In October 2024, after negotiations with the United States, the Modi government agreed to cut ties with Yadav, who is currently at large and wanted by the FBI. India, which has never admitted guilt in the killing, has portrayed Yadav as an independent actor, but a source close to Indian intelligence told me that RAW The officer privately called the denials “total bullshit.” Another called the plot a “botched operation.” Court filings for Gupta’s trial indicate that U.S. prosecutors will argue that India was directly involved in the attempted assassination of Pannun and that he was just one of several targets in a plan to assassinate political activists in Canada, California and New York. These people, fearing for their lives in India, had immigrated to North America decades ago and continued to advocate for an independent Sikh state.
Minutes after Nijjar was shot, his son Balraj received a distress call from a family friend and ran towards the gurdwara, sprinting through a crowd that already numbered around two hundred people. “They were pulling on my clothes, my arms while I was running,” he told me. In the center of the crowd, already cordoned off with police tape, was Nijjar’s blood-stained van. “As soon as I saw him, I knew he was dead,” Balraj told me. “His last breath was for Khalistan, no matter how many thousands of kilometers he was from home. »
The idea of a Sikh homeland arose almost a century ago, as colonial Britain lost its grip on its South Asian territories. The region began to divide along religious lines, and Sikh leaders, recognizing that their community was much smaller than that of Muslims and Hindus, argued for their own sovereign state. The idea never came to fruition. In 1947, British India was divided into a Muslim-majority Pakistan and a Hindu-majority India. As vast migration flowed from one place to another, depraved and indiscriminate religious violence ensued, affecting Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs alike. The province of Punjab, where most of the Sikhs in British India lived, was divided into two.
Sikhs currently make up less than 2% of India’s population. Since Partition, however, advocacy for an independent state has grown, financed in part by wealthy members of the diaspora and fueled by a pattern of discrimination by the Indian government. The most striking example occurred in 1984, after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two of her own bodyguards, who were Sikhs; the ruling Indian National Congress helped organize a retaliatory wave of mob violence that killed thousands of Sikhs. Subsequently, the state began disappearing members of the community. Such brutality only encouraged resistance. Although Sikhism is built around the principles of unity and divine love, a small group of activists waged a long campaign of violence. Before September 11, 2001, Sikh separatists held a grim record for the deadliest act of aviation terrorism in history: in 1985, all three hundred and twenty-nine people aboard Air India Flight 182, a passenger flight from Toronto to Delhi, were killed when a bomb in the cargo hold brought the plane down off the coast of Ireland.
The cycle of violence and discrimination has only intensified since Modi came to power in 2014. As leader of the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party, he has led a ruthless Hindu nationalist campaign that vilifies and attacks religious minorities. For a party that believes Hindus have the predominant right to govern India, the Sikh separatist cause is a deep affront, especially when calls for independence are being made by Canada and the United States. According to the source close to Indian intelligence, a senior official RAW officials have a “skewed worldview” that “it’s all a conspiracy, that the West is out to get India,” and this paranoia has played a big role in recent assassination plots.
The Indian government considers Pannun’s law offices a hotbed of terror, a base from which he directs “gangsters and youths from Punjab” to undermine India’s “sovereignty, integrity and security.” The offices are located in a large corporate center, decorated with gaudy contemporary sculptures and gently flowing water features, in East Elmhurst, Queens. The interior evokes the detritus of a small business in stasis: Post-its stuck to the walls, stacks of paper stacked haphazardly, a mini-fridge stocked with forgotten lunches.
On a recent visit, I was led through a series of corridors and searched by two imposing guards. The main entrance remains locked, the lights in the waiting room turned off. Pannun, who met me in a small conference room, was dressed conservatively. “Since 2023, I only wear black,” he said. “I will only change this once we liberate Punjab.” He grew up in a village outside the city of Amritsar, home to Sikhism’s holiest site, the Golden Temple. In 1984, Indian military forces invaded the gurdwara to capture Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh militant who was hiding there. In this raid, known as Operation Blue Star, the army opened fire on Bhindranwale’s supporters and civilians. Government documents put the death toll at a few hundred people, but independent reports suggest the figure exceeds four thousand. (It was this unilateral attack, sanctioned by Gandhi, that led to his assassination.) Pannun was then seventeen years old. “We could see the helicopters bombing, the shooting,” he said. “There was blood everywhere.” Fearing that the massacre would spark an insurrection, the government mounted a campaign called Operation Woodrose, during which thousands of young Sikhs living in rural areas were arrested and interrogated. “These were people I grew up with,” Pannun said. “I haven’t seen them since.” A young man he knew was tortured so badly that his back was broken.
