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Terry Milewski On His New Book, ‘Blood for Blood’ | INTERVIEW

In Blood for Blood, veteran Canadian journalist Terry Milewski takes a close look at the global Khalistan project, its hunger for revenge and the feeble response of India’s Western allies. In conversation with HarperCollins India, Terry tells readers about his forthcoming book and what the Khalistan movement has evolved to mean today.

As a journalist, what first drew you to cover the Khalistan separatist movement?

A: I became intrigued by Indian history and politics as a student, after travelling through Afghanistan, Pakistan and India and interviewing Indira Gandhi in New Delhi. Then, when I was sent to Ireland to cover the 1985 bombing of the Kanishka, I came to know some of the victims’ families. Although I also reported on conflicts from the Middle East to Central America, the Khalistan struggle never seemed like just another story to be filed and forgotten. I was unable to forget the grace those stricken families showed in the face of the Canadian government’s astonishing failure to give them justice or to prevent the bombing in the first place – when they had the bombers under surveillance for months beforehand, I also felt that I’d failed to offer our audience any coherent account of why all this happened. How was the massacre of hundreds of innocent Indo-Canadians supposed to conjure a new nation for the Sikhs? It made no sense to me then, and it still doesn’t. So the story was always unfinished business for me.

Why do you think the movement has sustained itself abroad even when it has lost steam back in India?

It’s obvious that the Sikh diaspora was self-selected to include more than its share of those not content to live in India. But many of those were hardline separatists who were not content to live in the UK, the US or Canada, either. Rather, they saw their new citizenship as a platform from which to battle for a state of their own – and for revenge against India for the horrors of 1984. The more they were banned from India, the less they knew of what life is like for Sikhs who actually live there, in a majority-Sikh state where the independence struggle is a bad memory. For the diaspora militants, it still evokes the glory days of a just and even holy war. But it’s not enough to say they’re living in the past. Rather, they remain wedded to an imaginary future. It’s not easy to abandon the cause of a lifetime, just because it failed.

Do you think foreign governments can or should do more to denounce Khalistani extremism?

A: They can, and they should, but they won’t. First, they know the cause has fizzled out in India, so that Indian officials, however annoyed they are about western politicians pandering to separatists, won’t do much about it. Second, that pandering is for domestic consumption, and it works. The separatist activists maximize their political leverage by helping compliant politicians at election time. Sure, it’s embarrassing that the separatists make heroes out of mass-murderers like the Air India bombers  – but if they bring in thousands of votes, the candidates don’t seem to pay a price for looking the other way.

How do you think the recent tensions in Indo-China relations will impact the movement in India?

It’s easy to say that it won’t, because it seems absurd that the Chinese Communist Party, while bent on wiping out its own Muslim population in Xinjiang, would become brothers in arms with Pakistani jihadists and their Khalistani friends in waging war on India. And it is, indeed, absurd. And yet, absurd things keep happening. Pakistan is already a Chinese client state which never utters a peep in defence of its Muslim brothers in China. Simultaneously, Sikh separatist groups like Sikhs for Justice pledge solidarity with China and with Pakistan in their battles with India, even as the remaining Sikhs in Pakistan are hounded out. So it’s evident that the absurd can come true and that none of this is about the best interests of Muslims or Sikhs. It still seems unlikely that Chinese troops will ever ride into battle alongside the Khalistan Liberation Front. But might they find it convenient to exploit the remnants of the Khalistani movement – covertly, no doubt – in the name of solidarity with their friends in Pakistan? Would that be any stranger than China jailing a million Muslims while showering cash on the Islamic Republic of Pakistan?

Do you have another book in the pipeline?

That’s top secret. First, let’s see if anyone buys this one.

harperbroadcast

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