Harvard International Review Removes Article Critical Of Khalistan After Backlash

India-West Staff Reporter

On February 22, the Harvard International Review (HIR) removed an article criticizing the Sikh separatist Khalistan movement after it sparked significant backlash, including complaints from Harvard’s Sikh chaplain, Harpreet Singh. The article, titled “A Thorn in the Maple: How the Khalistan Question is Reshaping India-Canada Relations,” was first published on February 15 and argued that the Khalistan movement lacked widespread support, echoing Indian government claims that key leaders were involved in terrorism.

The controversy began soon after the article’s publication, leading to an influx of complaints. In response, HIR’s editors-in-chief, Sydney C. Black ’27 and Elizabeth R. Place ’27, contacted the author, Zyna Dhillon ’28, to request edits. Dhillon, however, rejected these requests, stating that the article already represented the “balance” she had intended. “I think the HIR buckled down under pressure,” Dhillon said in a statement, criticizing the decision as a “knee-jerk reaction.”

Black and Place later explained that the article had been temporarily removed to allow for further review, with the condition that Dhillon make the necessary revisions before it could be reinstated. “When we receive complaints about a published article, we review both the article and the critiques,” the editors wrote in a statement to The Crimson. “If we determine that any criticism may have merit, we temporarily remove the article from our website, to facilitate further research and a more detailed review.”

The editors criticized Dhillon’s piece for not meeting the HIR’s standards for neutrality, describing it as “an opinionated style of journalism rather than the analytical reporting HIR has published for nearly 50 years.” The Khalistan movement advocates for a separate Sikh state, primarily in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. While the movement was prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, it is not widely supported in Punjab today but continues to resonate within segments of the Sikh diaspora, particularly in Canada.

Dhillon’s article argued that the Khalistan movement’s influence in Canada had exacerbated tensions between Canada and India. This claim gained renewed attention following the 2023 killing of Canadian Khalistan leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an event that led to accusations from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau against Indian government agents. The Indian government denied the allegations.

Following the publication of Dhillon’s article, Black and Place reached out to discuss a reader’s concerns about the lack of contextualization regarding the suppression of the Khalistan movement. In their email to Dhillon on February 16, they proposed two options: either leave the article unchanged or add additional background on the movement’s origins and evolution. However, six days later, following a four-page complaint from Singh, the editors informed Dhillon that the article had been removed.

Singh criticized the article for equating Khalistan activism with terrorism and accused Dhillon of presenting unverified data from the Indian government while underplaying support for Khalistan within the global Punjabi community. In a follow-up email, Black and Place proposed two specific changes: removing unverifiable Indian government statistics on deaths caused by Sikh militants and adding a sentence about whether Khalistan supporters had harassed Indian diplomats in Canada.

Dhillon refused these changes, stating that one of the suggestions — a reference to how “India defines terrorism broadly” — would have undermined the article’s integrity. “I would have found these edits more credible had they been proposed before the editors started receiving reader complaints,” Dhillon remarked.

Dhillon also expressed frustration with the HIR’s handling of the situation, suggesting that the editors might not fully understand the complexities of the Khalistan movement. “They seem to think that me presenting the Khalistan movement in a certain way is a matter of my opinion, rather than what is like the actual situation on the ground,” she said in an interview.

In response, Black and Place acknowledged that the HIR was reviewing its editorial process. “We have begun instituting stronger editorial checks on all reporting in order to improve content and coverage,” they stated. They also mentioned efforts to expand the magazine’s faculty advisory network to better handle complex regional issues.