Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is a co-founder of Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), a terrorist group banned by India. Yet the United States protects Pannun like one of its own. There is a mountain of evidence of Pannun’s crimes: murder of Indians on US soil, incitement of violence against Indian diplomats in the US and Canada, arson attacks against Indian gurdwaras and diplomatic missions, and threats to bomb Air India and Parliament. Instead of prosecuting Pannun, an American citizen, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has targeted an Indian businessman Nikhil Gupta on charges of “murder-for-hire”. The supposed victim of the alleged plot: Pannun.
The evidence is thin and relies largely on phone intercepts of Gupta acting on behalf of an Indian government agent (codenamed CC-1) to assassinate Pannun. Gupta was detained by Czech and US agents at Prague airport and forcibly taken into custody.
This happened on June 30, 2023. Six months later Gupta remains in a Czech prison but under US jurisdiction. His kin last week filed a habeas corpus petition in the Supreme Court to seek Gupta’s release from “illegal detention” in the Czech Republic.
Meanwhile, a group of five influential US lawmakers of Indian origin have been briefed by US authorities on the outlines of the case. The lawmakers last week issued a joint statement noting the seriousness of the accusations.
Analysts in both India and the US have concluded that the India-US strategic partnership is now under its greatest strain since President Bill Clinton imposed harsh sanctions on India following the Pokhran-2 nuclear test in May 1998.
They are wrong. Washington has no intention of weakening India-US ties. It still needs India to counter China in the Indo-Pacific. But there are caveats.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has carved out an independent foreign policy that challenges US hegemonic interests. There are certain premeditated rules India has violated. For example, America and its Anglophone allies can kill anyone, anywhere, at will. India and others can’t.
Three Indian policies have especially upset the US. One, India’s continued dalliance with Russia following the Ukraine war. Two, India’s leadership of the Global South that has diluted Western sanctions on Russia. Three, rapid indigenisation of military hardware that in the long term will greatly reduce New Delhi’s dependence on US weaponry.
Since WW2, the US has been paranoid about losing its status as a global hegemon. It targeted the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites as America’s principal threat through the 40-year Cold War. After the Soviet collapse in 1990 it ignored China’s threat. China’s economy and military were a fraction of the US. But by 2010 China had emerged as an incipient rival. By 2020 it represented a geopolitical and geo-economic threat to the US-led world order that was far more serious than the Soviet Union.
Enter India. Till 2000, the US treated India with benign indifference. Since 1947 it had tilted towards Pakistan, most infamously during the 1971 Bangladesh war. But after China’s rise became apparent, the Bush administration made the 2005 India-US civil nuclear deal the beginning of a new strategic partnership that secured US national interests in the Indo-Pacific.
India was to be patronised for being an obedient ally, serving the West’s overarching interests. There was one problem though. India, on the cusp of becoming the world’s third-largest economy by 2029, didn’t quite see matters that way. It increasingly looked at the world through its own prism, not through the West’s.
History matters
India and the US come from different sides of history. The US built its wealth and power on two historical atrocities: the transatlantic slave trade and the occupation of native peoples’ land. This gave the US through its foundational years in the 18th and 19th centuries the momentum to create an industrial society. But warts remained.
Until 1965, when the Civil Rights Act was passed under pressure from Martin Luther King, black Americans were not allowed into restaurants in several southern US states. Their children couldn’t study in white schools. The Ku Klux Klan lynched blacks at will.
After WW2 the US has waged more wars, invaded more sovereign nations and assassinated more people on foreign soil than any other country in modern history.
Given this background, the US is sensitive to any changes in the balance of global power. It successfully ended the Soviet threat. It is working hard to neutralise the Chinese threat.
But India? Farsighted US policymakers know that India will in a decade not only be the world’s third-largest economy but the largest consumer market with the largest internet audience and the largest pool of software engineers adept in artificial intelligence (AI). It’s imperative for the longevity of America’s hegemonic status that India does not emerge as an independent-minded, intransigent global power in the next 10 years as China has done in the last 10.
There is a further complication with India. It has the moral high ground. Its rise has not depended on transatlantic slavery (America), colonialism (Britain) or genocide (China).
When India emerges as a leading global military and economic power, it will be the first to have done so without extraterritorial blood on its hands.
The Pannun case is a warning shot across India’s bow: India’s rise is good for the world but it should be on the West’s terms. The alleged assassination attempt on Pannun, the proscribed terrorist who remains a US protectee, is part of the warning.
India must call America’s bluff.
The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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