#pakistan diaspora

[desigoblinacademic]

So is it a canon event that every brown girl has her "i hate my culture phase" only to deeply fall in love with everything about it when she leaves her homeland?

[secular-jew]

Muslims know

[paulpingminho]

[usertoxicyaoi]

also! a very good desi gl movie that hit the bollywood mainstream that i would reeeeally rec is ek ladki ko dekha toh aisa laga (2019) available on netflix!

The Absence of India in Discussions on Queer Asian Media

So, yesterday @lurkingshan tagged me in an ask she got from @impala124 about the absence of India when we're talking about queer Asian media. I was intially just going to reblog it with my thought, but as it kept growing I figured it'd be best to just make my own post. Please read the ask linked above first so this makes sense.

*cracks knuckles* this is going to be the most fun I've had writing a post in ages. (For a little background, I'm a queer Indian, born and raised)

So, this is a very interesting question on a subject I've been rotating in my head for the past several months. There's a lot of different variables that contribute to the noticeable lack of discussion on Indian and South Asian queer media in general, so I'm just going to talk through the ones I've noticed a little randomly.

Talking about Asian media in general, it's well known that the mass popularity of kpop and anime has contributed massively to the increase in popularity of Asian media. If you've been in the Asian media fandom for any amount of time at all, you'll have noticed that media from Korea, Japan, and China gets by far the most attention from international audiences; all East Asian countries. There may be several reasons for this, but in particular, it's no secret that the fetishization of East Asians is a massive proponent in the popularity of media from these countries, while there's no such interest in South Asians. If we shift our focus to queer media specifically, media from these three countries is still extremely popular, with the addition of Thailand and the Philippines to some extent; both South East Asian countries. From what I've seen, there's very little international interest in media from South Asian countries (although, if we're talking about India specifically, I can't exactly say anything. Bollywood has not been good lately). If we talk about queer South Asian media, the scope of interest falls even further. If you'll notice, MyDramaList, one of the most commonly used websites for finding and tracking Asian shows only allows for East and South-East Asian shows. So, that's one reason—there's just not much international interest in Indian media in general. As Shan said in the initial post, it's partially because of a difference in priorities. Korea is notorious for using media to gain global standing, the role of the 'soft power' of Thai bls in the recent bills for equal marriage in Thailand has been widely discussed, the list goes on. Could racism also play a part in the massive gulf of interest in media from East Asian versus South Asian countries? Probably. But I'm not going to get into that too much.

Moving on, there's obviously a massive lack of queer media in India. I think this is greatly exacerbated by the fact that it's very hard to support the people making queer media beyond buying and/or streaming their work. The majority of people engaging with Indian queer media are queer Indians, and a lot of us have to do so in secret because of the society we live in. This means that creators that have to push through several obstacles to publish their work often receive little incentive to continue doing so because of the lack of engagement. Because of the lack of media, international fans are less likely to become interested in queer Indian media, and the cycle continues.

I will say though, contrary to what Shan said, I think Indian media, particularly anything that came out post 2019 might actually be on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to access. This may simply be bias, so forgive me if I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen, a lot of queer Indian shows are in fact available on streaming sites, and at most you'd need a vpn to access them. I think the two main things that actually hold back queer Indian media from becoming more popular are a lack of noise and it's relatively lower quality.

The main way we find out about new shows in this space is through either word of mouth (well actually, post) or because we follow production houses known for producing media. Because of the sparse nature of both the media and the consumers, there's very few people who learn enough about the media to want to give it a shot. For example, there's a film on netflix called Badhaai Do (hindi for Congratulate Us) that I've been meaning to watch for a while. It centers around a lavender marriage and I've heard a lot of good things about it, so I was slightly surprised to see that most of the people on tumblr I interact with who have been engaging with queer media for far longer than me had never heard of it. There's also a, Indian BL from 2017 called Romil and Jugal that I've written about before here, and I would've never learned of it's existence if not for a friend hearing about it from another friend of hers.

Because there's so little queer indian media, it's natural that the quality leaves much to be desired. The main issue is, because the queer asian media market has become so saturated lately people are becoming a lot more selective with what they watch, and for good reason. This means that queer media from india is simply unable to grow and improve over time, leaving it stagnant. Back in 2016-2018, the overall dearth of queer media from Asia meant that a lot of people were willing to watch shows that were average or even worse. Thailand particularly seems to have benefitted from this, being able to grow and evolve its queer media due to the successes of shows like SOTUS, 2gehter, TharnType and more even recently, KinnPorsche. Queer Indian media will have a much, much harder time with this because of all of the factors I've talked about and more, meaning that it is much harder for queer media to evolve. Honestly, though I haven't been able to watch/read much queer media from India, the stuff I have seen is really quite decent, it's just that it tends to fail in comparison to some of the brilliant stuff we're seeing from other countries. A while a ago, I bought four queer books by Indian authors, and of the three I've read so far, I'd genuinely recommend two, albeit one with quite a few reservations (I'll be writing about them sometime in the future, just haven't found the time yet). While talking about this with @neuroticbookworm, she brought up the excellent point of how Indian media in general has just been of fairly poor quality lately. It seems to me that a lot of it is catered to more conservative audiences, which results in people like me becoming disillusioned with Indian media and simply moving onto things from other countries. It has been a long time since I've watched anything worthwhile come out of Bollywood. So, it becomes even harder for queer Indian shows to be found at all; a majority of their target audience has already forsaken Indian media as a lost cause.

So, those are a bunch of reasons because of which there's not a lot of discussion about queer Indian media in fandom spaces like Tumblr. Something else I'd like to point out is, it's very hard for queer shows in India to gain much traction whatsoever. Live television slots are ruled by the infamous Indian serials, the majority of the audience being people in their late thirties and older, particularly women. And while homophobia is just as prevalent amongst the youth of India as it is amongst older generations, younger people are far more likely to be engaging with queer media, in India at least. This means that it would be near impossible for queer shows to air on live television the way they do in countries like Thailand and Japan. The majority of Indian youth use global streaming services to watch shows, hence the greater concentration of queer shows on service platforms. (Romil and Jugal is something of a dark horse here—I don't believe it was ever aired, but it was produced by a producer who has a few decently popular serials under her belt and is available on an Indian steaming service—another reason I'm determined to research how tf this show ever came into existence) If we talk of movies, the industry is limited by the iron fist of Bollywood, another reason it's very hard for queer movies to be produced and why they're generally found on streaming sites.

There's just not a lot of people who have the balls it would take to make a queer Indian show/movie and push it to the Indian public beyond a streaming service. I mean, we're all seeing what's happening with the Love in The Big City drama right now, and believe me, public backlash in India would be the same, if not much worse. And if no one in India is watching these shows, why would anyone in any other part of the world? There's barely any public figures that would be willing to participate in such a project, so queer media stays underground. Currently, Karan Johar is the most popular—and one of the only—out celebrities in Bollywood, and, well, he's treated as something of a laughing stock by the public. He has one or two queer adjacent shows under his belt as a producer, but once again, they're barely known and available only on Netflix. There was a movie called Dostana in which he played a straight guy pretending to be gay but, well, that speaks for itself. And well, I can't exactly blame him for it, knowing how the Indian entertainment industry is.

To talk a little more about the specific comparison between India and Korea, I think you're fairly accurate in saying that the two countries seem to be roughly on par in terms of homophobia, although that's an extremely vague statement that's rather hard to either prove or disprove. While the difference in international attention towards Korean and Indian media is certainly a major component of the difference in discussion about the queer media from these countries, there's obviously other things that go into it as well. There's this video I watched some time ago on the progression of queer representation in K-dramas that's quite well researched. It's an hour and a half long, so in case you don't have the time to watch it (though I do recommend it), it basically talks about some of the dramas with queer rep that have aired on Korean television and their impact. While it's hard to gauge the level of impact of these shows on the availability of bls and gls in Korea, they certainly had an effect, if only telling the queer population of Korea that they are seen and heard. To my knowledge (although I may be mistaken), no such queer rep has ever aired on Indian television, meaning that there's nothing to push creators to put queer media out there. There have been old movies and shows that depict queerness, but none of them ever reached the sort of the scale where they may have some sort of impact on the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the widespread popularity of K-dramas (and k-pop) does make it easier for creators to make queer media since there's a much higher chance of the shows being successful thanks to the international audience. Bringing back Love In The Big City, the success of the book abroad and the high probability of the show being well received internationally is probably one of the reasons it was able to be produced amongst domestic backlash.

Now, I've been talking a lot about how it's difficult for queer Indian media to gain any sort of international recognition with domestic attention. However, it's not necessarily the case. Here's where I start rambling (I say, as if this post isn't verging on 2k words). It's been proven that the presence of the international market allows for greater creative freedom in spaces beyond television. The best example comes from Korea's very own 'soft power'; K-pop. There's a K-pop group called Dreamcatcher that debuted in 2017 with a rock sound and horror concept that was extremely rare in kpop at the time. They succeeded mainly by focusing most of their promotions to the foreign market, knowing that their concept would not be well liked in Korea. And they succeeded. Today, Dreamcatcher has a sizeable fandom and has even been growing in popularity in Korea, with the Korean public warming up to their genre and having influenced other girl groups to try out similar sounds. We've already talked about the lack of international attention for Indian media, but there's also the issue that the producers of queer Indian media aren't marketing to foreign audiences, which remain ignorant.

That's all I have, this is so long good lord. All in all, there's a bunch of factors that feed into each other creating a cycle which means that, unless there's a break somewhere, queer Indian media will remain unrecognized. I'm excited to see what other people have to say, because this is a topic close to my heart and I'd definitely enjoy seeing more discussions around it.

[timetravellingkitty]

KASHMIR MASTERLIST

Background

History of Kashmir from 250 BC to 1947 [to understand Kashmir's multi religious history and how we got to 1947]

Broad timeline of events from 1947 to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in 2019 (BBC) [yes, BBC. hang on just this once]

Human Rights Watch report based on a visit to Indian controlled Kashmir in 1998 [has a summary, background, human rights abuses and recommendations]

Another concise summary of the issue

Sites to check out

Kashmir Action - news and readings

The Kashmiriyat - independent news site about ongoings in Kashmir

FreePressKashmir - same thing as previous

Kashmir Law and Justice Project - analysis of international law as it applies to Kashmir

Stand with Kashmir - awareness, run by diaspora Kashmiris (both Pandit and Muslim)

These two for more readings and resources on Kashmir: note that the petitions and donation links are from 2019 and also has explainers on the background (x) (x)

To read

Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? - about women in the Kashmiri resistance movement and the 1991 mass rape of Kashmiri women in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora by Indian armed forces

Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir - a compliation of writings about the lives of Kashmiris under Indian domination

Colonizing Kashmir: State Building under Indian Occupation - how Kashmir was made "integral" to the Indian state and examines state-building policies (excerpt)

Resisting Occupation in Kashmir - about the social and legal dimensions of India's occupation

On India's scapegoating of Kashmiri Pandits, both by Kashmiri Pandits (x) (x)

Of Gardens and Graves - translations of Kashmiri poems

Social media

kashiirkoor

museumofkashmir

kashmirpopart

posh_baahar

readingkashmir

standwithkashmir and their backup account standwithkashmir2 (main account is banned in India wonder why)

kashmirlawjustice

kashmirawareness

jammugenocide (awareness about the 1947 genocide abetted by Maharaja Hari Singh and the RSS)

To watch

Jashn-e-Azadi: How We Celebrate Freedom parts 1 and 2 - a documentary about the Kashmiri freedom struggle (filmed by a Kashmiri Pandit)

Paradise Lost - BBC documentary about how India and Pakistan's dispute over the valley has affected the people

Kashmir - Valley of Tears - the exhaustion with the conflict in the post nineties

In the Shade of Fallen Chinar - art as a form of Kashmiri resistance

Human rights violations (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Land theft and dispossession (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

A note: I know annoying Desis are going to see this and go "Oh but Kashmir is Pakistan's because-" and "Kashmir is an integral part of India because-". I must make my stance clear: Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiris, the natives, no matter what religion they belong to. Neither Pakistan nor India get to decide the matter of Kashmiri sovereignty. The reasons given by both parties as to why Kashmir should be a part of either nation are bullshit. The United Nations itself recognises Kashmir as a disputed region, so I will not entertain dumbfuckery. I highly encourage fellow Indians especially to take the time to go through and properly understand the violence the government enacts on Kashmiris. I've also included links to learn more about Kashmiri culture because really, what do the rest of us know about it? Culturally and linguistically Kashmir differs so much from the rest of India and Pakistan (also the amount of fetishization of Kashmiri women...yikes). This is not just a bilateral issue between these two nations over land, this actually affects the people of Kashmir. And if you're still here, thank you for reading

[germiyahu]

"If you describe a horrific and detailed act of racism committed by an IDF soldier or a Kahanist or other anti Arab extremist (say Baruch Goldstein's massacre), you'll find that a huge majority of Jews condemn him, his philosophy, his actions, denounce him and consider him a poor practitioner of Judaism"

No they don't, that's the whole fucking point.

Whenever IDF soldiers kill Palestinians the only reaction from Israelis you would get is them bringing up how military service is mandatory in Israel so you can't be mad at the soldier, how this is an extremely complex two-sided "conflict" where both sides are equally wrong and equally victims, how everything is the fault of the entire government of Hamas and Bibi (but just Bibi, they will never hold anyone else in the government accountable) and gaslighting people into believing that this is an isolated incident that doesn't normally happen and that the Israeli committing the crime will actually face any type of justice.

And this assuming that they would even acknowledge a crime has been committed instead of calling it "blood libel" and using what happens as a segue to talk about anti-semitism even more.

So you clearly don't know any Jews because Baruch Goldstein is one of the least controversial figures in Jewish history to condemn. Like, he probably has defenders in Israel but they're definitely a pretty small minority, and you'd be very hard pressed to find any diaspora Jews who approve of his crimes.

And aside from that, because yes people do defend the IDF when they are presented with similarly horrific sounding stories... but look what happens, most of these stories turn out to be exaggerated or completely false to begin with! This isn't about starry-eyed Jewish supremacy vs Muslims just doing an oopsie and they had good reasons for it, this is about truth. That's the key element. It's a little ridiculous to whine that Jews won't full throatedly condemn bombing a hospital and killing 500 people when that turned out to be a lie!

Baruch Goldstein was a terrorist, he factually provably committed horrific crimes. Osama Bin Laden was also a terrorist, he factually provably orchestrated horrific crimes. If you ask the average Jew to defend the former, they'd be equally as uncomfortable as if you asked the average Muslim to defend the latter. There are always going to be braindead terrorism fanboys in both groups, duh. I'm talking about the average person.

And here you are, deciding that no, the average Jew is a savage devotee to terrorism and genocide, just like every other Jew Hater online. It's becoming a bit stale. See that last part in particular, this is about a deep envious rage you feel that Jewish people "get away" with doing/thinking/saying "The Bad Thing" and you feel a need to bring them down a peg. You frame a very real thing (like blood libel is not trivial and Jewish people do not actually talk about it frivolously), as a privilege, a cheat code. You're jealous because you probably belong to a demographic that can't "milk" it's own historic oppression and tragedy, so you feel that Jews shouldn't "get" to.

But this is the real world, where exaggerating the alleged crimes of Jews is demonstrably linked with an increase in antisemitic rhetoric (check), harassment of Jews and Jewish institutions (check), and even violence (they just thwarted a planned terrorist attack in Brooklyn, very much the last roadblock to a liberated Palestine).

Anyway my point was that if you zoom out to more and more abstract concepts, a greater percentage of both Jewish and Muslim populations will probably support them. And I think it's telling that "a Jewish state founded on war and large violent population transfers" has a higher moral burden on it than "a Muslim state founded on war and large violent population transfers."

Ask a Muslim if they support "Pakistan exists" and how many would disagree? Realistically? But you dare act disgusted and shocked that a similar number and percentage of Jews support "Israel exists"? My entire question is why "This is a country that has done bad things and it exists amid ethnic conflict" is even on par with "this niche cult within a giant religion (literally they admitted to it) did a massacre on civilians."

If that's the moral equivalence then we're done here. I'm not playing games like that.

[avi-on-jumblr]

absurd and ridiculous tweet warning:

this is so fucking stupid on so many levels. first is that time magazine makes this decision in SEPTEMBER. this is not a global conspiracy to silence palestinians. it's just not how the magazine works. they choose the person who "for better or for worse… has done the most to influence the events of the year".

who do they want on the cover? hamas? fucking yahya sinwar? can any of them name a single palestinian? can any of them name a single person working for peace? doubt it! because this is a trend for them and they only care about generating outrage to get likes.

but. most glaringly. it is insane that they think that israel/palestine is the Biggest Thing Happening In The World. yes, it is obviously extremely significant. in terms of media attention it's basically the only thing people are talking about at all. in terms of global impact to jews in the diaspora it is fucking terrifying to see the rising antisemitism and for a lot of us it is the biggest thing happening right now. BUT for random-ass americans (et al) with zero connections to the region, this should not be more important than crises in ukraine, or iran, or pakistan, or yemen, or china, or sudan, or armenia, etc, etc, etc. in terms of scale, if we go by number of deaths, or number of displacements, there are so many things happening that are so much worse. the only reason it's receiving such an insanely disproportionate amount of attention is, of course, that this is the thing involving jews.

and like. it is genuinely fucking insane that people legitimately think that every single thing in the world revolves around this. the spotify and black friday conspiracies were baseless and delusional enough. genuinely can we not go five fucking seconds without a new one?

[shokuto]

I’m beginning to think Miles and Kamala get along so naturally because they both belong to respective diasporas they don’t fit in with. Like, as a sheltered biracial kid and a second gen American immigrant, their personalities are so informed by mainstream western culture that they simply can’t live up to the myopic idea of who they’re supposed to be according to their race/ethnicity, and from a watsonian perspective they can probably sense that in each other.

Like, I was thinking about how Kamala’s described as an ABCD in her show, how her peers in Pakistan make fun of her for speaking poor Urdu in her comics or outright refer to her as a self hating Pakistani for being so tethered to American culture, and it sounded exactly like the south asian variant of “You aren’t black enough,” an actual narrative Miles had to contend with in real life because he initially didn’t speak aave, wasn’t particularly stylish and wasn’t depicted as interested in things like music or basketball.

[junglejim4322]

Some people in the diaspora who’ve never been to the country they descend from have a next level skewed perception of what it’s like just being real when it comes to the whole “my phantom limb” thing for example I knew this Pakistani girl who waxed poetic about how she’d return to her true home her phantom limb etc one day and then she spent one week in Pakistan and all she did was text me complaining about how hot it was and that she kept having to go to mosques and they were boring and hot and she had to walk too much and it was hot and also people treated her like a foreigner because she was American and didn’t really speak Urdu and also it was hot

[desigoblinacademic]

The overwhelming grief of being an immigrant. The ache when you see your loved ones carry on with their lives, the only change being your absence. The heaviness when you think of "home" and your heart yearns for your grandmother's warm embrace. The hollowness of returning to an empty flat, all the love you had a thousand miles away. The guilt of leaving the country your younger self would've sacrificed their life for. The restlessness of feeling like an imposter everywhere you go. The anxiety when you make the slightest mistake because you did not leave behind pieces of your heart scattered in your favourite childhood spots for all this to not be worth it in the end.

[secular-jew]

Only in degenerate ☪️

[eretzyisrael]

by Melanie Phillips

he outspoken chief rabbi of South Africa, Dr. Warren Goldstein, has once again given voice to crucial truths that others have shamefully ignored.

He accused both Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, of being indifferent to the murder of black Christians in Africa and the terrorism threat in Europe while being “outright hostile” to Israel’s attempts to battle jihadi forces led by Iran.

“The world is locked in a civilizational battle of values, threatened by terrorism and violent jihad,” said Goldstein. “At a time when Europe’s very future hangs in the balance, its two most senior Christian leaders have abandoned their most sacred duty to protect and defend the values of the Bible. Their cowardice and lack of moral clarity threaten the free world.”

Goldstein’s blistering accusations were on the mark.

Christians in Africa have been subjected to barbaric slaughter and persecution by Islamists for decades. Two years ago, Open Doors, an organization that supports persecuted Christians, observed: “In truth, there are very few Muslim countries—or countries with large Muslim populations—where Christians can avoid intimidation, harassment or violence.”

In January 2024, a report for Genocide Watch confirmed that, since 2000, 62,000 Christians in Nigeria have been murdered by Islamist groups in an ongoing attempt to exterminate Christianity. In addition, more than 32,000 moderate black Nigerian Muslims and non-faith individuals have been massacred.

According to a report in 2020 by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Christians in Myanmar, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Vietnam are being persecuted.

These facts were reported in June by Peter Baum for The Daily Blitz. Yet the mainstream media all but ignore these atrocities. There are no marches in Western cities to accuse these countries of facilitating crimes against humanity. There are no NGO-inspired petitions to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to declare these countries and groups guilty of genocide.

Instead, the media and Western elites demonize Israel as the pariah of the world for defending itself against these genocidal Islamists. This unique and egregious double standard is the hallmark of classic antisemitism.

The attitude of the church leaders is even more astonishing. The hundreds of thousands of victims of this persecution are their flock. The goal of this onslaught is the wholesale destruction of the faith they lead.

Yet from Welby and the pope have emerged little more than occasional expressions of measured concern. And even then, they usually refuse to call out what’s happening by its proper name—the Islamist war to eradicate Christianity and destroy the West.

The 10-month war against Israel by Iran and its proxies following the Oct. 7 pogrom is a crucial front in that onslaught against Western civilization. Yet as Goldstein said, the pope and Welby have stood passively by while African Christians are “butchered by jihadi groups with direct ties to Israel’s enemies in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The jihadi ideology, he said, was also a clear and present danger to Europe. As a result of open-border policies, immigrants poured into the United Kingdom and across Europe, many of them “brandishing a violent jihadi ideology deeply hostile to Christianity, liberal democracy and western values.”

The result has been surging antisemitism leaving Diaspora Jews living in fear. Yet on the ideology fueling this civilizational onslaught, Welby and the pope have been silent. Instead, they have recycled the Islamists’ propaganda that demonizes and delegitimizes Israel with lies.

[andmaybegayer]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/29/india-assassination-raw-sikhs-modi/

cool cool cool

(full text below the cut)

An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi’s India

Greg Miller, Gerry Shih, Ellen Nakashima

The White House went to extraordinary lengths last year to welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a state visit meant to bolster ties with an ascendant power and potential partner against China.

Tables on the South Lawn were decorated with lotus blooms, the symbol of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. A chef was flown in from California to preside over a vegetarian menu. President Biden extolled the shared values of a relationship “built on mutual trust, candor and respect.”

But even as the Indian leader was basking in U.S. adulation on June 22, an officer in India’s intelligence service was relaying final instructions to a hired hit team to kill one of Modi’s most vocal critics in the United States.

The assassination is a “priority now,” wrote Vikram Yadav, an officer in India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, according to current and former U.S. and Indian security officials.

Yadav forwarded details about the target, Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, including his New York address, according to the officials and a U.S. indictment. As soon as the would-be assassins could confirm that Pannun, a U.S. citizen, was home, “it will be a go ahead from us.”

Yadav’s identity and affiliation, which have not previously been reported, provide the most explicit evidence to date that the assassination plan — ultimately thwarted by U.S. authorities — was directed from within the Indian spy service. Higher-ranking RAW officials have also been implicated, according to current and former Western security officials, as part of a sprawling investigation by the CIA, FBI and other agencies that has mapped potential links to Modi’s inner circle.

In reports that have been closely held within the American government, U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that the operation targeting Pannun was approved by the RAW chief at the time, Samant Goel. That finding is consistent with accounts provided to The Washington Post by former senior Indian security officials who had knowledge of the operation and said Goel was under extreme pressure to eliminate the alleged threat of Sikh extremists overseas. U.S. spy agencies have more tentatively assessed that Modi’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, was probably aware of RAW’s plans to kill Sikh activists, but officials emphasized that no smoking gun proof has emerged.

Neither Doval nor Goel responded to calls and text messages seeking comment.

This examination of Indian assassination plots in North America, and RAW’s increasingly aggressive global posture, is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former senior officials in the United States, India, Canada, Britain, Germany and Australia. Citing security concerns and the sensitivity of the subject, most spoke on the condition of anonymity.

That India would pursue lethal operations in North America has stunned Western security officials. In some ways, however, it reflects a profound shift in geopolitics. After years of being treated as a second-tier player, India sees itself as a rising force in a new era of global competition, one that even the United States cannot afford to alienate.

Asked why India would risk attempting an assassination on U.S. soil, a Western security official said: “Because they knew they could get away with it.”

The foiled assassination was part of an escalating campaign of aggression by RAW against the Indian diaspora in Asia, Europe and North America, officials said. The plot in the United States coincided with the June 18 shooting death of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., near Vancouver — an operation also linked to Yadav, according to Western officials. Both plots took place amid a wave of violence in Pakistan, where at least 11 Sikh or Kashmiri separatists living in exile and labeled terrorists by the Modi government have been killed over the past two years.

The Indian intelligence service has ramped up its surveillance and harassment of Sikhs and other groups overseas perceived as disloyal to the Modi government, officials said. RAW officers and agents have faced arrest, expulsion and reprimand in countries including Australia, Germany and Britain, according to officials who provided details to The Post that have not previously been made public.

The revelations have added to Western concerns about Modi, whose tenure has been marked by economic growth and rising global stature for India, but also deepening authoritarianism. A recent report by Freedom House, a human rights organization, listed India among the world’s practitioners of “transnational repression,” a term for governments’ use of intimidation or violence against their own citizens — dissidents, activists, journalists — in others’ sovereign territory.

India is part of an expanding roster of countries employing tactics previously associated with China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes. It is a trend fueled by factors ranging from surging strains of nationalism and authoritarianism to the spread of social media and spyware that both empower and endanger dissident groups.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to respond to detailed questions submitted by The Post or provide comment for this article. Responding to questions raised by a Post reporter at a news briefing last week, spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said that India was still investigating the allegations and that the Pannun case “equally impacts our national security.”

Jaiswal referred reporters to previous ministry statements that targeted killings are “not our policy.”

For the Biden administration, which has spent three years cultivating closer ties with India, the assassination plots have pitted professed values against strategic interests.

Last July, White House officials began holding high-level meetings to discuss ways to respond without risking a wider rupture with India, officials said. CIA Director William J. Burns and others have been deployed to confront officials in the Modi government and demand accountability. But the United States has so far imposed no expulsions, sanctions or other penalties.

Even the U.S. criminal case reflects this restraint. Senior officials at the Justice Department and FBI had pushed to prosecute Yadav, officials said, a step that would have implicated RAW in a murder-for-hire conspiracy. But while a U.S. indictment unsealed in November contained the bombshell allegation that the plot was directed by an Indian official, it referred to Yadav as only an unnamed co-conspirator, “CC-1,” and made no mention of the Indian spy agency.

Justice Department officials who took part in the White House deliberations sided against those urging criminal charges against Yadav. Administration officials denied any undue influence. “Charging decisions are the prerogative of law enforcement alone,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, “and the Biden NSC has rigorously respected that independence.”

The only U.S. charges made public to date are against an alleged middleman, Nikhil Gupta, who is described in the indictment as an Indian drug and weapons trafficker enlisted to hire a contract killer. Gupta, an Indian national who has denied the charges, was arrested in Prague on June 30 and remains in prison. He is awaiting a Czech court ruling on a U.S. request for his extradition.

Even in recent days, the Biden administration has taken steps to contain the fallout from the assassination plot. White House officials warned the Modi government this month that The Post was close to publishing an investigation that would reveal new details about the case. It did so without notifying The Post.

Laying a trap

For decades, RAW was regarded as a regional player, preoccupied by proxy wars with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. Under Modi, however, RAW has been wielded as a weapon against dissidents in India’s vast global diaspora, according to current and former U.S. and Indian officials.

The U.S. operation shows how RAW tried to export tactics it has used for years in countries neighboring India, officials said, including the use of criminal syndicates for operations it doesn’t want traced to New Delhi. It also exposed what former Indian security officials described as disturbing lapses in judgment and tradecraft.

After the plot against Pannun failed, the decision to entrust Yadav with the high-risk mission sparked recriminations within the agency, former officials said. Rather than joining RAW as a junior officer, Yadav had been brought in midcareer from India’s less prestigious Central Reserve Police Force, said one former official. As a result, the official said, Yadav lacked training and skills needed for an operation that meant going up against sophisticated U.S. counterintelligence capabilities.

Attempts by The Post to locate or contact Yadav were unsuccessful. A former Indian security official said he was transferred back to the Central Reserve Police Force after the Pannun plot unraveled.

The U.S. affidavit describes Yadav as an “associate” of Gupta who procured the alleged drug trafficker’s help by arranging for the dismissal of criminal charges he faced in India. Gupta had a history of collaborating with India’s security services on operations in Afghanistan and other countries, according to a person with knowledge of his background, but he had never been used for jobs in the West.

Petr Slepicka, a lawyer in Prague who represents Gupta, declined to comment on the case except to say that his client denies the charges against him. In court filings in India, Gupta’s family members described him as an innocent “middle-class businessman” whose arrest was a case of mistaken identity. They said he traveled to Prague “for tourism” and to explore new markets for a “handicraft” business, according to the court filings.

Yadav and Gupta spent weeks trading encrypted texts about the plot to kill Pannun, according to a U.S. affidavit filed in support of the request for Gupta’s extradition. To find a willing assassin, Gupta reached out to someone he had been in touch with for at least eight years and understood to be a drug and weapons dealer. In reality, according to the affidavit, the supposed dealer was an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The two were discussing “another potential firearms and narcotics transaction,” according to the affidavit when, on May 30, Gupta abruptly asked “about the possibility of hiring someone to murder a lawyer living in New York.”

From that moment, U.S. agents had an inside but incomplete view of the unfolding conspiracy. They orchestrated Gupta’s introduction to a supposed assassin who was actually an undercover agent, according to court filings. They captured images of cash changing hands in a car in New York City — a $15,000 down payment on a job that was to cost $100,000 when completed.

At one point, the indictment said, U.S. agents even got footage of Gupta turning his camera toward three men “dressed in business attire, sitting around a conference room,” an apparent reference to Indian operatives overseeing the mission. “We are all counting on you,” Gupta told the purported assassin on the video call, according to the indictment.

Yadav indicated that there would be more jobs after Pannun, including one “big target” in Canada. But a separate hit team got to that assignment first, according to the U.S. indictment, suggesting that RAW was working with multiple criminal elements.

Hours after Nijjar was gunned down in his car on June 18 outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, Yadav sent a video clip to Gupta “showing Nijjar’s bloody body slumped in his vehicle,” according to the indictment.

The message arrived as U.S. authorities were laying a trap for Gupta. Seeking to draw him out of India and into a friendly jurisdiction, U.S. agents used their DEA informant to persuade Gupta to travel to the Czech Republic for what he was led to believe would be a clandestine meeting with his American contact, according to officials familiar with the operation.

Gupta arrived in Prague on June 30 — 11 days after Czech authorities, acting at the behest of U.S. officials, had secretly issued an arrest warrant for him.

As he exited Vaclav Havel Airport, Gupta was intercepted by Czech police, who ushered him into a vehicle in which two U.S. federal agents were waiting, according to court filings submitted by Gupta’s family in India. He was questioned for hours while the car meandered around the city. His laptop was seized and his phone held to his face to unlock it, according to the family petition.

Gupta was eventually deposited in Prague’s Pankrac Prison, where he remains awaiting possible extradition. Seeking help, Gupta’s family tried to reach Yadav last year but could find no trace of him, according to a person familiar with the matter. After months of near-constant contact with Gupta, the person said, CC-1 had “disappeared.”

Engaging with the underworld

Though Yadav served as RAW’s point man, current and former officials said the operation involved higher-ranking officials with ties to Modi’s inner circle. Among those suspected of involvement or awareness are Goel and Doval, though U.S. officials said there is no direct evidence so far of their complicity.

As RAW chief at the time, Goel was “under pressure” to neutralize the alleged threat posed by Sikh extremists overseas, said a former Indian security official. Goel reported to Doval, and had ties to the hard-line national security adviser going back decades.

Both had built their reputations in the 1980s, when the country’s security services battled Sikh separatists and Muslim militants. They were part of a generation of security professionals shaped by those conflicts much the way their U.S. counterparts came to be defined by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Doval, 79, has claimed roles in undercover missions from the jungles of Myanmar to the back alleys of Lahore, Pakistan — tales that contributed to his frequent depiction in the press as the “James Bond of India.”

He also exhibited a willingness to engage with the criminal underworld. In 2005, after retiring as head of India’s domestic intelligence service, he was inadvertently detained by Mumbai police while meeting with a reputed gangster. Doval was seeking to enlist one crime boss to assassinate another, according to media reports later confirmed by senior Indian officials.

Before being tapped as national security adviser by Modi in 2014, Doval publicly called for India’s security apparatus to shift from “defense” to “defensive offense” against groups threatening India from other countries, especially Pakistan.

Goel, who was then rising into the senior ranks at RAW, shared Doval’s instincts. Police forces under Goel’s command in the early 1990s were tied to more than 120 cases of alleged extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances or torture, according to a database maintained by Ensaaf, an Indian human rights group based in the United States. Goel was so closely associated with the brutal crackdown that he became an assassination target, according to associates who said he took to traveling in a bulletproof vehicle.

Former Indian officials who know both men said Goel would not have proceeded with assassination plots in North America without the approval of his superior and protector.

“We always had to go to the NSA for clearance for any operations,” said A.S. Dulat, who served as RAW chief in the early 2000s, referring to the national security adviser. Dulat emphasized in an interview with The Post that he did not have inside knowledge of the alleged operations, and that assassinations were not part of RAW’s repertoire during his tenure.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reached a similar conclusion. Given Doval’s reputation and the hierarchical nature of the Indian system, CIA analysts have assessed that Doval probably knew of or approved RAW’s plans to kill Sikhs his government considered terrorists, U.S. officials said.

A fierce crackdown

India’s shift to “defensive offense” was followed by a series of clashes between RAW and Western domestic security services.

In Australia, two RAW officers were expelled in 2020 after authorities broke up what Mike Burgess, head of the Australian intelligence service, described as a “nest of spies.”

Foreign officers were caught monitoring “their country’s diaspora community,” trying to penetrate local police departments and stealing information about sensitive security systems at Australian airports, Burgess said in a 2021 speech. He didn’t name the service, but Australian officials confirmed to The Post that it was RAW.

In Germany, federal police have made arrests in recent years to root out agents RAW had recruited within Sikh communities. Among them, German officials said, were a husband and wife who operated a website purportedly covering local Sikh events but who were secretly on RAW’s payroll.

In Britain, RAW’s surveillance and harassment of the Sikh population — especially a large concentration near Birmingham — became so egregious in 2014 and 2015 that MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, delivered warnings to Goel, who was then serving as RAW’s station chief in London.

When confronted, Goel scoffed at his counterparts and accused them of coddling Sikh activists he said should be considered terrorists, according to current and former British officials. After further run-ins, British authorities threatened to expel him, officials said. Instead, Goel returned to New Delhi and continued to climb RAW’s ranks until, in 2019, he was given the agency’s top job.

RAW’s record of aggressive activity in Britain has fanned suspicion that the agency was involved in the death of Sikh activist Avtar Singh Khanda, who died in Birmingham last year, three days before Nijjar was killed in Canada. British officials have said Khanda suffered from leukemia and died of natural causes, though his family and supporters have continued to press for further investigation.

A U.S. State Department human rights report released this month catalogued India’s alleged engagement in transnational repression. It cited credible accounts of “extraterritorial killing, kidnapping, forced returns or other violence,” as well as “threats, harassment, arbitrary surveillance and coercion” of overseas dissidents and journalists.

RAW’s operations in Western countries during Modi’s tenure have been overwhelmingly aimed at followers of the Sikh religion, especially a minority faction seeking to revive the largely dormant cause of creating a separate state called “Khalistan.”

That movement had peaked in the 1980s, when thousands were killed in violent skirmishes between the Indian government and Sikh insurgents. One brutal sequence beginning in 1984 included an Indian assault on the Sikh religion’s holiest site, the Golden Temple; the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikhs in her security detail; and the bombing of an Air India flight widely attributed to Sikh extremists. A fierce crackdown quashed the insurgency, prompting an exodus of Sikhs to diaspora communities in Canada, the United States and Britain.

As Sikhs settled into their new lives abroad, the Khalistani cause went quiet until a new generation of activists — whose leaders included Pannun and Nijjar — sought to rekindle the movement with unofficial referendums on Sikh statehood and with protests that at times have seemed to glorify violence. A parade in Canada last year included a float depicting Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and Khalistan supporters have stormed and defaced Indian diplomatic facilities in Western cities.

The effort has seemed to gain little traction beyond a minority within the diaspora communit

[handweavers]

it is strange to think that even in malaysia i am still in the diaspora, even at home i am in the diaspora - my family hasn't lived in the place where we are "truly" from since the late 1800s... and before that, reading about migrations of punjabi clans and finding out the clans my family are part of migrated north from the sindh region of what is now pakistan between the 1300s-1600s... how long do you have to live in a place before you are allowed to call it home? for you to say you're "from" there? a hundred years, two hundred, four hundred, a thousand? at what point do you stop being from one place and start being from somewhere else? the lines feel so arbitrary

[originalleftist]

I wonder if those who think Israel should be destroyed, or that the US should do nothing to assist in it's defence, have ever really thought about what Israel's defeat and destruction would entail.

Because even beyond the immense loss of life, primarily to civilians, that that would entail, the reality is that Israel has nuclear weapons. And if it is ever in a position where it is desperate enough, where it's existence is imminently threatened, it will likely use those weapons. And again, this is not because Israel is uniquely destructive or genocidal- it's literally the central reason why every country that has nuclear weapons (so the US, Russia, China, UK, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) has them. As a final deterrent, and means of retaliation, against destruction.

So if Hamas or Iranian or another enemy were to successfully overrun Israel, such that Israel's existence as a nation-state was imminently threatened, those nukes would come into play. And it should go without saying, but that will not help anyone. Not Israelis. Not the US. And not Palestinians. Because you can't have your own state when you're dead.

Israel is a small nation, surrounded by enemies. The choices of it's government bear some responsibility for the latter fact, but regardless, that is the situation at present. The best guarantee that Israel will never find itself desperate enough to consider using those nukes is likely a strong guarantee of US support. No, that doesn't mean that the US has to give Israel unlimited offensive weapons for any purpose. But it does mean that whenever Israel's existence is threatened, it does not stand alone.

The alternative is not a good one. For anyone. And if you want the destruction of Israel by force, you are not supporting a "free Palestine". You have one goal- the slaughter of "Zionists" (by which is meant, Israeli and also often diaspora Jews). And are willing to see Palestine and a lot of other places turned to radioactive wastelands to get it.

Remember this as well when you see commentators and social media posts denouncing Biden for supporting Israel against Iran, accusing him of genocide, and urging people to stay home/vote third party/vote Trump on Election Day.