Indian Police are investigating a video that shows Canadian national 'Mo' Dhaliwal linking the farmers’ protests with radical Sikh separatist politics.
Manmendar 'Mo' Dhaliwal, a Canadian national, is the founder and director of strategy at a Vancouver-based digital branding creative agency called Skyrocket. Dhaliwal has political ambitions in Canada and has played the diaspora identity politics- which essentially involves vilification of the country of origin to garner political mileage and stature. Like other Sikh political leaders before him, Dhaliwal has based his politics on flogging the ghost of long-dead issues from the sub-continent and 'happenings in India' as his political platform rather than raise any meaningful Canadian issues.
The latest Indian matter that has been made an issue in Canada has been the protest by some farmers' unions in India against the reforms being introduced in the Indian market that are similar to the reforms undertaken in Canada 20 years ago, which resulted in the breaking of the monopoly enjoyed by the Canadian Wheat Board. Canada has demanded that India reform its domestic agricultural markets to allow Canadian farmers better access to the lucrative Indian markets.
Several Canadian leaders have sought to gain political mileage from what is an emotive issue for some Canadians who have immigrated from Punjab but continue to own land in India. In India, farmers do not pay income tax, and Indian and Canadian authorities suspect that Canadian immigrants transfer undeclared incomes from Canada to India and report it as agricultural income in India to avoid taxes.
The Indian government has invited the protesting farmers for talks. It has also expressed concerns that the movement is being used to fan sectarian and subversive narrative, including Khalistani demands, resulting in the threat of violence.
Dhaliwal is the founder of an opaque activist group- 'Poetic Justice', which has been accused by Indian authorities, along with other subversive groups like the XR or ‘Existential Rebellion,’ FFF — 'Fridays for Future' and Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA), of plotting against the Indian state and of inciting sectarian hate, spreading false propaganda and encouraging violence in India. The funding of these organizations remains opaque, it being suspected that they receive funds from states like Pakistan, which sponsor terrorist activities. Indian police have expressed suspicion that Pakistani-funded organizations are trying to “fish in these troubled waters.”
Another Canada-based organization, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), had also planned to hold a worldwide Sikh referendum in 2020 to decide if they want the creation of a Khalistani nation or not. The Canadian government had, however, declared that it would not recognize such a referendum. Gurpatwant Singh Pannu is the prime mover of SFJ in Canada. Both the SFJ and Pannu are designated as terrorists in India.
Indian police have instituted a case against these organizations for planning large-scale disruptive activities, damage to government and private properties, and disrupting supplies and essential services to the Indian capital, New Delhi, on 26 January. In the rioting and violence, more than 85 police personnel were seriously injured.
In the past, Dhaliwal’s organization has worked closely with National Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh, another Canadian who has made a political career out of exploiting the imagined angst of the diaspora and has been reluctant to denounce acts of pro-Khalistan Sikh terrorism that resulted in deaths of Canadian citizens.
Dhaliwal has also jumped onto the Khalistan bandwagon and proudly calls himself a Khalistani. On 17 September 2020, Dhaliwal, while criticizing a report from the well-known centrist Canadian think-tank MLI, wrote that he is a Khalistani, proclaiming that Khalistan is a living, breathing movement. Khalistan movement was a Pakistan-supported terrorist campaign directed at carving a Sikh theocratic state in India. In the 1980s and 90s, thousands of people were killed by Khalistani terrorists before the police forces in the Indian state of Punjab defeated the terrorists, and the remaining few escaped to Pakistan.
Khalistan movement is recognized as a terrorist movement, and Canada has declared several Khalistani organizations as 'terrorist entities.' Canada has also assured India that it would not allow its soil to be used against India.
In practice, however, actors like Dhaliwal and Jagmeet Singh exploit the freedom of expression privileges in Canada to glorify Khalistan and the terrorists and murderers associated with the movement.
On 3 June 2020, Dhaliwal had uploaded a picture of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a terrorist leader who was like an Indian Osama Bin Laden, and oversaw the killing of thousands of innocent people in the Indian province of Punjab, on his Facebook page and had written - “Freedom from slavery is achieved only when a person starts to feel and understand that he would prefer death to life as a slave.”
In October last year, Dhaliwal was a panelist for a webinar named ‘Khalistan, a conversation on trauma, racism, and sovereignty,’ which was organized by the Poetic Justice. The programme involved a discussion on the Sikh separatist movement.
On 26 January 2021, which India celebrates as its Republic Day, during a protest organized in support of Khalistan that sought to disrupt the functioning of the Indian Consulate in Vancouver, Dhaliwal had made a statement that has been captured in a video. Dhaliwal says: "If the farm bills get repealed tomorrow, that is not a victory. This battle begins with the repeal of the farm bills, it does not end there. Let no one tell you that this battle is going to end with the repeal of the farm bill. That is because they are trying to drain energy from this movement. They are trying to tell you that you are separate from Punjab and you are separate from the Khalistan movement. You are not."
Indian police have accused Dhaliwal of being a separatist, as the video of him openly propagating the cause shows. Indian authorities have maintained that organizations like the Poetic Justice are pushing the Khalistani agenda in the garb of farmers’ protests. The Indian government has reportedly asked the Canadian government to assist with investigating Dhaliwal and Poetic Justice and arrest and extradite him to India to face the charges.
Dhaliwal is now reported to be in hiding and has made emotive appeals that he is being targeted by the Indian government. As a terrorist, he should be captured and extradited for trying to wage war against a friendly country.