- Tuesday, April 16, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
The Indian government on Sunday (20) expressed its displeasure over the incident at the Indian high commission in London where a group of Khalistani sympathisers pulled down the country’s national flag. New Delhi summoned the British deputy high commissioner to lodge a protest and sought an explanation over an alleged lack of security of Indian diplomatic premises and personnel in the UK.
According to noted Indian editor and author Shishir Gupta, the repercussions could go beyond the diplomatic protest lodged by India.
In a piece in Hindustan Times daily, Gupta said the pulling down of the Tricolour at the mission and the “indifference” of the British system towards the security of the diplomatic premises has been viewed as an “action forcing event” by India’s Narendra Modi government and will see far-reaching repercussions.
He said while the Modi government wants its British counterpart to “act at the very minimum” against the culprits, serious discussions have taken place at the highest levels on how to make London more accountable to India’s security concerns on the British soil.
It has been found that the man behind Sunday’s incident is Avtar Singh Khanda, a UK-based asylum seeker whose father Kulwant Singh Khukrana had links with the Khalistan Liberation Force. It was also learnt that Khanda got the radical Sikh students on the British soil organised for the protest on Sunday.
Gupta also said that despite the Indian government pointing out the soft stance of the British system, including intelligence towards the anti-India Khalistani activists since the protests against the Modi government’s Citizenship Amendment Act outside the Indian mission in 2019, the UK has not responded in a firm way which is seen as its disaffection towards New Delhi and the Modi government in particular.
Recently, political and diplomatic circles in India and the UK saw reactions over an income-tax survey at the offices of the BBC in New Delhi and Mumbai, weeks after the British broadcaster released a documentary series over Modi’s role in the 2002 riots in the western Indian state of Gujarat when he was its chief minister.
The editor-write also said in his column that the Modi government is keeping a close watch on how the Rishi Sunak government of Britain responds to another anti-India protest which has been planned by the Sikhs for Justice group in the UK on Wednesday (22).
“Led by designated extremist Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, the SFJ has been allowed to thrive, collect funds outside UK Gurudwaras and accumulate property despite pin-pointed evidence by the Indian intelligence to their British counterparts,” Gupta wrote in his Hindustan Times piece.
