MEA Condemns Anti-India Activities Ahead of Khalistan Referendum in Canada
By Anjali Sharma
WASHINGTON – The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday condemned so-called ‘Khalistan referendum’ planned in Canada by the banned radical outfit Sikhs for Justice is planning to hold a so-called Khalistan referendum in Canada’s Edmonton on October 18.
MEA has reiterated that New Delhi strongly condemns all anti-India activities.
“We strongly condemn all anti-India activities,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said during the bi-weekly media briefing in New Delhi while responded to a question about the Khalistani event planned in Canada media reported.
The reports mentioned about terrorist and SFJ founder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun’s announcement to form a Khalistan Army and Sikh Homeland Security force.
It stated that videos showing Sikh men training with semi-automatic rifles on Canadian soil were deeply alarming, adding that this could have catastrophic consequences for the Sikh community itself.
Pannun in a video had called on diaspora Sikhs to participate in a so-called Khalistan “Referendum” in Indianapolis, the capital of the US state of Indiana.
He floated the idea of a “Sikh Homeland Security” force, or Khalistan Army, according to a report in ‘Khalsa Vox’.
“These are not abstract political arguments. They are calculated provocations aimed at restless young men already navigating the pressures of migration, identity, and easy money. The result is visible and ugly: a small minority of Sikh youth in the United States and Canada drifting into drugs, illegal guns, and gang life, damaging their own communities and the cities that host them,” media reported.
“Pannun’s messaging does not create every troubled youth, but it supplies a ready-made narrative that romanticizes defiance and externalizes every failure onto India. When a young man already exposed to street culture hears that the real war is against the Indian state and that arming or ‘securing’ the community is legitimate, the leap from online rhetoric to real weapons becomes shorter,” it stated.
