POWERLESS TO STOP THE ETHNIC CLEANSING?

The new global awards may be viewed by the future as evidence, direct or indirect, of our unhappiness with unceasing killings in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere, even if we, the world’s people, appear to be powerless as yet to stop the killings.

The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki working to free the earth from nuclear weapons. The best-known novel of Han Kang, the South Korean winner of the Literature Nobel, is The Vegetarian, where the protagonist walks away from meat in order to defy our violent environment.

Arundhati Roy’s words when she accepted, in London, the PEN Pinter Award for 2024, stunned us with their stark evocation of scenes from Gaza and Lebanon. Through her words she also made visible some of the great many in India who’ve been shut away for years for standing for democratic rights.

Thus far the U.S. and a majority of the world’s most powerful nations have closed their eyes to Israel’s continuing ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank and to Israel’s invasion (by air and on the ground) of portions of Lebanon. In the U.S.’s case, shut eyes have been joined by the supply to Israel of fresh and deadlier weapons.  By its silence, New Delhi, too, has in effect taken Israel’s side.

MUCH MORE TO COME

However, the fact that the Middle East’s story may not be anywhere near its end was underscored on October 11 when Vladimir Putin met with Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian in Ashgabat, the capital of oil-rich Turkmenistan, and announced that he and Pezeshkian shared a “very close” worldview.

Most nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as well as large and vocal sections of the populations of Europe and North America have been offended by Israel’s actions and reactions. Even though members of the U.N.’s teams in Lebanon have been injured in Israeli attacks, the international agency has so far defied Israeli pressure for their removal.

If Israel’s drive continues, Iran apart, how, eventually, will large neighbouring countries like Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the UAE react? Can they continue to look away as Palestine and Palestinians are sought to be eliminated from their neighbourhood, in effect from the face of the earth? Isn’t that the picture we are getting?

Breaking his silence, Qatar's ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, has accused Israel of choosing to expand what he calls its "aggression" to "implement pre-prepared plans" in the West Bank and Lebanon. Speaking to his country's legislative body, Sheikh Al Thani said that Israel can attack "because it sees that the scope for that is available". According to Al Thani, the "easiest and safest way" to stop the conflict escalating on Lebanon's border would have been to "stop the war of extermination on Gaza".

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cjwdx0y5nj9t

Can Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin continue endlessly with their indifference? It is worth marking that Tory leader and former Prime Minister David Cameron has urged the U.K. to consider sanctioning two Israeli ministers as a way of "putting pressure" on the country to act within international law.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy435dx0jpko

NOW IN MAHARASHTRA

In India it is always election season. After Modi’s unexpected win in the North Indian state of Haryana, a bigger battle is about to be witnessed in India’s richest state, Maharashtra. Though this coastal province, washed by the Arabian Sea and with Mumbai as its capital, is currently ruled by a coalition where Modi’s BJP is the largest partner, in the national election held earlier this year the BJP’s opponents -- the Congress, the NCP (Sharad Pawar), and Shiv Sena (UBT) -- won most of Maharashtra’s parliamentary seats.

After the Congress’s loss in Haryana, seasoned Indian Express columnist Tavleen Singh wrote, “Congress can’t take on BJP if it remains an adjunct of the Gandhi family.” Her argument that the Congress’s recovery has been blocked by the large profile the party provides to Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, and to his sister Priyanka Gandhi is shared by some other observers.

It has also been Modi’s line. That, however, is not how I see it. In fact much of the Congress Party’s recent recovery can be credited to the efforts of the brother-and-sister duo, who by Indian standards are very young politicians, as also to the work of Mallikarjun Kharge, the party’s octogenarian president.

What hurt the party in Haryana, apart from blind overconfidence, was the intense rivalry between two powerful local leaders, one of whom belonged to the dominant farming caste of the region, the Jats, and the other to the Dalit community, seen as untouchable in the past. Clashing personal ambitions have weakened democratic parties everywhere and at all times. If such ambitions can be better reconciled in Maharashtra by Rahul, Priyanka, Mr. Kharge, and their associates, the opposition alliance should win there, but sorting out conflicting ambitions democratically is not an easy task.

Something else in Tavleen Singh’s Indian Express column is worth noting. “There is no question,” she writes, “that the BJP has lost the appeal it once had, and that Modi has lost his magic.”

INDIA’S DISPUTE WITH CANADA

Meanwhile the world’s second largest country by area, namely Canada, and the world’s most populous country, namely, India, have, believe it or not, expelled their top envoys as also other diplomats! Why? Because the row between the two countries over an assassination on Canadian soil has intensified.

In June 2023, Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot and killed in his pickup truck after he left a gurdwara (Sikh temple) in the town of Surrey in Canada’s British Columbia province. Born in India, Nijjar had become a citizen of Canada, where he owned a plumbing business and was engaged in a movement to create “Khalistan”, an “independent Sikh homeland” detached from India. Evidently he was also a leader in the Surrey gurdwara.

The Khalistan movement is banned in India, where most observers see nothing more than scant support for a separate and independent Sikh nation. Among Canada’s Sikhs, however, who number more than 700,000 out of an “India-origin” total of two million or so, Khalistan appears to enjoy considerable appeal.

PRECISE AND NARROW QUESTION

The relevant question in the Nijjar case is much narrower. It is not whether he supported Khalistan. The question is, were Indian agents involved in his murder?

Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, says that his government responded after police began pursuing credible allegations that Indian agents were directly involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Canadian police have also accused Indian agents of involvement in "homicides, extortion and violent acts" and targeting supporters in Canada of the pro-Khalistan movement. India has rejected the allegations as "preposterous" and accused Trudeau of pandering to Canada’s large Sikh community for political gain.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyle3py4nko

Two of the world’s most prominent countries that have always enjoyed close and cordial relations have fallen out! It should be remembered, moreover, that Indians are not only around 5 percent of Canada’s total population, they are probably more than five times that percentage when it comes to new immigrants and international students in Canada.

Who had a role in the Nijjar murder is a precise question that should be answered fully, fairly, and quickly. It should not be allowed to injure a rich relationship or the lives and prospects of millions.