Newsletter: Week 4, 2023
Newsletter: Week 4, 2023
The Khalistan referendum reaches Melbourne, transnational communal tensions in Australia, and the plot to prevent Sweden's NATO membership
Khalistan Referendum Arrives In Melbourne
Sunday in Melbourne saw voting for the Australian phase of the Khalistan Referendum. The referendum – or more accurately, a survey – has been organised by Sikhs for Justice, who are based in the United States, and were banned within India in 2019. The objective of the vote is to determine support among diaspora Sikhs for a separate Sikh state to be known as Khalistan to be carved out of India’s north-west. So far four phases have been conducted in the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy and Switzerland.
Upon the partition of India in 1947, Sikhs overwhelmingly chose India as the state that would best protect their interests. They made this decision despite three of Sikhism’s holiest sites now being in Pakistan, and Lahore being Sikhism’s cultural capital and the political capital of the short lived Sikh Empire (1799 – 1849). Only a small number of Sikhs remained in what became Pakistan.
However, there has always been a romantic movement among Sikhs that have sought a separate state for themselves. Support and agitation for this goal has come in waves, and has led to some serious acts of political violence. Most notably in the mid-1980s with a series of escalating events that began with the occupation of Golden Temple – Sikhism's holiest site – by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers. The Indian army’s bungled attempt to remove them resulted in significant destruction to the temple, and in response prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards – leading to a pogrom against Sikhs mostly around Delhi. The following year Air India flight 182 from Montreal to London was bombed, with the Sikh militant Talwinder Singh Parmar being deemed responsible, although he was never convicted.
It should be noted that only a tiny percentage of the Khalistan movement supports acts of violence to achieve their goals. However, the broader Khalistani movement has gained greater traction in recent years as India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been dissolving the promise of India as a religiously plural state, and the country has become less hospitable to minority groups. The referendum is an attempt to provide a democratic demonstration of this concern. Although, as this vote is being conducted within the Sikh diaspora it is a unique – and a not entirely representative – exercise.
The Indian government has demonstrated its disapproval of these votes, although in acknowledging them New Delhi is playing into the hands of the other major player in this situation – Pakistan. Islamabad has consistently shown support for the Khalistan movement as a way of annoying New Delhi – which is Pakistan’s primary national objective. However, as a national Sikh movement could also make considerable spiritual claims on Pakistani territory this is an indication that Pakistan doesn’t take the movement too seriously. The existence of the movement is what Pakistan desires, not its success.
Local Communal Tensions
In my time spent at Federation Square observing the voting I was pleased to not witness any conflict. I had been concerned that supporters of the BJP would seek to disrupt the process, leading to a major disturbance in central Melbourne. There have been some incidents recently in Australia that indicate that communal tensions between Hindus and Sikhs are becoming a serious problem. This has included attacks on Sikhs in Sydney, and the vandalism of Hindu temples with Khalistani slogans in Melbourne.
Australia has become not just comfortable, but increasingly enthusiastic about its diverse population (with some notable exceptions). However, this has relied on an implicit compact that culture is welcome, but conflict is not. A small minority of Indian-Australians look to be ignoring this compact.
The ease of global communication makes it incredibly easy to physically exist in one place, but mentally exist in another. Religions also exist in a realm that have no political boundaries, which often puts them in tension with the realities of nation-states. The Khalistan referendum itself is an example of the complex web between diaspora groups, nation-states, and religion.
The BJP has seen active engagement within the Indian diaspora as a significant component of its overall political strategy. As a political party that seeks to cultivate souls, not just attract votes, an inability to vote in Indian elections does not make the diaspora unimportant. They are considered an essential part of how the party is institutionalising itself globally (and the diaspora are a major source of donations).
Transnational communalism can be an incredibly powerful force. Yet if the Australian public continues to see tensions within the Indian community here it presents a number of serious problems for the country. Public support for the relationship between Australia and India might wane – undermining Australia’s current geostrategic calculations; Support for Australia’s migration program could weaken – a program essential to enhancing Australia’s overall capabilities; And it makes life a lot more difficult for Indian-Australians who have no interest in communal tensions (and may very well have migrated to avoid them).
Unfortunately, it seems that after I left the area there was an incident between Khalistan supporters and others who had come to Federation Square waving Indian flags. A video is here.
Sweden’s Anti-Islam Agitators Seek To Prevent NATO Membership
Sweden’s ascension to NATO took a negative turn last weekend with an anti-Muslim demonstrator burning a copy of the Qu’ran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. Due to the demonstration Ankara cancelled a 27 January visit by Sweden’s defence minister, Pål Jonson, intended to discuss Sweden’s NATO accession.
The incident highlights that there are movements within Sweden intent on preventing Sweden from becoming a NATO member. There is considerable sympathy for Russia and suspicion of NATO within both the Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats) and Vänsterpartiet (The Left Party).
There is also the political necessity for the Sweden Democrats to continue to aggravate Sweden’s Muslim population. Their own political support relies on making these people feel like perpetual outsiders and to react to this status in disruptive and violent ways. Burning the Qu’ran – although it may not have been done by the party themselves – provides this necessary goading. But it also goads Turkey, and gives them an excuse to continue to delay ratifying Sweden’s accession to NATO.
It should not be not be overlooked that Russia’s influence operations know how to agitate these fault lines in Swedish society and have them ripple out towards Turkey to achieve Moscow’s aims of preventing Sweden from becoming a NATO member. A report in The Guardian indicated that the demonstration permit for the burning of the Qu’ran was paid for by a journalist with ties to Kremlin-backed media.
This Week’s Reading and Listening
Australia Day, Invasion Day: Evolving The Idea Of Australia
Grant Wyeth - The Diplomat
“Yet to Australia’s credit, this is a debate that is now mainstream. Australia Day has become a day of national self-scrutiny. It is a day to question what Australia’s national symbols are and to discuss ways to improve them. All the country’s major media outlets now engage in commentary about the meaning of Australia Day and whether there are better options for the country. This national introspection is an uncommon attribute among modern nation-states – where national days often involve uncritical displays of national chauvinism.
There is no ability to undo past wrongs, but there is an opportunity to evolve the idea of Australia toward being a country that all citizens can feel comfortable with. This year the government of the state of Victoria scrapped its usual Australia Day parade, and it is likely that other states will eventually follow suit. Momentum suggests that soon January 26 will cease to be Australia’s national day. As this date dissolves in the national psyche, it is now time for the country to focus on what should replace it.”
India Against Gandhi — A Legacy Rewritten
Ramachandra Guha – Financial Times
“Such is the broader context for the now widespread animosity towards Gandhi in the land of his birth. It has principally to do with his commitment to religious pluralism. While Modi stays silent, BJP leaders taunt and intimidate the 200mn-strong community of Indian Muslims, asking them without reason and provocation to prove their “loyalty” to the motherland. (Notably, among the 300 or so BJP members of parliament elected in May 2019, there was not a single Muslim.) While Modi praises Gandhi — selectively — many of those who support and vote for him believe Godse was right in murdering Gandhi; indeed, that he should have murdered him earlier, before the Mahatma’s last fast in support of equal rights for those Muslims who chose to express their own patriotism by staying in our country, which was also theirs.”
Project Syndicate
Interview with Congress Party MP on his latest book – Ambedkar: A Life
“There is no doubt that Ambedkar would have opposed this trend in India today. He was the first – and remains the most important – figure to articulate a non-Hindu conception of Indian nationalism, making current attempts by the Hindutva movement to appropriate him astonishingly hypocritical. Ambedkar deplored what he called Hindu society’s undemocratic nature, as reflected in its internalisation of inequality and untouchability. “If Hindu Raj does become a fact,” he bitterly exclaimed, “it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.”
On majoritarianism, Ambedkar famously reminded the Constituent Assembly of the vital importance of minority protection, arguing that “minorities are an explosive force which, if it erupts, can blow up the whole fabric of the State. The history of Europe bears ample and appalling testimony to this fact.” Given that India’s minorities have “agreed to place their existence in the hands of the majority” and “loyally accepted the rule of the majority, which is basically a communal majority and not a political majority,” the majority has a “duty not to discriminate” against them. Such a man would surely have spoken out strongly against the majoritarian bigotry that has been on the rise in India in recent years.”
The Adani Crisis - Is Modi's House Of Cards At Risk?
Adam Tooze - Chartbook
“Modi was elected in 2014 on a slate to overcome the corruption of the previous administration. But instead, the entanglement between the Gujurat business clique, headed by Adani and Ambani, and the Modi regime became ever more intense. So intense did it become that it escaped generic categories of corruption or cronyism and put in question the historic model of India’s development.
Under intense external pressure, will the Gujarat clique hold together? Will Delhi stay loyal to Adani? If it comes to a bailout will oppositional forces in India go along? What price will Modi pay? What might a dog-fight within the BJP-oligarch cabal look like?”
Sameer Lalwani & Happymon Jacob – Foreign Affairs
“In recent years, New Delhi has sharply reduced its dependence on Russian arms without triggering any adverse reactions from Moscow. With the war raging and other external markets shrinking, the Kremlin just wants to generate much-needed revenue from India, not influence the country’s strategic position. In other words, Russia needs India’s money as much as (maybe even more than) India needs Russia’s weapons.
The long-standing Indian-Russian partnership has become a transactional one steeped in uncertainty. Yes, it may continue this way for some time yet, but should Russia fail to deliver on its defence promises to India, and should Indian officials grow increasingly alarmed by Russia’s ties with China, expect New Delhi to only push Moscow further away.”
A World Between Orders (Audio)
A Conversation With Shivshankar Menon – Foreign Affairs
“To hear Western leaders tell it, the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will determine whether the international rules-based order survives. If Russian President Vladimir Putin wins in Ukraine, the laws and norms that are supposed to protect sovereignty will be exposed as useless. But what if that order is already broken, and there is no going back? The international system’s response to recent transnational challenges—whether it’s climate change, conflict, the pandemic, or the global debt crisis—has been deeply inadequate, especially for the “global South.” Much of the world can see that the stakes are high in Ukraine, especially for European security—but does not share the view that the outcome will fundamentally change how the world is governed.
This discussion involves what’s at stake in Ukraine, India’s place in this changing world, and what order could emerge from today’s great-power competition.”
The World’s Stake In American Democracy
Richard Haass – Project Syndicate
“A weaker and less predictable US would fray the fabric of alliances, which to be effective require mutual assistance to be near-certain. Similarly, foes would grow emboldened in the belief they could act with impunity. The result would be a world of more frequent conflict, one in which advanced weapons proliferate more widely and aggressive countries wield more influence.
Moreover, a US that is distracted and divided at home would lack the capacity and the consensus to exercise leadership on global challenges such as climate change. Without American resources and leadership, the already large gap between these global challenges and global responses would almost certainly grow. There is no other country or group of countries both willing and able to take America’s place on the world stage.”
China’s New Anti-Uyghur Campaign
James Millward – Foreign Affairs
“The camps were just the most famous aspect of the CCP’s broad-spectrum program of assimilation and repression. The party has also disparaged and restricted the use of the Uyghur language; prohibited Islamic practices; razed mosques, shrines, and cemeteries; rewritten history to deny the longevity of Uyghur culture and its distinctiveness from Chinese culture; and excised Indigenous literature from textbooks. These scars on the cultural landscape remain. The vaguely worded counterextremism and antiterrorism laws, implemented from 2014 to intern people for everyday religious and cultural expression, are still on the books. The infrastructure of control that made southern Xinjiang look like a war zone a few years ago—intrusive policing, military patrols, checkpoints—is less visible now. But that is because digital surveillance systems based on mobile phones, facial recognition, biometric databases, QR codes, and other tools that identify and geolocate the population have proved just as effective at monitoring and controlling local residents.
The state continues to incentivise, and likely coerce, Uyghur women to marry Han men while promulgating propaganda promoting mixed marriages. (Uyghurs very rarely married non-Uyghurs before the current crisis.) Uyghur children are being institutionalised in boarding schools, where they are forced to use the Chinese language and adopt Han cultural practices. There is little data about these schools, but escaped children tell of beatings and hours of basement confinement for speaking Uyghur.”
Myanmar Crisis ‘Has Been Forgotten’
Interview with United Nations special rapporteur, Tom Andrews
“The military junta—they’re like mushrooms. They thrive in the darkness. They take extraordinary measures to keep as out of the public eye as possible. And the attention of the world is easily distracted. Obviously there’s an enormous focus on the crisis in Ukraine, and as a result of that, there has been less attention on the crisis in Myanmar. But public attention is necessary for governments of the world to take action, and I think public attention will help generate political will.”
Japan Was The Future But It's Stuck In The Past
Rupert Wingfield-Hayes – BBC
“Look, there's something you need to understand about how Japan works," an eminent academic told me. "In 1868 the Samurai surrendered their swords, cut their hair, put on Western suits and marched into the ministries in Kasumigaseki (the government district of central Tokyo) and they're still there today."
In 1868, fearing a repeat of China's fate at the hands of Western imperialists, reformers overthrew the military dictatorship of the Tokugawa Shogunate and set Japan on a course of high-speed industrialisation.
But the Meiji restoration, as it's known, was no storming of the Bastille. It was an elite putsch. Even after a second convulsion of 1945, the "great" families survived. This overwhelmingly male ruling class is defined by nationalism and a conviction that Japan is special.”
Women in South Korea Are on Strike Against Being ‘Baby-Making Machines’
Hawon Jung - New York Times
“Young Koreans have well-documented reasons not to start a family, including the staggering costs of raising children, unaffordable homes, lousy job prospects and soul-crushing work hours. But women in particular are fed up with this traditionalist society’s impossible expectations of mothers. So they’re quitting.
President Yoon Suk-yeol, elected last year, has suggested feminism is to blame for blocking “healthy relationships” between men and women. But he’s got it backward — gender equality is the solution to falling birthrates. Many of the Korean women shunning dating, marriage and childbirth are sick of pervasive sexism and furious about a culture of violent chauvinism. Their refusal to be “baby-making machines,” according to protest banners I’ve seen, is retaliation. “The birth strike is women’s revenge on a society that puts impossible burdens on us and doesn’t respect us,” says Jiny Kim, 30, a Seoul office worker who’s intent on remaining childless.”
Idrees Kahloon - The New Yorker
“Many social scientists agree that contemporary American men are mired in malaise, even as they disagree about the causes. In academic performance, boys are well behind girls in elementary school, high school, and college, where the sex ratio is approaching two female undergraduates for every one male. (It was an even split at the start of the nineteen-eighties.) Rage among self-designated “incels” and other elements of the online “manosphere” appears to be steering some impressionable teens toward misogyny. Men are increasingly dropping out of work during their prime working years, overdosing, drinking themselves to death, and generally dying earlier, including by suicide. And men are powering the new brand of reactionary Republican politics, premised on a return to better times, when America was great—and, unsubtly, when men could really be men. The question is what to make of the paroxysm. For the revanchist right, the plight of American men is existential. It is an affront to biological (and perhaps Biblical) determinism, a threat to an entire social order. Yet, for all the strides that women have made since gaining the right to vote, the highest echelons of power remain lopsidedly male. The detoxification of masculinity, progressives say, is a messy and necessary process; sore losers of undeserved privilege don’t merit much sympathy.”
Research Has Long Shown How Feminist Progress Is Always Followed By A Misogynistic Backlash
Lisa Sugiura – The Conversation
“In the manosphere, there is an overriding sense of male victimhood. Tate has capitalised on the idea that men are oppressed. He presents simplistic explanations that legitimise this idea that men are being wronged by societal efforts towards gender equality. And he is weaponising it for his own financial gain.
Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells showed, in his 2012 book, Networks of Outrage and Hope, how the internet has granted unprecedented allure and reach to people such as Tate. Their ideas, however, are not new. Tate’s philosophy is but the latest iteration of what communications scholar Sara Banet-Weiser terms “popular misogyny”. Research shows that every instance of feminist progression has systematically been followed by a backlash, from those who feel their privileges are being stripped away.”
Talking Papers With Haley Hrymak (audio)
Episode 15: Parental Alienation With Suzanne Zaccour
Does Domestic Violence Disappear from Parental Alienation Cases?
Why? How? Suzanne Zaccour is a feminist author, researcher and public speaker. After studying law at McGill University, the University of Toronto and the University of Cambridge, she is currently wrapping up her research on sexual offences law as a doctoral candidate at Oxford University. Her research interests include sexual and domestic violence, family law, animal rights, and gender and language. She is the author of La fabrique du viol (Leméac 2019), a book in French about sexual violence and rape culture, and has authored and co-authored other books and articles related to women’s rights. She has created and delivered trainings on inclusive language and sexual assault to schools, law firms, government branches and other organizations. Suzanne was a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada (2019-2020) and was called to the Ontario bar in 2021.
In this episode, Suzanne Zaccour discusses what parental alienation is said to be, and her empirical research on the impact of parental alienation allegations in cases involving intimate partner violence and child abuse.
This week’s playlist is themed mysticism