task force leadership. Meanwhile, the deeper political question remains untouched, and the alleged foreign direction continues to operate inside the fog.

This is why the phrase “state-sponsored terrorism” resonates, even if politicians flinch at it. Because the lived reality of sustained intimidation, paired with violence used to compel compliance, is terror in its political meaning. It is meant to discipline a population. It is meant to reshape behaviour through fear. It is meant to produce silence. When that intimidation is allegedly directed or enabled by a foreign state through proxies, it becomes something far beyond ordinary crime. It becomes a test of whether Canada is prepared to defend itself as a sovereign country, and whether the people entrusted to represent the affected community are prepared to speak truthfully about the threat.

Instead, we are watching Sikh politicians compete to be the most obedient messengers of their parties. We are watching them recycle slogans, chase clip-worthy outrage, and offer “solutions” that sound forceful while remaining politically evasive. We are watching them turn a community’s suffering into a theatre where the only permissible villains are domestic opponents, never the foreign state alleged to be behind the terrorism.

This is not just failure. It is cowardice, and cowardice has a cost. When politicians refuse to name the crux, they do not simply avoid controversy. They abandon the community to a misdiagnosed crisis. They teach the public to demand the wrong remedies. They allow the alleged perpetrator to remain politically insulated by silence.

A serious response starts where these politicians refuse to start. It starts with naming. It starts with demanding that Canada confront the alleged role of the Indian state openly, repeatedly, and without euphemism. It starts with treating this as a national security rupture as much as a policing challenge. It starts with consequences that are not limited to sentencing theatre, but extend into diplomatic and strategic action that matches the severity of foreign-linked intimidation inside Canadian cities. It starts with refusing to trade the safety of people for the comfort of political careers.

Until Sikh politicians are prepared to do that, they should stop pretending they are leading. They are not leading. They are performing. They are playing games while people live under threat. They are trying to win arguments while the community absorbs the bullets, the fear, the silence, and the slow corrosion of normal life.

Ultimately, this also falls on us as active members of our communities: organizers, activists, gurdwara sevadars, students, and even those who have been targeted by extortion. It is incumbent on us to hold these politicians accountable, to challenge them publicly, and to name their nonsense for what it is: evasion, dishonesty, and cowardice. We have, in our own ways, allowed fear and fatigue to dull the courage this moment demands. We need to change that.

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Jungfateh Singh is an organizer, writer and producer, and has worked on Sikh issues across the globe for over 15 years.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Deepa Singh
January 20, 2026 | 4 min. read | Opinion

This year, the Labour Party has promised to begin a national public inquiry into grooming gangs. Last week, the UK was reminded why this inquiry must include Sikh voices.

The sight of hundreds of Singhs confronting an alleged groomer in Hounslow (UK) brought the world to a momentary standstill last week. But this is not a new phenomenon. As the RASE report showed, for decades, British Sikh communities have fought against this issue.

For UK Sikhs, the issue defined as grooming involves vulnerable females being coerced into abusive relationships by what has thus far always been Muslim men. By design, the relationships separate the target from their family, isolating them. Last week was a prime example. A girl of 16-years-old left her family home to stay with a 34-year-old man, having been groomed by him for years. Technically, this is not illegal. In reality, this is a horror story for any family, and one which many Sikh families have suffered with.

As such, our community reacted as it has before, only this time it was more public than ever. And now no one can deny the issue, and no one can deny that Sikhs have stepped in to help a vulnerable girl when police could not. The perpetrator’s arrest for domestic common assault on the day highlights the limitations of the law that remain.

That is why the national grooming inquiry needs Sikh voices involved. The nature of these religiously motivated attacks on Sikh families can only be described by those who have dealt with them at a street level. For the inquiry, academics and politicians need to take a step back and learn from activists and families. The Sikh Youth UK national inquiry offers a natural avenue into this perspective, as we continue to study submissions from Sikhs across the UK regarding being victims of targeted grooming.

Voicing the grassroots perspective is vital as the topic at a mainstream level has become a political pawn, pushed for agendas rather than protecting the public. Right-wing politicians only reference grooming gangs to win votes with anti-immigrant rhetoric. Left-wingers denied that grooming gangs existed to keep favour with some communities.

For Sikhs, it has never been about anything other than basic safeguarding.

The hardest part of that was getting people to recognise the existence of a threat which often was not apparent until it was too late. The sad case of Sandeep Samra of Coventry is the starkest example of this. It was not until she was found planning to fly to Syria to join ISIS that authorities realised Sikh community groups were valid to be against this young girl’s newfound association with adult Muslim men.

Sikh targeted grooming cases are very unique, often relying on cultural proximity and ethnic religious affiliations to win trust. Police and social services are unable to spot the red flags which we can.

This is not the same as the way mainly white underage girls were targeted by predominantly Pakistani members of grooming gangs in Rotherham, Rochdale and beyond. Although those were similarly religiously motivated, the way the children were coerced into the abuse is different from what occurred with Sikh survivors.

So, whilst there is recognition that the grooming scourge impacted various communities, assuming they were targeted the same way will only continue to cloud what really happened. Without this, authorities still may not be able to adequately act when needed, and as such, Sikhs will continue to do what is needed to protect our community.

This safeguarding effort exists beyond the grooming issue, too. If Sikh pupils find themselves being seriously bullied, our sevadaars may end up outside of that school. When police themselves were carrying out harassment against Sikhs, the protest went to the police state. And when our women became targeted last year, we have gone to Gurdwaras across the UK to meet with them, handing out thousands of personal alarms and awareness material.

The spate of racist attacks on Sikh women last year is part of a new issue, but still partly fuelled by the grooming epidemic. In response to online posts about these attacks on Sikh women, countless comments online showed anger from Brits regarding the lack of publicity around historic grooming gang abuses. This sense of injustice has turned into a national racist backlash.

Whilst nothing can be done to go back and correct what went wrong, moving forward the government can attempt to bring impacted communities together, and I believe if we can address historic failures together, we can move forward positively as a society.

Not many people know better than me that exposing police failures by challenging grooming gangs can be costly at a personal level. But whatever it takes for authorities to admit their own limitations and support Sikh communities to safeguard ourselves will be worth it, and the 2026 national inquiry offers the best opportunity yet.

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Deepa Singh is a senior sevadaar of Sikh Youth UK, 2017 Sandwell Council Outstanding Volunteer award winner, activist, content creator and community organiser.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jungfateh Singh
January 16, 2026 | 5 min. read | Opinion

There is a moment in every community’s life when the question stops being whether the state can protect you, and becomes whether the state has decided you are acceptable collateral. British Columbia is living through that moment now. When an RCMP national security assessment describes the Lawrence Bishnoi crime group as a violent organization “acting on behalf of the Indian government,” that is not a routine policing file, and it is not an ordinary headline to be managed. It is a warning about foreign directed violence, coercion, and intimidation unfolding inside Canada. It is the kind of finding that, in any serious democracy, would trigger a hard political response, not a trade delegation and a press line.

What we have instead is a premier and a cabinet minister attempting to recast an explicitly political problem into the language of commerce and administration.

Premier David Eby chose to travel to India from January 12 to 17, 2026, pitching British Columbia’s mining, energy, forestry, and broader economic ambitions as though the central question of our time is market access. The same week, he downplayed the RCMP document, describing the key paragraph as a “summary of publicly available news reports,” and insisting it was “not an RCMP intelligence report.” The problem is not merely that this response is evasive. The problem is that it normalizes the premise that the safety of British Columbians, including Sikh Canadians living under credible threat, can be subordinated to a diplomatic reset.

This is especially grotesque because Eby has already told us, in his own words, that he understands the stakes.

On October 14, 2024, he publicly addressed RCMP allegations and acknowledged that they were not just interference, but credible claims of Indian government involvement in homicides, extortions, acts of violence, and intimidation against Canadians. The RCMP’s public messaging that same day described a significant threat to public safety, and it warned that investigations had uncovered information about criminal activity orchestrated by agents of the Government of India, including links to homicides and violence. You cannot speak that clearly in 2024, then feign uncertainty in 2026 when it becomes inconvenient to the province’s trade branding. That is not confusion. That is a choice.

The premier’s defenders will repeat the familiar script: trade is necessary, diversification is strategic, and British Columbia must protect jobs amid broader economic uncertainty.

The question is not whether British Columbia should trade with the world, or whether diversification is generally wise. The question is whether this particular relationship is being inflated into a moral alibi, as though it is so economically indispensable that it justifies silence, minimization, and political passivity in the face of transnational repression. The province itself has said B.C. origin goods exports to India were worth about $1.3 billion in 2024. That is not nothing, but it is also not the economic lifeline being implied when politicians speak as if India is the single hinge on which British Columbia’s prosperity turns.

The numbers make the reality plain. India represents a small share of British Columbia’s exports compared to the United States, and compared to several other major export destinations. British Columbia’s overall export economy is not held together by this one relationship. You do not endanger lives, soften your language, or launder a national security crisis for a slice of the export picture that remains comparatively modest. And at the national level, India represents a very small share of Canada’s goods exports, which further undercuts the idea that Canada is facing an economic cliff if it insists on accountability.

Meanwhile, the violence that Sikh communities have been warning about is not abstract. Extortion related shootings and intimidation have become a recurring feature of the public record in Surrey and across the Lower Mainland, with victims, families, and business owners forced into a life shaped by risk management.

The premier can insist that the matter is primarily criminal and that processes are underway, but that is precisely the sleight of hand. Law enforcement work is necessary, but it is not sufficient, because the underlying allegation is that the criminality is being directed, enabled, or leveraged by a foreign state. If that allegation is true, the response is not only arrests and investigations. The response is political deterrence, diplomatic consequence, and a public posture that treats Canadian sovereignty as non negotiable.

The federal record, even with its own inconsistencies, makes it harder for British Columbia to plead ignorance. In October 2024, Canada expelled Indian diplomats and consular officials in relation to what it described as a targeted campaign against Canadians by agents linked to the Government of India. In September 2025, the Government of Canada listed the Bishnoi gang as a terrorist entity.

These are not minor gestures. They are acknowledgements that something structurally abnormal is unfolding. Against that backdrop, Eby’s decision to treat a new RCMP assessment as essentially a media artifact is not just unhelpful. It is politically dangerous.

This is where Ravi Kahlon’s role becomes impossible to ignore.

The province’s trade mission messaging frames India as a major market with significant opportunities, while presenting the delegation as practical, job focused leadership. But leadership is not merely the ability to sign memoranda and take meetings. Leadership is the willingness to draw bright moral lines when residents are being intimidated, extorted, and shot at, and when federal policing has publicly described organized crime being used to generate fear in diaspora communities. If the province wants to talk about inclusion, safety, and belonging, it must treat Sikh safety as a real test of those values, not as inconvenient noise in the background of a trade itinerary.

For Sikh Canadians, this should be a clarifying moment, not a despairing one. The point is not to beg for a few kinder sentences from a premier who has already demonstrated he will say one thing when the cameras demand it and another when trade talking points require it. The point is to accept, soberly, that relying on political parties and proximity to power as a substitute for community power has reached its limit. If the province is willing to walk into India for meetings while dismissing national security findings that directly implicate the Indian state’s relationship to criminal proxies, then the Sikh community must be willing to treat that decision as disqualifying.

That is why direct civic action against the BC NDP, including David Eby and Ravi Kahlon, is not extreme. It is civic self-defence, exercised through lawful, disciplined, non-violent pressure. Boycotts, protests, and the refusal to provide community stages, honours, or celebratory platforms are legitimate tools of public accountability when a political class insists on trading away your safety for optics. You do not owe legitimacy to leaders who ask you to accept escalating threats as the price of economic theatre. You organize, you withdraw consent, and you make it socially and politically costly to treat Sikh lives as negotiable.

If British Columbia’s government wants to talk about jobs, prosperity, and the future, it can start by proving that the future includes the people it claims to represent. That means acknowledging what the RCMP has said, in plain language, and acting accordingly, without rhetorical laundering.

Until then, Sikhs in British Columbia should treat this as a lesson in political reality: when faced with a choice between spurious trade theatre and the lives of Canadians, this government has shown what it is willing to sacrifice. The only question left is whether our communities will continue to behave as if that sacrifice is inevitable, or whether we will build the independent power needed to make such choices impossible.

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Jungfateh Singh is an organizer, writer and producer, and has worked on Sikh issues across the globe for over 15 years.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jaskaran Sandhu
December 29, 2025 | 3 min. read | Opinion

If there is one through line that defines 2025 for Sikhs globally, it is that Anti-Sikh hate has become normalized, coordinated, and algorithmically amplified.

This did not happen in a vacuum.

Across the West, far-right nationalist and white supremacist movements have gained renewed confidence and visibility, aided in part by social media platforms that increasingly reward outrage, racial grievance, and conspiratorial thinking. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, changes to content moderation and engagement algorithms have helped create an environment where hate no longer merely survives online. It thrives.

Sikhs, as a visibly distinct, economically successful, and politically engaged minority, have increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of these movements. Turbans, beards, Gurdwaras, and public religious processions mark Sikhs as outsiders in societies where xenophobia is gaining steam. But what makes the current moment uniquely dangerous is not simply the rise of Western far-right hate. It is the way that Hindu Nationalist networks, mainly operating out of India, have actively fused themselves to these movements to target Sikhs in the diaspora.

This alliance is cynical and opportunistic.

Hindu Nationalists understand perfectly well that Western white supremacists also harbour and advance deep hostility toward Hindus and Indian immigrant communities more broadly. That contradiction does not matter. As long as Sikhs are the immediate target, Hindu Nationalist actors are willing to amplify, excuse, and launder hate from any source. Moral consistency is irrelevant. Tactical utility is everything.

We are often told, disingenuously, by Hindu and Indian Nationalists, that they do not hate Sikhs, only those labelled Khalistanis (not that there is anything wrong in believing in Sikh sovereignty and self-determination, but we can put that conversation aside for now).

That claim, however, collapses under even minimal scrutiny.

In practice, any Sikh who is politically active, outspoken, or simply visible can be arbitrarily branded a Khalistani “extremist”. Advocacy for Sikh rights, remembrance of state violence, or criticism of Indian government policy is enough to trigger waves of disinformation and abuse. The goal is not to debate ideas. It is to delegitimize and cast a shadow on an entire community.

The incident in New Zealand earlier this month illustrates this dynamic with clarity.

When members connected to Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church, an organization frequently described by observers as cult-like and known for a pattern of inflammatory actions, like once holding a demonstration to tear apart a Hindu flag, blocked a Nagar Kirtan procession, the hostility was unmistakable. Protesters shouted “Jesus is King” and told Sikh participants to go back to India. This was a religious hate incident, plain and simple, directed at a peaceful Sikh religious procession organized by local Gurdwaras and attended by families, elders, and children.

Yet almost immediately, pro-Hindu Nationalist accounts moved to reframe the incident. They falsely claimed the demonstration was aimed at Khalistanis and suggested that Sikhs had somehow provoked or deserved the abuse. They amplified footage not to condemn the hate, but to justify it, boosting the reach of a group that despises them as much as it despises Sikhs. Go back and watch the video of the incident. There are no Khalistan flags in sight, and even if there were, how does that justify what happened?

This is how modern Anti-Sikh hate operates. It is produced at the intersection of far-right nationalism, white supremacy, and Hindu Nationalism, then scaled through coordinated online networks that exploit platform algorithms. IT cells, bot farms, and engagement manipulation turn localized incidents into global spectacles, stripped of context and repackaged as propaganda. The result is a feedback loop in which Sikhs are constantly portrayed as threats, extremists, or outsiders, regardless of the facts.

The consequences are no longer abstract. In the United States, Sikhs are now the third most targeted religious group for hate crimes, after Jewish and Muslim communities, according to FBI data. In Canada, Anti-Sikh hate has risen sharply as well, occurring alongside India’s involvement in transnational repression and state-sponsored terrorism. And, as we just witnessed in New Zealand, our ability to practice our faith freely is in question.

What the Nagar Kirtan incident shows us is not merely that Sikhs are being targeted. It shows us how that targeting is rationalized, excused, and accelerated, often by those who claim to be allies, and almost always by those who see Sikh identity as expendable in a larger ideological battle.

Anti-Sikh hate was the story of 2025. And unless governments, decision makers, and civil society begin treating it as the grave and coordinated threat that it is, there is little reason to believe 2026 will be any different.

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Jaskaran Sandhu is the co-founder of Baaz. He is a lawyer and previously served as Executive Director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada and as a Senior Advisor to Brampton’s Office of the Mayor. You can find Jaskaran on Twitter at @JaskaranSandhu_

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Harjot Singh
December 18, 2025 | 5 min. read | Analysis

When foreign influence efforts are ignored or dismissed by the U.S. government, even as legal red lines are crossed, the consequences extend far beyond Washington. Each failure of enforcement sets a dangerous precedent, telling autocratic governments and extremist movements worldwide that U.S. transparency laws are negotiable. That risk is now apparent as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a powerful Hindu nationalist organization based in India, has quietly begun lobbying members of Congress through a major DC firm while avoiding the disclosures required under federal law.

As most readers well know, but many in the U.S. Congress do not, the RSS is a Hindu nationalist paramilitary group that has been operating in India for nearly a century and serves as the ideological backbone of the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself is a lifelong RSS member who rose through its ranks. For decades, scholars and human rights organizations have documented the RSS’s role in promoting an exclusionary vision of a Hindu India - one that has coincided with democratic backsliding, rising religious intolerance, and organized discriminatory violence against India’s religious minorities.

According to public lobbying disclosures, the RSS has launched a well-funded lobbying effort in Washington. As first reported in an investigative report published by Prism last month, a major U.S. lobbying firm, Squire Patton Boggs (SPB), registered earlier this year to lobby Congress on the RSS’s behalf on issues described broadly as “U.S.–India bilateral relations.” Government filings show that the firm received hundreds of thousands of dollars for this work, yet the registration did not identify the RSS as a foreign entity.

More alarming still, the firm did not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A law specifically designed to ensure transparency when foreign actors seek to influence American public policy.

This lack of registration matters. FARA requires far more detailed disclosure than the Lobbying Disclosure Act, the less stringent statute under which the firm chose to register. Under U.S. law, anyone acting in the United States at the order, request, direction, or control of a foreign principal must register under FARA if they engage in political or lobbying activities on that principal’s behalf. That obligation extends to indirect arrangements as well: an agent working through an intermediary does not escape disclosure requirements simply because another entity sits in between them and their true client.

In this case, the lobbying was routed through a U.S.-based intermediary - State Street Strategies, doing business as One+ Strategies - which Squire Patton Boggs listed as its client in connection with the RSS. Multiple legal experts have noted that such an arrangement does not remove the activity from FARA’s scope and may raise further serious concerns about deliberate efforts to avoid its transparency requirements. By choosing to file under the Lobbying Disclosure Act rather than FARA, this campaign has largely escaped public scrutiny, leaving Congress little oversight into the nature, scope, or targets of the RSS’s influence efforts.

SPB’s role here is also especially alarming in light of the firm’s recent history of representing foreign clients implicated in grave human rights abuses. Until 2021, it served as a lead lobbying firm for a Saudi media entity linked to a senior Saudi official who was later sanctioned for his role in the brutal murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Only after sustained public pressure, and after multiple Members of Congress refused to meet with the firm because of that relationship, did SPB terminate the contract. That the firm has thus already been the subject of intense scrutiny for lobbying on behalf of foreign clients implicated in human rights violations makes its current relationship with RSS-linked interests all the more alarming.

Beyond legal technicalities lies a more fundamental question: who is the RSS, and why should Americans care?

Historians have long described the RSS as a far-right paramilitary organization whose founding leaders openly expressed admiration for Nazi fascism. From 1925 onwards, the RSS has promoted an exclusionary form of Hindu nationalism and has since evolved into the central node of a vast global network of affiliated Hindu nationalist groups. A recent investigation estimates that this network may include as many as 2,500 subsidiaries worldwide, a structure which has been described by some scholars as the oldest and largest far-right movement of its kind. Independent observers, including the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, have warned about the RSS’s role in “decades of extreme violence and intolerance” directed at religious minorities in India.

Under RSS-backed BJP leadership, India has experienced a marked rise in religious intolerance, violent majoritarianism, democratic erosion, and violence against minorities - developments documented by U.S. government agencies, including the State Department.

Historically, the RSS has advanced a supremacist vision of majoritarian dominance that seeks to discipline religious minorities through dehumanization, social exclusion, and coercion. Its affiliates have been credibly linked to advancing anti-minority rhetoric, organized hate campaigns, and mob violence targeting Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and others.

For Sikh Americans, these concerns are deeply personal.

The RSS’s vision of India as a Hindu Rashtra (a Hindu nation) explicitly relegates non-Hindus, whether Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, or others, to second-class status. Its ideology has long insisted that Sikhs and other minorities must either assimilate into the Hindu fold or accept subjugation with diminished rights. When genocidal massacres against Sikhs were unleashed across India in November 1984, many RSS members were accused of participating in the mass violence; prominent RSS ideologues, including Nana Deshmukh, were reported to have publicly defended the nationwide killings.

That such an organization now seeks legitimacy and access in the halls of the U.S. Congress is deeply distressing not only to Sikh Americans, but to all who value pluralism, human rights, and democratic accountability.

This is what makes the RSS’s quiet push into Washington so dangerous. Lobbying is not merely about persuasion; it is about legitimacy, access, and power. When an organization with a documented history of sectarian extremism seeks to shape U.S. policy behind closed doors, without full transparency, it undermines the democratic norms we claim to uphold at home and promote abroad.

The U.S. Congress and Justice Department should take this matter seriously. Most urgently, the Department of Justice should examine whether U.S. lobbying laws have been properly followed and whether FARA applies. Members of Congress, for their part, should ask hard questions before engaging with any lobbyists connected to the RSS, and ultimately look to decline meetings with anyone representing nefarious interests or intent. Constituents, too, can and should make their voices heard by contacting their members of Congress and urging them to question and refuse meetings with any lobbyists acting on behalf of the RSS.

Transparency is not a partisan issue, it is a democratic one.

When laws like FARA are selectively enforced or quietly sidestepped, they invite abuse by actors who do not share our commitments to pluralism, democracy, or the rule of law. As Sikh Americans, we have a moral responsibility to speak out on this issue, not least of all because our community has seen what happens when extremist ideologies are normalized and shielded from accountability.

With ongoing concerns about Indian transnational repression still fresh in the minds of many Sikh Americans, any additional instance of unlawful foreign interference must be treated with utmost seriousness.

The United States cannot become a place where intolerant movements quietly rehabilitate their image while evading the very laws meant to protect our democracy.

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Harjot Singh is the Federal Policy Manager at the Sikh Coalition, the largest Sikh civil rights organization in the United States. He holds a master’s degree in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University and previously served as a student fellow at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jasveer Singh
December 12, 2025 | 4 min. read | Opinion

What is happening to Gurpreet Singh Rehal should alarm every Sikh and every person who believes in civil liberties in Britain.

In an unprecedented move, the UK government has imposed sanctions on Rehal, a well-known Sikh activist, using the Domestic Counter-Terrorism Regime for being “suspected of belonging to organisations involved in terrorism in India.” This is the first time this framework has been used in this way. The consequences are extraordinary. A British resident has been publicly branded a terror financier without being charged, tried, or convicted of any crime under UK law.

The response from the Sikh world has been swift and united.

More than 200 Sikh organisations across 12 countries and three continents have issued a joint condemnation of the UK decision. Organisations from England, Scotland, Canada, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Portugal, France, Italy and New Zealand have warned that this action signals something far more dangerous than the targeting of one individual.

“The sanctions look to be based on unverified and unscrutinised intelligence, likely supplied by foreign authorities, such as India, with a vested interest in silencing him and his work. This lack of independent judicial review or oversight gives the perception of institutional racism, where a political agenda trumps the civil liberties of an ethnic minority group,” the joint press release reads.

Their concern is clear. It appears the UK authorities have coordinated closely with the Indian state to suppress research and commentary on human rights abuses in India. If true, this represents a chilling escalation of India’s campaign of transnational repression now operating with the cooperation of a Western democracy.

Gurpreet Singh Rehal is not a militant. He is not a clandestine figure. He is a public educator, entrepreneur and commentator whose work is widely known across the Punjabi diaspora. Through his platform Saving Punjab, Rehal has focused on governance, infrastructure, environmental degradation and human rights in Punjab. That focus alone appears to have placed him in the crosshairs of the Indian state.

Saving Punjab has reached millions since its launch in 2017. Its content is shared by artists, Sikh organisations, academics, politicians and ordinary Punjabis across the world. Rehal has built a reputation for explaining complex political realities in accessible language. He has done so openly, publicly and peacefully.

That is precisely why he is perceived as dangerous.

Rehal has spoken on international stages, including the 2023 United Nations Water Conference in New York, where he addressed global diplomats on the diversion of Punjab's river waters and the long-term impact on its people. None of this activity is illegal. None of it is violent. None of it meets any reasonable definition of terrorism.

But it does challenge the narrative of the Indian state.

India has long equated Sikh political consciousness with extremism. The mere discussion of Sikh self-determination is framed as a security threat. The word Khalistan has been deliberately weaponised as a dog whistle to discredit dissent and shut down debate. Education itself has become suspect.

Punjabi Sikhs have repeatedly shown that their resistance is mass based and peaceful. The Farmers’ Protest of 2020 and 2021 was one of the largest civil resistance movements in modern history. More recently students in Punjab have mobilised against repression through protest, not violence. Yet the Indian state continues to respond with surveillance, intimidation and increasingly, assassination.

The danger is no longer confined to India.

Rehal is not far removed from those already lost. In 2023, Avtar Singh Khanda, a UK-based Sikh activist connected to Sikh rights advocacy, died in Birmingham under highly suspicious circumstances. That same year, Rehal spoke at a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, only months after its president, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was assassinated outside the very same place of worship.

Despite this context, much of the British media reported the sanctions against Rehal with little scrutiny. The lack of critical interrogation reveals how easily a Sikh man can be criminalised in the public imagination. No evidence is required. No trial is necessary. The accusation alone is enough.

The absurdity of the campaign against Rehal is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that some Indian nationalists are now linking him to the 1985 Air India bombing, an attack that occurred before he was even born. This tactic is familiar. It mirrors what was done to Jagtar Singh Johal, to the West Midlands Three, and to countless other Sikhs whose only crime was dissent.

Recent fabricated claims by Indian authorities including disputed bombing allegations in Punjab and highly publicised arrests later called into question by international agencies further undermine the credibility of Indias terror narratives. Yet these claims continue to shape foreign policy decisions abroad.

It is increasingly difficult to ignore the role of trade and geopolitics in the UKs posture. Despite public commitments made to Sikh communities before elections, the British government appears eager to align with India regardless of the cost to human rights. Silencing Rehal avoids scrutiny. A court case would invite it.

This is what makes the Rehal case so dangerous. If the state can bypass the courts to punish speech, then no one is safe. Counter terrorism laws become instruments of political convenience rather than public protection.

This is not just about Gurpreet Singh Rehal. It is about precedent. It is about whether Britain is willing to allow a foreign government to export repression onto its soil. It is about whether dissent, education and political thought can now be criminalised by administrative decree.

Rehal may be the first person in the UK to face this kind of sanction without any real due process. If there is no resistance, he will not be the last.

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Jasveer Singh hails from Southall, UK, and is the Senior Press Officer of The Sikh Press Association, a position he has held since 2015. In this role, Jasveer works across all sectors of media supporting Sikh organisations and individuals on Panthic endeavours. Jasveer previously worked as a freelance journalist, which included stints with Sky News, Super Fight League, and more. You can find Jasveer on Twitter at @Jazzthejourno.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Mankamal Singh
December 11, 2025 | 2 min. read | Opinion

Nearly eight years of detention without resolution should spark national outrage. In the case of British citizen Jagtar Singh Johal, it has not.

Scottish-born blogger and archivist Jagtar Singh Johal travelled to India in 2017 to get married. Weeks later, he was abducted by the police and charged with flimsy allegations of involvement in terrorism-related activities under draconian laws. He has always maintained his innocence.

UN experts have ruled his detention arbitrary, while human rights organisations have raised serious concerns about torture and forced confessions. Earlier this year, he was acquitted on the main charge, with the court highlighting the lack of credible evidence.

However, he remains behind bars, and the UK government has offered nothing more than “concerns” and “empty statements.”

If it were not for his family and grassroots Sikh groups, Jagtar would have been erased entirely from public consciousness.

No national headlines. No primetime documentaries. No dramatisations to humanise his story. By contrast, other British detainees abroad have received sustained media coverage and political attention, generating public pressure that helped secure their release. Jagtar has had none of this.

Into the vacuum stepped people with no institutional power and no broadcasting platform. His brother, Gurpreet Singh Johal, has turned personal anguish into public advocacy, lobbying MPs and holding governments to account. Sikh Youth UK has kept the issue alive among younger Sikhs, and Sikh Federation UK has pursued sustained political engagement. Their efforts alone have kept Jagtar’s name from disappearing.

The silence raises an uncomfortable question: would this have happened if Jagtar were not a Sikh? When white, middle-class Britons face wrongful detention abroad, the machinery of the state and media mobilises quickly. When a British Sikh man is detained, urgency appears optional.

This is more than a diplomatic failure; it is a reflection of whose stories Britain values and whose it does not. Jagtar Singh Johal’s continued imprisonment is a national shame. Without his community’s tireless advocacy, he would already be forgotten.

A British citizen has spent nearly a decade detained, and the UK has yet to show the same urgency or commitment shown in other cases. If Britain claims all citizens are equal, their actions must match that claim.

The fight for Jagtar Singh Johal is not just about one man’s freedom; it is about justice, equality, and the value democratic countries place on all their citizens. Eight years of arbitrary detention is a national shame for Britain.

It is a test of the Sikh diaspora’s courage and determination. We must keep raising our voices, organising, and demanding action. If we remain silent, Jagtar may be forgotten - and with him, the principles we claim to uphold.

Freedom for Jagtar Singh Johal is not negotiable. It is a duty, and it is long overdue.

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Mankamal Singh is a London based Sikh who is an advisor to The Sikh Network and is one of the hosts of ‘The Sikh Network Podcast.’ He has served on the Sikh Council UK, local Gurdwara committees and several public committees. You can follow Mankamal Singh on Twitter at @MankamalSingh.

Baaz is home to opinions, analysis, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Akanksha Dhingra
November 27, 2025 | 5 min. read | Original Reporting

It’s a damp Saturday night in Vancouver, and eight-year-old Simran Singh is sitting in the stands at Rogers Arena with his parents. On the ice, Arshdeep Bains, a Punjabi Sikh professional ice hockey player with the Vancouver Canucks, skates fast towards the net, his stick low. With a quick snap, the puck hits the back of the goal and the crowd roars.

Arjun’s dad leans down to him and says quietly, “One of us made it.”

For Simran, it’s the first time he’s seen someone who looks like him, with a name like his, in the National Hockey League (NHL). That moment plants a seed: maybe professional sports is for him, too.

Diasporic Sikhs are finding success across an expanding range of sports, far beyond the more traditional athletic pursuits in South Asia, such as cricket and field hockey.

The examples are starting to grow.

At the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, the men’s freestyle 125 kg wrestling event produced a remarkable moment when all three medalists had Punjabi roots, each competing under a different flag.

The “India-heritage” roster at the Amerigol Latam Cup, an ice hockey tournament for non-traditional markets, was so dominated by Punjabis and Sikhs that fans on social media began referring to it as Team Punjab.

When reports surfaced that India was considering allowing Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs) to represent the national football team, much of the online discussion focused on Punjabi footballers from the diaspora already being tracked by scouts.

Sikh athletes have played basketball at the NCAA level for years, and India Rising, the team that captured attention during its unlikely run in The Basketball Tournament 2023, was primarily composed of Punjabi players.

Sareet Kaur recently became the first Sikh to captain England’s U16 squad, while on the other side of the world, Sarpreet Singh is preparing to represent New Zealand at the next World Cup.

Randeep Singh currently serves as a Head of Race Strategy in Formula 1, and Kareen Kaur has broken new ground as the first Sikh woman to compete in Formula 4.

The list goes on, and while there has been a noticeable, much-celebrated increase in Punjabi youth succeeding in amateur and professional sports, with more prospects destined to reach the big leagues, it was not always that way.

Punjabi families began settling across the diaspora well over 100 years ago, carving communities where kabaddi on Gurdwara grounds kept athletic roots alive.

Yet, organized sports remained a dream for many kids who remained out of touch with elite development programs, professional scouts, and coaching. Even today, that dream comes with a price tag. A recent RBC survey shows Canadian families spend an average of C$4,478 per year on organized hockey, for example. That’s about C$53,700 by the time a child turns 16.

Racism and bias have been, and remain, other real barriers in community sports. In 2023, 26 per cent of athletes and volunteers in Canada said racism and discrimination were a problem in their sports circles, while 18 per cent reported witnessing or experiencing unfair treatment over the past five years, which later climbed to 12 per cent among racialized participants. Of the respondents from the same study, 22 per cent said they were threatened or harassed, and 14 per cent said they had been physically attacked or assaulted.

These numbers matter when small biases decide who gets to play, or who’s invited for tryouts, who gets cut, or who is seen as “not a fit.”

Dr. Courtney Szto, Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, elaborates on how South Asian players in hockey and sports have often been always visible, yet invisible. They are seen for their difference yet overlooked when it comes to opportunities.

That pattern shows up again and again in research about Punjabi players in Canadian ice hockey; community interviews and fieldwork underline how everyday bias, not always obvious abuse, can cost a player their chance to play the sport.

Across the Atlantic, Kira Kaur Rai, a soccer player based in England, who has been a part of the women’s team at Derby County Football Club, has personally experienced both historic successes and headline-making battles against racism in competitive sports. As with hockey in Canada, football in the UK is also seeing more Punjabi talent in the professional pipeline.

“For Punjabi and Sikh athletes, the pathway can feel harder to navigate because you don’t see people who look like you in leadership, coaching, or media roles,” Rai said, adding that the “lack of visibility can affect confidence, but it also motivates you to break through as it has done to me personally.”

Rai highlights that one of the toughest barriers is visibility.

“On the field, you want to be judged purely on ability, but sometimes there’s an unconscious bias that creeps in, questions about whether you ‘fit the mould’ of what people expect an athlete to look like or play like,” she said.

Off the field, Punjabis have also seen success in sports broadcasting.

Amrit Gill is a Canadian TV host and producer who often covers sports and is part of the popular national TV program “Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi”. She said that growing up in immigrant households where sports are not always considered a realistic career path can sometimes mean opportunities at elite levels become limited.

“I know the feeling personally. Growing up, I didn’t always see myself reflected in the world of sport or media, and I often felt I had to prove twice that I belonged,” Gill said.

As diasporic Punjabi and Sikh athletes are making history in sports like hockey, cricket, wrestling, MMA and more, their stories are often missing from the national sports pages and TV coverage.

Gill said she experienced being tokenized by parts of the sports media industry that lacked a nuanced lens, seeing her only as a voice of diversity rather than recognizing the full depth of what she brings.

“That kind of pigeonholing is something I see mirrored in how athletes are often framed, reduced to identity instead of celebrated for their full humanity,” Gill said, echoing findings from Dr. Courtney Szto.

“Diversity of thought and lived experience in production rooms is crucial. If the people deciding what gets covered don’t reflect or understand the communities of the athletes themselves, important narratives can be overlooked,” she adds.

Regardless, Punjabi and Sikh athletes have drawn on their own history of competition, triumph, and athletic excellence to drive their success.

Karenjeet Kaur Bains, born in Warwickshire, was the first Sikh woman to compete for Britain in 2019. “I’m very proud of my culture and my heritage,” Bains told Malala at the time. “I insist on having my full name...I also wear a kara…I have rituals in my head when I’m on the platform, and I’m lifting. It helps keep me focused if I think of God,” she said.

Rai adds that Sikhi is a faith that has faced significant historical suppression, so there’s a deep-rooted emphasis on hard work, resilience, and perseverance.

“I think being a Sikh naturally instills certain values in you: compassion, honesty, generosity and those are things you carry through life, not just as a person but as a footballer too,” she shares, pointing to core Sikh values of seva (selfless service), nimrata (humility), sabar (patience), and mehnat (discipline and hard work).

In one quiet yet powerful act of representation at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, four Sikh athletes from Canada - Ravi Kahlon, Bindi Kullar, Gabbar Singh, and Ranjeev Deol - chose to wear red turbans during the opening ceremony. Though none of them regularly wore turbans in daily life, the decision was intentional: a public affirmation of Sikh identity and principles on the global stage.

“I want to show that you can wear a turban and still be Canadian,” Kahlon told reporters. He added that when the plan was first announced, “a few said, ‘this is the Canadian team, not the Indian team.’” But for Kahlon, whose father had removed his beard and turban to find work after immigrating to Canada in 1970, the gesture was deeply personal.

What comes next, Jasveer Singh, a journalist who has been covering Sikhs in sports, is an intentional effort to build upon Sikh sports infrastructure.

“Gurdwaras have historically maintained gyms, fields, and courts for athletic development. It is something that has been ingrained in our psyche for generations,” he shares, adding that with the right community-led mentorships, sponsorships, and resources, we will see even greater success.

Initiatives like the Sikh Games in Australia, which see thousands of participants take part from around the world, are examples of how the community can continue to support young athletes and provide high-quality spaces to refine their skills.

“Sports are critical to our community, our ethos, and even our faith,” Jasveer Singh shares, “it is only natural then that you will continue to see more and more success as our athletic endeavours and institutions become more sophisticated in the coming generations. Punjabis are just built different, it’s time we truly capitalize on it.”

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Akanksha Dhingra is a journalism graduate from Toronto Metropolitan University. Akanksha holds great passion for everything concerning storytelling and digital marketing. You can find her on Twitter at @Akankshadhingr5

Baaz is home to opinions, analysis, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Harman Singh
October 14, 2025 | 4 min. read | Opinion

This week, a failure of moral courage played out in Sacramento, California, when Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 509.

This simple and bipartisan bill was designed to equip California’s law enforcement with training on the growing threat of transnational repression (TNR). It passed the California Assembly and Senate with no votes of opposition, and was backed by a wide and diverse coalition of Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Kashmiri, Asian American, immigrant rights, and law enforcement organizations.

This coalition was not window dressing, but an earnest collaboration between different groups: Sikh and Hindu Americans attended legislator meetings together, an Iranian American (with his own personal connection to TNR) penned an op-ed in support, and Japanese American groups were among those signing letters of support in solidarity. And of course, our sangat came out in full force.

Thousands of Sikh Californians, a bipartisan group of California Sikh elected officials, and more than 50 California Gurdwarae all supported the bill. Each time the legislature heard public testimony, we filled the State Capitol’s hearing rooms to raise our voices together.

SB 509’s defeat, therefore, is not a reflection of the bill’s merit or a failure of community mobilization. Instead, it is the direct result of a deeply dishonest and cynical campaign waged by a small but vocal minority led by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF). For months, the process of advancing this crucial civil rights bill was poisoned by lies, hate, conspiracy, and innuendo. Behavior utterly unbecoming of any organization that claims to stand on the side of justice.

HAF’s deep bad-faith opposition to any serious effort to address transnational repression runs well beyond SB 509.

In an April 2025 podcast episode, HAF’s Managing Director for Policy and Programs (and eventual lead opposing witness to SB 509), Samir Kalra, featured Dr. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. During the discussion, Dr. Rubin shockingly compared all Sikhs to “the mafia” and argued that India ultimately possesses the right to extrajudicially kill individuals it deems to be terrorists - even if those individuals are on United States soil. Hearing these assertions, Mr. Kalra’s ultimate reply was simply, “absolutely.”

While HAF has refused to respond to our organization’s repeated attempts to seek clarity on these hateful comments, they have doubled down on their minimization and deflection of the TNR issue at large.

On social media, they have referred to the very real FBI, and DOJ, confirmed threats faced by Sikhs as mere “sob stories.” When pressed on the issue of justifying extrajudicial killings, they dismissed the comments as “tongue-in-cheek.” This refusal to condemn rhetoric that justifies violence against a religious community should disturb all elected officials and organizations that work with HAF.

Even after the veto, HAF can’t help themselves from adding insult to injury, referring to TNR as “so-called transnational repression.”

HAF didn’t just work to undermine SB 509 with their opposition to TNR in general -they of course also opposed the bill itself. On the surface, HAF cited several objections that were factually inaccurate.

For example, they claimed that a TNR course for law enforcement already existed (Fact: CalOES confirmed it did not).

They said that the bill would restrict free speech (Fact: The bill text explicitly stated it “shall not prohibit the exercise of rights under the First Amendment”).

And they wailed that the bill would “train law enforcement to falsely slur Americans as ‘AGENTS’ or ‘proxies’ of India” (Fact: The bill made no mention of any country, ethnicity, or religion - and it is in fact HAF who has been documented attempting to push their own political views on law enforcement.)

Beyond their legislative dishonesty, HAF launched blanket attacks against anyone who dared to support the bill. Their Executive Director, Suhag Shukla, tweeted that “if you think SB509 should be law”- a group presumably including 99 California legislators who voted for it - ”it’s because you want to harass people.”

The organization’s primary X account extended similarly baseless, conspiratorial rhetoric to state civil servants, bizarrely alleging “backroom deals” with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

And HAF also circulated disinformation to legislative offices, accusing several Sikh organizations of being “antisemitic” and “Hinduphobic” simply for supporting SB 509 and speaking up against Islamophobia and on other unrelated issues.

Of course, HAF operates within a wider ecosystem of opposition, which has been well documented by interfaith and South Asian groups like the Savera Coalition.

For instance, Hindu American PAC, one of the groups opposing SB 509, made a now-deleted social media post implying that Assemblymember Dr. Jasmeet Kaur Bains - a sitting legislator, author of last year’s version of SB 509, and co-sponsor of this year’s - was sympathetic to terrorism simply because of her authorship. This prompted a rebuke from California’s AAPI Legislative Caucus. Interestingly, four of Hindu American PAC’s six current board members appear to also be board members and/or co-founders of HAF.

This unified front of misinformation has even attempted to redefine the threat, with HAF writing in their 2025 policy priorities that federal and state legislation addressing transnational repression is being “weaponized” against Hindu American organizations. This fantastical claim lacks any evidence and is undermined by the fact that other Hindu American groups supported the bill. (Then again, HAF also has a tendency to cast doubt on the authenticity of other groups’ Hindu identity, so long as they have different opinions.)

The time for euphemisms is over.

TNR is not a political football or an imaginary issue. It is a genuine and pressing problem of foreign governments targeting individuals and violence originating with the Government of India - confirmed by the FBI, the State Department, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and leaders from both political parties in Washington, DC.

It makes one wonder why an organization would build an entire policy platform focused on obstructing training about transnational repression.

Whose interests does such rigorous advocacy actually benefit?

Governor Newsom’s veto of SB 509 is a victory for bad-faith actors willing to sacrifice honesty, decency, and the safety of American communities on the altar of political obstruction. We must demand greater integrity from organizations that seek to influence policy in the name of civil rights and ensure that legislative processes are never again hijacked by campaigns of fear, hatred, and misinformation. But if those organizations can’t or won’t find such integrity within themselves, we have to at least demand that our elected officials and law enforcement agencies do not reward their duplicitous behavior.

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Harman Singh is the Executive Director of the Sikh Coalition, the largest Sikh civil rights organization in the United States.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Mandeep Singh
October 2, 2025 | 7 min. read | Opinion

ਨੀਚਾ ਅੰਦਰਿ ਨੀਚ ਜਾਤਿ ਨੀਚੀ ਹੂ ਅਤਿ ਨੀਚੁ ॥
ਨਾਨਕੁ ਤਿਨ ਕੈ ਸੰਗਿ ਸਾਥਿ ਵਡਿਆ ਸਿਉ ਕਿਆ ਰੀਸ ॥

ਜਿਥੈ ਨੀਚ ਸਮਾਲੀਅਨਿ ਤਿਥੈ ਨਦਰਿ ਤੇਰੀ ਬਖਸੀਸ ॥੪॥੩॥

I seek the company of the lowest of the low, I am the very lowest of the low.
It is their Sangat I seek, why would I want to associate or emulate the (so-called) great?

Where the (so-called) low find care/love; there is Your (Waheguru) Grace and Blessings

The truth is as profound as it is simple: Guru Nanak Sahib walks with those the world casts aside. The blessings of Waheguru rain down where the forgotten are embraced, where the broken are lifted, where the outcast is made family. So the question is, on what side does the Sikh stand? With the oppressed or with the oppressor? History answers with unmistakable clarity. From the shaheedi of our Gurus to the struggles of the Khalsa, the path of the righteous Sikh has never wavered.

The Sikh stands with the oppressed - always.

The story of Bibi Harjit Kaur is a microcosm of the story of all non-indigenous people who migrate for a better and safer life. A 73-year-old grandmother, she made the Bay Area her home for over three decades, becoming a living thread in the fabric of the East Bay community and a beloved presence at the El Sobrante Gurdwara. For more than twenty years, she worked quietly and faithfully as a seamstress in a small business, stitching clothes while weaving connections that warmed the hearts of all who knew her.

However, Bibi Harjit Kaur was far more than her work: she was a mother and grandmother, but also a guiding, nurturing presence to so many beyond her own family. To neighbors, to friends, to the Sangat, she was comfort and care embodied. In her humility, in her steadfast service, she exemplified everything a community could ever hope for in a citizen: devoted, selfless, and deeply rooted in love for all.

On September 8, 2025, Bibi Harjit Kaur was detained while she was at her regular scheduled check-in with the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). What occurred in that moment and in the days that followed has been a clear act of elder abuse, carried out in service of a political agenda designed to satisfy the cruelty of those who cheer the suffering of immigrants and society’s most vulnerable. The Trump administration and the Republicans openly championed on mass deportations, building their platform on fear and resentment. From the very start of his political career, Trump branded migrants as “drug dealers, criminals, rapists,” setting the tone for a politics steeped in racism and xenophobia. Far too many of our own brothers and sisters bought into the politics of white supremacy.

This is not an accident. It is the deliberate weaponization of policy to inflict cruelty and pain.

Under Trump, deportations were expanded on an unprecedented scale, continuing and hardening an “enforcement-first” approach that even under previous administrations, including one that earned President Obama the nickname Deporter-in-Chief, has already torn countless families apart. What we are witnessing here is not simply political disagreement, but rather a calculated assault on human dignity, targeting immigrants and the marginalized to score political victories.

Bibi Harjit Kaur was caught in the crossfire of a current Western politics of hate, bigotry and a decaying empire that longs to hold onto power through mass surveillance, increased law enforcement and a divide of a people through lines of race.

Bibi Harjit Kaur’s asylum case was denied during the 2012-2013 year. Under ICE’s request, she repeatedly checked in with ICE every six months. She was given a work visa allowing her legal work authorization. This all happened because the Indian consulate refused to give her travel documents so she could leave on her own terms. Even after multiple repeated attempts and requests directly by ICE themselves, the Indian consulate refused to provide travel documents for Bibi Harjit Kaur. Thus, she has been in limbo for over a decade.

She has an immaculate record. She is a beloved member of her community who has paid taxes into the system while having zero crime history. She has been a contributing member of society for every moment she has been in America. If someone like her is in the crosshairs of the current fascistic rage in Western countries, then what hope do the rest of us have?

On Monday, September 8th, Bibi Harjit Kaur’s granddaughter took her to San Francisco at 8 a.m. for her routine immigration check-in. While waiting for over an hour, her granddaughter wondered what was taking so long. Two hours went by. Three hours went by. Then she got the worst phone call a grandchild can imagine in this scenario, and she was told that she could go home because ICE had detained her grandmother.

Through her attorney, Deepak Ahluwalia, who got to see her after a week of her detention, we learned Bibi Harjit Kaur was shackled and cuffed for over 5 hours while in custody in initial detention, and then later taken to Fresno, where she was held in a cell without a bed or chair to sit on. Eventually, she was taken to Bakersfield at the Mesa Verde ICE Detention Facility. They arrived at 3 pm on Tuesday. While being transported, she was in the vehicle with no seatbelt on, while being cuffed. She was unable to hold onto anything and wasn’t secure as they were driving on highways and moving in and out of cities. She received a vegetarian meal after a week of being in detention. Her phone call privileges were not activated for over a week. She’s on several medications and to date, she’s been given medications only for her thyroid. ICE was given the full medication list during her check-in. She requested to see a doctor, but has not been even since by a nurse, much less a doctor. While being detained, she asked for water, and was told by the ICE employee, “No More Water.” A 73 yr old woman has been subjected to this treatment. What is this, if not elder abuse? What is this, if not purposeful cruelty? What is this, if not oppression?

A few days after Bibi Harjit Kaur’s detention, we at Jakara Movement learned about the case from her daughter, Manjit Kaur, who informed us that they need all the help they can get to inform the sangat about Bibi Harjit Kaur’s ordeal. The family was immediately connected to the media to get their story out. The sangat members were horrified when they learned of Bibi Harjit Kaur’s situation and treatment. A protest was organized for the following day in El Sobrante to bring the sangat together and uplift the voice of Bibi Harjit Kaur’s family. On a single day’s notice, 200+ community members from all backgrounds gathered to protest the detention of Bibi Harjit Kaur.

The family of Bibi Harjit Kaur set up a website for members of the sangat to help. The website https://bringharjithome.com laid out options for individuals that wanted to help. Even after multiple requests from congress members, organizations and community members for humane treatment of this elderly woman, ICE secretly transferred Bibi Ji in the middle of the night to Los Angeles in shackles and put her on a flight to Georgia to be deported 3 days later. When she asked for water so she could take her medication, she was given a plate of ice. When she informed the ICE agent she had dentures and couldn’t eat ice, the agent replied, “That’s your fault.”

Children, who are U.S. citizens, but have members of the family who may be undocumented immigrants live with great uncertainty about their families and their own future. “Children whose families are subject to immigration enforcement feel less safe at school and report a higher incidence of bullying incidents. Parents who are subject to these types of enforcement are less engaged in their children’s schooling.” The effect on the economy is rising prices and destruction of jobs especially “rippling through industries that rely on immigrant workers, like farms, hotels, construction and meatpacking plants.”

The case of Bibi Harjit Kaur is one of a person who tried to do everything right, according to the law. She was not an “illegal”. She was documented under ICE’s own system. However, we must critically examine what is considered illegal vs. immoral.

We cannot see morality through the lens of governmental legality and illegality. It was illegal to drink from “Whites-only” water fountains in America for colored people. Through the Alien Land Act, it was illegal for immigrants to own land in America for many years and the last remnants of it were repealed in 2018 in Florida. It is illegal NOW in many western countries for a Khalsa to practice Sikhi and walk into city halls and courthouses wearing a kirpan. It was illegal for Bhai Taru Singh to feed the Khalsa in the jungles. Oppression on people has always been doled out through unjust laws.

The Sikh must use the framework of Gurmat to understand legality vs. morality, not Western democracy, which is on the chopping block every election cycle. Those in power who claim morality through legality do not even respect their own rule of law.

The Poet Sainapati, one of Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s 52 poets, writes in his work Gursobha, “The Khalsa stands on one side; the world on the other.” Where do we as individuals actually stand? When the world around us is focused on eliminating those on the margins of society, where is our place as individuals? As a sangat? Do we have the courage to look in the mirror and confront our contributions to the current-day subjugation faced by our people on the margins? Can we critically examine the politics that asks us daily to submit to myths of a model minority? Do we understand that we personally may be next as a roadblock in the fascism parade?

The hope of having a seat at the table so you can get closer to power structures to improve society, while a noble thought, is a misguided one. “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them,” Assata Shakur once shared.

Soon, we will not even be welcome at the gates, much less let into the house to beg for a seat on the table.

What is the Sikh to do? The answer to this question and any question the Sikh faces is given by Sant Jarnail Singh Khalsa Bhindranwale, who eloquently states; Neither must Sikhs oppress nor should they live under oppression.

Now, it is time to self-reflect and search your soul. What will you do? Will you build with your fellow sangat members in a way that lifts each other up? Can we hold ourselves and each other accountable beyond the binaries of left vs right? Will you aim to live up to the direction given by Guru Nanak Sahib’s bani, “Nanak seeks the company of the lowest of the low class, the very lowest of the low.”

The Sikh must. The Sikh is ordered to. It is Waheguru’s Hukam.

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Mandeep Singh is the Sacramento Regional Director for The Jakara Movement. His passions include organizing with Sikhs, learning from the Sangat, and helping increase community capacity. He is also passionate about hiking. You can find him on Twitter @Light0fMind.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jaskaran Sandhu

September 30, 2025 | 4 min. read | Original Reporting

On September 29, 2025, the Government of Canada announced it has officially listed the Bishnoi Gang as a terrorist entity.

According to the RCMP and Canadian security officials, the gang is used as a proxy by the Government of India to conduct transnational repression in Canada, including homicides, arsons, extortions and other criminal activity, targeting primarily the Sikh Canadian community.

The move gives authorities sweeping powers to freeze the group’s assets, restrict financial transactions, criminalize support or association, and expand surveillance efforts. Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree added in a press release announcing the designation that Ottawa “will continue to use all tools at our disposal to protect Canadians from violence and intimidation.”

The announcement drew swift response from Sikh groups

The World Sikh Organization of Canada welcomed the listing but framed it as merely a partial victory. WSO contends that the Bishnoi Gang serves as an implement of India’s campaign of transnational repression against Sikhs in Canada, asserting that Indian state actors guided, financed, and enabled its violent tactics.

It points to high profile incidents such as the 2023 assassination of Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar and documented consular surveillance, arguing that the real architects of violence must also face consequences.

“Those Indian officials who have directed, financed, or facilitated this gang must also be exposed, sanctioned, and punished,” WSO President Danish Singh declared in their statement.

The Sikh Federation of Canada also expressed solidarity with steps taken to curtail gang activity, but it labeled the terrorist designation as insufficient in the face of India’s ongoing threats to the Sikh diaspora.

The Federation highlighted that Dinesh Patnaik’s recent appointment as India’s High Commissioner to Canada, coupled with a broader push by Ottawa to restore diplomatic normalcy with India, risks overshadowing accountability for violent acts.

It warned that unless Indian officials implicated in repression are held to account, Canada’s move will amount to a symbolic gesture with limited impact.

“The distinguishing feature here is the nexus between India’s government and organized crime, a nexus that Canadian authorities themselves have acknowledged but which was conspicuously absent from the public announcement,” Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the WSO, shared with Baaz, echoing the Federation and other Sikh bodies.

According to reporting and statements from Canadian officials, the Bishnoi Gang is not simply a criminal outfit but is being directed by India’s Home Minister Amit Shah for political motivations and goals.

The RCMP has linked the gang directly to India, with officials confirming that it operates as an extension of state power.

For many, this makes the Bishnoi Gang fundamentally different from other gangs, because its violence is not random but part of an orchestrated campaign of transnational repression targeting Sikhs in Canada.

Sikhs for Justice described the designation as a “political distraction” designed to mask the Modi government’s direct involvement.

SFJ argued that assassinations and extortions attributed to Bishnoi were in fact directed by India’s government itself, funneled through its diplomats and consulates.

“Accountability for the assassination of Shaheed Hardeep Singh Nijjar cannot be outsourced to RAW’s proxy gang,” SFJ General Counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun said in their statement. He stressed that Bishnoi was an extension of Amit Shah’s criminal network and that Canada’s attempt to shift blame onto a gang amounted to an effort to renew relations with Modi’s regime rather than hold the masterminds accountable.

The listing also complicates Ottawa’s ongoing efforts to warm ties with New Delhi.

In recent months, the Canadian government has quietly signaled a desire to stabilize relations with India after years of strain following the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar and allegations of Indian interference in Canada.

It does not appear at this juncture India has taken any meaningful public steps to acknowledge its role in transnational repression and foreign interference in Canada.

Balpreet Singh adds that “amidst the warming of ties between Canada and India we have seen continuing activity from the Bishnoi Gang and the Indian Government here, necessitating ongoing duty to warns for Sikh activists. The Carney administration needs to be cautious, because the steps it has been taking in this regard is sending mixed signals to Sikhs in Canada.”

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Jaskaran Sandhu hails from Brampton, Canada, and is the co-founder of Baaz. He is a lawyer and previously served as Executive Director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada and as a Senior Advisor to Brampton’s Office of the Mayor. You can find Jaskaran on Twitter at @JaskaranSandhu_

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jaskaran Sandhu
September 2, 2025 | 3 min. read | Opinion

The Punjab floods are not just another environmental disaster.

India opened dams and closed canals, turning Punjab into a lake. And, as the waters rose, and the state did nothing, it was left to Sikh institutions, Gurdwaras, and ordinary Punjabis to mobilize.

Once again, we have been forced to save ourselves while the so-called largest democracy in the world looks away.

Modi has not uttered a single word, Bhagwant Mann has proven useless, and the Indian media has treated the unprecedented destruction with silence. Worse still, Hindu Nationalists have mocked Punjab online while villages sink.

That is how much contempt there is for Punjab and Sikhs. Our pain is not even worthy of acknowledgement in the halls of power in Delhi.

Juxtapose this with the rapid response of the Indian state to yesterday's earthquakes in Afghanistan. Aid has been sent, and Modi and his ministers tweeted support immediately.

Punjab has always sacrificed itself for the Indian state. We gave our rivers and our land to feed the country. We gave our sons and daughters to the Indian army. We gave our blood to defend its borders.

In return, we are rewarded with neglect and betrayal.

The floods only confirm what has always been true: Punjab is an afterthought for India, a colony to be exploited and abandoned.

The point is not to play victim here. In fact, what stands out even more about these floods is how Punjabis have responded. There has been no looting. No fighting. No collapse of social trust. Instead, there has been seva, langar, and community.

Ordinary people have been donating whatever they can. Volunteers are wading through waist-deep water to deliver food and medicine. Gurdwaras have opened their doors to anyone in need.

This is a high-trust society in action.

Punjabis are looking after each other because no one else will. Here lies the sharpest contrast. The very organizations and people that are routinely called “Khalistanis” by the Indian state were the first responders.

The SGPC. Diaspora groups. Punjabi artists. NGOs. They are the ones saving lives. Meanwhile, the Indian nationalists who love to tell us who the “real Sikhs” are have been nowhere to be found.

Let us be clear. “Khalistani” is not a bad word. We are sovereigns. We are different. And, everyone is welcome, as we build a society grounded in the principles of the Guru - no matter how much India tries to cast suspicion on the Panth.

It's those very principles you see in action now.

India does not just neglect Sikhs. It despises Sikhs who carry self-respect and honour. It wants to break our spirit. It wants us to see ourselves through the eyes of those who hate us. It wants us to internalize shame.

But we never will. Because we know who we are.

The waters will eventually recede, the mud will dry, and reconstruction will begin. It will be long and painful. But what cannot return is the status quo.

Punjab cannot keep sacrificing itself for an ungrateful country.

This flood has ripped away the last illusions. Sovereignty is no longer an abstract idea. It is quickly becoming the only option left.

There has always been one stubborn argument against Punjab's independence: that Punjab could not economically survive on its own and that we were too dependent on India.

But this argument collapses in the face of reality.

What is economic survival when India is already destroying our economy and flooding our fields every year? What is dependence when the state refuses to protect us or provide relief?

We were told that being part of India meant security and belonging. Instead, it has meant dispossession and abandonment.

We were told our sacrifices would be recognized. Instead, they are mocked.

We were told Punjab could thrive within India. Instead, Punjab has been systematically bled dry.

The floods are radicalizing because they expose the entire arrangement between Punjab and India as a lie - if it wasn’t clear post-1947 already.

Independence is not the risk. Remaining in India is the risk.

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Jaskaran Sandhu hails from Brampton, Canada, and is the co-founder of Baaz. He is a lawyer and previously served as Executive Director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada and as a Senior Advisor to Brampton’s Office of the Mayor. You can find Jaskaran on Twitter at @JaskaranSandhu_

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jungfateh Singh

August 17, 2025 | 3 min. Read | Opinion

On August 17th, Edmonton will host a Kabaddi tournament in honour of Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra, the fearless human rights defender who uncovered and documented the illegal killings and disappearances of thousands of Sikhs in Punjab during the 1990s. This gathering is not only a celebration of sport but a reaffirmation of the Sikh tradition that binds physical readiness, communal pride, and the remembrance of shaheeds into a living heritage.

Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra’s life exemplified the Sikh principle of gareeb di rakhiya, jarvanay di bhakhiya — to protect the oppressed and dismantle tyranny. In exposing the mass cremations of unclaimed bodies by Punjab Police, he challenged the Delhi Takhat and its machinery of repression, fully aware that truth-telling in those times carried the risk of death. His abduction and murder in 1995 were intended to silence his voice, yet his shaheedi amplified the call for justice and preserved his name in the collective conscience of the Panth.

Kabaddi itself has always been more than a sport in Punjab. It is an expression of tyar-bar-tyar — the state of being ever-ready, physically and mentally — and resonates deeply with the Sikh martial ethos. It demands strength, agility, strategy, and collective coordination, echoing the Sikh ideal of Miri-Piri, where temporal skill serves spiritual and moral duty. The kabaddi field, like the akhara of the pahlwan, has been a training ground for discipline and honour, qualities revered in Sikh history.

Bhai Diljit Singh Bittu, in his writings on the Sikh sangarsh, recalls how wrestlers (pahlwans) in Punjab often admired the Khadku Singhs who fought in the armed struggle. This respect was not superficial — both worlds valued rigorous training, mastery over one’s body, and readiness to endure hardship for a higher purpose. In rural Punjab, kabaddi matches were sometimes dedicated to shaheeds, serving as both cultural celebration and political remembrance, reinforcing the idea that physical prowess must serve the cause of justice.

The Sikh concept of Patshahi — divine sovereignty bestowed upon the Khalsa — rejects subjugation (adheragi/gulaami) to worldly powers and calls for the creation of a Begampura-Halemi Raj, a fear-free and just society. Sport in this framework is not isolated from political and spiritual life. It is one dimension of kirat, dignified labour, and a means to build the physical and moral capabilities necessary for jujharoo (resistance) against oppression.

Shaheedi in Sikhi is the highest form of seva — selfless service. From Guru Arjan Sahib and Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib to the countless Singhs and Singhnias remembered in the Ardas — “jinhan Singh-Singhnian ne dharam het sis ditte” — the Sikh tradition has placed fearlessness at the heart of life. Kabaddi tournaments held in honour of shaheeds are part of this cultural continuum, affirming that the Panth remembers and draws strength from its martyrs.

In the diaspora, especially in places like Edmonton, these tournaments serve an even greater role. They become spaces where younger generations connect to their heritage, where stories of the sangarsh are retold alongside the cheers for a daring raid or an unyielding tackle. They embody the Sikh principle of sanjiwalta — dignified coexistence — by bringing the community together in joy and remembrance.

Tomorrow’s event is thus more than a match; it is a living gurmatta of the sangat, an affirmation that Sikh culture, history, and resistance are inseparable. Every point scored, every player cheered, and every moment of collective pride is a reminder that the struggle for truth and dignity continues — in courts, on the streets, and yes, even on the kabaddi field.

By dedicating the tournament to Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra, the Edmonton sangat asserts that shaheedi is not nostalgia but a guidepost for present and future action. It tells the next generation that strength must be guided by righteousness, that sport can carry memory, and that the Khalsa’s voice — Khalsa Jee Ke Bol Baalay — remains unyielding to injustice anywhere in the world.

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Jungfateh Singh is an organizer, writer and producer, and has worked on Sikh issues across the globe for over 15 years.

Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration, please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Balpreet Singh
July 10, 2025 | 3.5 min. Read | Analysis

The shooting outside Kap’s Café in Surrey early Thursday morning marks yet another chapter in an increasingly violent and unsettling pattern targeting prominent members of B.C.’s Punjabi community.

Not long after the incident, a Germany-based fugitive named Harjeet Singh “Laddi” allegedly posted a video online claiming responsibility for the shooting. Almost immediately, Indian media outlets labeled him a “Khalistani terrorist” affiliated with the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), citing a reward notice issued by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA). Yet notably, Laddi never mentioned BKI in his statements. Also, no Canadian law enforcement agency has identified any ideological motive behind the attack; only that a crime was committed.

This attack is not an isolated event. Over the past 18 months, a disturbing series of shootings have targeted prominent Punjabi celebrities in British Columbia.

In November 2023, multiple rounds were fired at the White Rock home of singer-actor Gippy Grewal. In April 2024, AP Dhillon’s North Vancouver property was the site of a drive-by shooting. In June of this year, bullets struck a trucking business tied to rapper Karan Aujla in Surrey. And now, the incident involving comedian Kapil Sharma’s café continues this wave of intimidation.

What all these cases share is a common thread of extortion. The India-based Lawrence Bishnoi syndicate has been repeatedly linked to these attacks. Delhi Police claimed the Gippy Grewal shooting was a warning issued by Bishnoi’s network. Bishnoi’s close associate, Goldy Brar, admitted the AP Dhillon hit was “purely for extortion.” Local law enforcement in Canada has investigated the Karan Aujla shooting for similar motives. Following these events, B.C. Premier David Eby formally requested that Ottawa designate the Bishnoi syndicate as a terrorist organization.

Investigators in both India and Canada say the mechanics of these extortion schemes begin inside India, where jail authorities allow gang leaders like Bishnoi to orchestrate threats and attacks from behind bars. Funds move through hawala networks and cryptocurrency, eventually landing in the hands of local shooters in Canada.

However, the implications of this network go beyond organized crime. Canada’s National Security Adviser Nathalie Drouin has testified before parliamentarians that India collected intelligence on Sikhs in Canada through diplomatic channels and proxies, then passed it to Indian authorities who worked with the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. The links and collusion between the Government of India and criminal gangs are no longer a secret.

The January 2025 report from Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission confirmed that India is among the countries actively attempting to sway Canadian politics and intimidate diaspora communities through disinformation and covert operations. Public hearings revealed allegations that Indian intelligence has leveraged criminal gangs to foment chaos in Canada, creating the illusion of lawlessness and extremism in Sikh spaces.

When all the pieces are put together, a troubling picture emerges. Whether the attackers claim allegiance to the Bishnoi gang or are labeled “Khalistani extremists” by Indian officials, the tactics are largely the same: threats, extortion, and targeted violence aimed at prominent Punjabi figures in Canada. The result is a narrative tug-of-war. New Delhi baselessly frames the violence as evidence of growing “Khalistani extremism”, while those in Canada, including security and intelligence, see it as a coordinated campaign of criminal activity, potentially enabled or exploited by the Indian state as part of a larger transnational repression campaign.

According to WSO President Danish Singh, “This wave of violence has its roots in Indian gang networks, and it is now abundantly clear that these gangs have ties to the Government of India. The goal is to create chaos in Canada and smear the Sikh community. The disinformation and propaganda being pushed by Indian media following the Kapil Sharma café shooting, including efforts to falsely link it to Khalistan and portray it as ‘Sikh extremism’, is a deliberate attempt to distort reality and damage our community’s reputation.”

The WSO and other Sikh bodies have long warned that India must be held accountable for its campaign of violence, foreign interference, and transnational repression. Canada, for its part, must respond forcefully. This includes designating the Lawrence Bishnoi network as a terrorist entity, identifying and sanctioning Indian government officials involved in directing or colluding with these attacks, and launching a full public inquiry into how Indian state actors are working with criminal syndicates to destabilize Canadian communities.

For Canada, the stakes are high.

British Columbia’s call to list the Bishnoi network as a terrorist organization is a direct response to growing fears of public safety, yet Ottawa must tread carefully amid diplomatic tensions with India. At the same time, it must act decisively to protect the safety of Canadians, especially those in communities under threat.

The shooting at Kap’s Café should not be viewed in isolation, nor should Harjit Laddi be painted solely with the ideological brush chosen by Indian security services. From the shooting at Gippy Grewal’s home to the firing at Karan Aujla’s property, the pattern is clear: profit-driven - all as India-rooted gang crime with links to the Government of India thrives in a cloud of political fog.

Clearing that fog now falls to Canadian law enforcement and policymakers. The safety of Canadian streets and the protection of its communities depend on it.

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Balpreet Singh hails from Toronto, Canada, and is the spokesperson and legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada.

Baaz is home to opinions, analysis, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Balpreet Singh
June 26, 2025 | 4 min. read | Analysis

On June 21, the National Post published an opinion piece by Ujjal Dosanjh and Joe Adam George titled “Canada has put up with Khalistani terrorists for long enough.” The piece contains several serious factual errors, relies on discredited sources, and repeats disinformation narratives that have been long promoted by the Government of India. In doing so, it does not merely offer an opinion; it endangers members of Canada’s Sikh community at a time when they are already facing rising threats, surveillance, and harassment.

Ujjal Dosanjh has become a consistent and prominent conduit for Indian state disinformation.

Over the years, he has repeatedly attempted to promote the narrative that Sikh extremism is on the rise in Canada, despite a lack of credible evidence. Rather than upholding the responsibilities associated with his former roles as premier of British Columbia and a federal cabinet minister, Dosanjh now functions more as a spokesperson for the Government of India, echoing its propaganda and advancing disinformation campaigns aimed at discrediting and marginalizing Canadian Sikhs.

Among the most reckless claims made in the article is the assertion that Peel Regional Police dismantled a major “narco-terrorism” network in the Greater Toronto Area linked to Khalistan sympathizers, with proceeds from drug trafficking allegedly funding protests, referendums, and the acquisition of weapons.

This claim is categorically false.

In direct response to an inquiry, Peel Regional Police confirmed there is absolutely no evidence linking any aspect of the Project Pelican investigation to anti-India activities or the Khalistan movement.

They further clarified that the term “narco-terrorism” would not be an accurate representation of the investigation, which involved dismantling a drug trafficking ring operating through commercial trucking and did not uncover any violent acts or ideological motivation. No credible Canadian media outlet has ever linked Project Pelican to Khalistan. These narratives appear only in Indian state-aligned media, which Canadian government officials have repeatedly warned are used as tools of foreign disinformation.

India ranks 151st out of 180 countries on the 2025 World Press Freedom Index and has a documented record of exporting propaganda through its national media. Canada’s own Global Affairs officials testified to the Foreign Interference Commission in October 2024 that India has a “formidable capacity” to conduct disinformation campaigns using its state media to target Sikh Canadians. These campaigns are not hypothetical. They are active, deliberate, and increasingly bold.

The article goes on to falsely claim that CSIS testified about Khalistani elements in Canada receiving covert support from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This is simply untrue. The cited hearing, held on September 27, 2024, contained no such testimony. The ISI was not mentioned at all.

The statement is a complete lie.

The authors also reference the 2023 UK Bloom Review as evidence of dangerous pro-Khalistan activity. What they fail to mention is that this section of the Bloom Review was widely rejected across the United Kingdom by Sikh organizations and legal experts alike.

The Sikh Federation UK described it as a “hatchet job” on Sikh institutions that stand up for human rights and speak out against Indian government abuses. The Sikhs in Law Association concluded that the review was flawed in both methodology and conclusions, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the Sikh community and rendering it unsafe and unreliable for use by any government department. Omitting this widespread condemnation while citing the review as credible misleads readers and distorts the public conversation.

Perhaps most egregiously, the article attempts to link the Khalistan movement to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Lashkar-e-Taiba, relying on reporting from Indian media and the Eurasian Times, an outlet that has been flagged as unreliable and is widely known for publishing India-aligned disinformation. Presenting these sources as credible, without any independent corroboration from Canadian or international outlets, falls far below the standards expected of responsible journalism.

These repeated falsehoods are not simply careless errors. They are components of a larger pattern in which Indian authorities and their proxies abroad attempt to delegitimize Sikh political advocacy by branding it as extremist or criminal.

Investigations by CBC, The Washington Post, Press Progress, , and Canada’s own Foreign Interference Commission have shown how Indian intelligence services manufacture and export narratives that cast Sikh political demands, particularly calls for an independent Sikh state, as threats to national security or as links to criminality. That these narratives appeared verbatim in a national Canadian newspaper without scrutiny or challenge is deeply alarming.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada has formally written to the National Post to highlight the numerous factual errors in the Dosanjh and George article and to request a correction or retraction. That was on Monday. As of this writing, the National Post has failed to respond.

This silence is troubling.

It suggests that the publication is content to serve as a platform for Indian state propaganda, regardless of how such falsehoods may endanger Canadian communities or distort public discourse. In choosing not to correct the record, the National Post undermines its own credibility and contributes to the spread of disinformation within our democracy.

This is not a debate about ideology or geopolitics. It is about facts, accuracy, and the duty of Canadian media to protect the public from foreign interference and targeted hate. The Sikh community in Canada has been repeatedly targeted by threats and disinformation campaigns. Publishing inflammatory falsehoods about Sikhs, disguised as opinion, contributes directly to that climate of hostility.

The National Post has a responsibility not only to its readers, but to Canadian democracy. It must correct the record and ensure that its platform is not used to spread propaganda that puts Canadian lives at risk.

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Balpreet Singh hails from Toronto, Canada, and is the spokesperson and legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada.

Baaz is home to opinions, analysis, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jaskaran Sandhu
June 6, 2025 | 5 min. read | Opinion

Today, on June 6, the anniversary of the 1984 Indian Army invasion of the Sri Darbar Sahib Complex, the Canadian government has invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the upcoming G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta.

For Sikhs across Canada, this is not just a tone-deaf decision. It is a horrendous betrayal.

The same Modi government that stands accused of orchestrating the assassination of Canadian citizens on Canadian soil, including the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Gurdwara property in Surrey, is now being welcomed by Prime Minister Mark Carney with open arms.

The RCMP have confirmed there is clear and compelling evidence of Indian government involvement in transnational repression in Canada. That includes India’s use of organized criminal gangs, such as the notorious Bishnoi network, to carry out arsons, homicides, and shootings against Sikh Canadians.

This isn’t speculation. This is the official position of Canadian law enforcement. And it doesn’t stop there.

The Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference confirmed that India is the second most active foreign actor undermining Canadian institutions, only behind China. India’s actions aren’t just offensive; they are strategic, illegal, and destabilizing.

One of the principal architects of this Indian Government-Criminal Gang nexus is Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man and India’s Home Minister. He’s been linked by our officials to the very networks executing reckless criminal activities on our streets to kill Canadians.

And what’s India’s response? Denial. Stonewalling. Obstruction. Disinformation.

They have refused to cooperate in various investigations, refused to waive diplomatic immunity for implicated officials, and refused to acknowledge the findings presented by our intelligence agencies.

And yet, here we are, preparing red carpets and photo ops at a mountain retreat.

Some are calling this diplomatic chess. But what exactly is the strategy here? There is no appeasing Modi. This is a leader who has openly stated that India will go abroad and eliminate its enemies - no due process, no regard for sovereignty, no care for the rule of law.

What Modi wants from Canada is not dialogue. He wants submission. He wants this country to suspend Charter-protected rights for Sikh Canadians. He wants to rob Sikhs of their ability to advocate for issues important to them. If this is chess, we’ve already sacrificed our pawns, our principles, and our position. For what? An empty handshake in front of the Rockies?

Others argue that India is a democracy and belongs at the G7 table. Let’s put that to rest, too.

Equating Canada’s democratic values with India’s is a dangerous false equivalence. Minister Anita Anand referred to both as “mature democracies.” Modi called them both “vibrant.” But only one of these countries routinely silences the media, criminalizes dissent, and stokes communal mob violence for political gain - and it’s not Canada.

India is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. The V-Dem Institute has classified India as an “electoral autocracy” and one of the fastest-declining democracies globally.

Reporters Without Borders ranks India 151 out of 180 countries for press freedom, placing it in the same company as Russia.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International repeatedly cite India for grave human rights violations, particularly against its minority populations.

We are not the same. Stop pretending we have invited a fellow liberal democracy to the G7. We’ve invited a regime accused of cross-border murder, foreign interference, and authoritarian repression. We’ve invited a government that treats Canadian sovereignty as optional and Canadian lives as expendable.

Carney’s invitation also reverses the principled stance taken by the previous Canadian government. Now, barely two years after Canada said its values are not for sale, Carney is sending the opposite message - that it’s business as usual, that trade trumps justice, and that Sikhs in Canada will have to live with it.

We would never extend this invitation to leaders from Russia, Iran, or China if they were found to be orchestrating political assassinations in Vancouver or Mississauga. However, for some reason, when it comes to India, the rules change. We’re told we have to “balance our interests” or that India’s market is too valuable to risk.

That’s a morally bankrupt line of thinking.

We cannot claim to be defenders of international human rights while welcoming those who violate them. No amount of vague diplomatic “engagement” can excuse what has already happened.

For the Sikh community in Canada, the message is chilling. You don’t matter. You’re expendable. Your rights are negotiable.

We hope Sikh Members of Parliament and all those who claim to stand for justice will not remain silent. This is not just about foreign policy. It’s about who we are as a country. It’s about whether our principles are fundamental or rhetorical. It is about whether Sikh Canadians are Canadians.

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Jaskaran Sandhu hails from Brampton, Canada, and is the co-founder of Baaz. He is a Strategist at the public affairs and relations agency State Strategy and a lawyer. Jaskaran also previously served as Executive Director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada and as a Senior Advisor to Brampton’s Office of the Mayor. You can find Jaskaran on Twitter at @JaskaranSandhu_

Baaz is home to opinions, analysis, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.

Jasveer Singh

May 23, 2025 | 3.5 min. read | Opinion

Amid a 2023 global assassination campaign targeting Khalistan figures in the diaspora, UK activist Avtar Singh Khanda was one of three shocking and sudden deaths.

In the USA and Canada, that murder spree led to arrests and trials of Indian nationalists operating within the Indian Intelligence-Organized Crime nexus.

In the UK, however, no action was taken.

This month, after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced an UK-India trade deal, we now likely know why no action has been taken against India.

It should not go unnoticed either, that the trade agreement announcement came a day before India launched an assault on Pakistan, escalating tensions in the region post-Pahalgam. India leaning on its trade partner benefits to get away with violence is nothing new, and was even central to UK involvement in India’s 1984 Sikh genocide.

The “landmark” trade deal announced on May 6, 2025, had been in works since Brexit in 2015. Now, under this Labour Government, agreements on imports, exports, and immigration were finally signed, for all to celebrate.

All, except for some rightfully concerned British Sikhs.

For decades, Sikh calls against Indian State interference in the UK have been ignored. According to the Washington Post, around 2015 the UK government even disregarded its own intelligence, complaining that India was carrying out “harassment” of Sikhs, particularly in Khanda’s home city of Birmingham.

Perhaps there was once a consensus among Western states to ignore India's bad extrajudicial habits abroad in order to access its markets and gain influence in the region. However, this ended in 2023 September when then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke on links between India and the assassination of Shaheed Bhai Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Shortly after, US President Joe Biden’s administration also raised the case, before confirming a similar attempt on the life of New York activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

The call-outs of India seemed coordinated and in response to coordinated attempts on Sikh lives. The assassination of Pakistan based Sikh activist Parmjit Singh Panjwar, in addition to the above, all happened within a few short weeks between May-June 2023.

Sandwiched in between all that, Khanda died of suspected poisoning, having suddenly gone from optimal health to on his death bed within days, in a case compared to Russia’s infamous Litvinenko assassination.

The Khanda death should have triggered the moment the UK finally publicly denounced Indian interference, just as the Nijjar assassination in Canada and the foiled plot to kill Pannun in the USA were for those respective nations. Just like the targets in those two countries, Khanda was also publicly demonised in Indian media and law in the lead up to his death. Yet, instead of marking a turn in approach to foreign interference, it seems to have underlined that the UK is now, in some ways, subservient to its once-colony of India, desperate for trade relations post-Brexit.

Many commentators have suggested the trade deal is proof of that too, with a strong belief India benefits much more from it. Nevertheless, despite celebrations around these new agreements, the Modi regime has arguably placed targeting UK-based Khalistanis above even a trade deal.

From Modi’s first engagements with the UK in 2015, he has been fabricating allegations about “Khalistani terror” in the UK. Claims he handed over a “dossier” on the topic to then UK PM David Cameron were quickly debunked.

Still, the pressure from Modi’s government on the UK has seen agreements to “tackle pro-Khalistan extremism” come about quicker than this trade deal did, with the random figure of £95,000 pledged by the UK to do so in 2023.

That agreement came after various government figures issued baseless statements on the so-called threat of Khalistanis in the UK. From two PMs (Rishi Sunak 2023, Boris Johnson 2022) to the Police Chief of Avtar Singh Khanda’s home city (Matt Ward 2021), regular bizarre allegations of a Khalistani threat to the UK have been raised by government figures. These claims ignore the research of CREST (Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats), which released a 2017 report on “Sikh radicalisation” which found no threat was posed to the UK public.

If the baseless claims were not a sign of India influencing the UK, the direct targeting of Sikh activists surely was.

India’s arbitrary imprisonment of Jagtar Singh Johal in 2017 was found to have been supported by UK intelligence. Less than a year later in 2018, a series of raids on Sikh activists saw personal info of those involved leaked to Indian media, which also bragged the raids came from Modi’s “diplomatic pressure”. Then in 2020 the #WestMidlands3 case saw Sikh activists targeted for extradition by India in a case found to be devoid of evidence, leading to it being thrown out by UK courts.

So this prompts the question after the trade deal, will the UK need to become even more extreme in its targeting of Sikh activism to appease India?

It could be speculated that the migration agreements could be used against India. Nothing would turn the Indian diaspora against Modi more than the thought of being forced back home, losing the opportunity to build a better life in the West. That kind of public pressure on Modi to comply with Western interests may yield results. As such, should a power shift now occur, it is not far-fetched to think the UK Labour government may be able to finally bring Jagtar Singh Johal home, now that a deal has been agreed. Sikh pressure on Labour is building.

There is no guarantee the dynamics between India-UK changes though. Many believe the new trade deal will only enhance India’s dominance in the relationship, especially given groups with deep links to Modi are in line to benefit from it.

What is clear though, is that justice for Bhai Avtar Singh Khanda will not come via the British government, although groups are still pursuing legal action. And that is because the Labour government’s Prime Minister Starmer is doing just what his Conservative predecessors did; putting trade deals with India above Sikh lives.

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Jasveer Singh hails from Southall, UK, and is the Senior Press Officer of The Sikh Press Association, a position he has held since 2015. In this role, Jasveer works across all sectors of media supporting Sikh organisations and individuals on Panthic endeavours. Jasveer previously worked as a freelance journalist which included stints with Sky News, Super Fight League, and more. You can find Jasveer on Twitter at @Jazzthejourno.

Baaz is home to opinions, analysis, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.