Pannun’s ‘Khalistani Army’ Push In Canada, Rings Alarm Bells

WASHINGTON, DC/OTTAWA -The recent announcement by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, whom India has designated a terrorist, about forming a Khalistan Army and Sikh Homeland Security force, along with videos showing Sikh men training with semi-automatic rifles on Canadian soil, has raised concerns about the potential impact on the Sikh community.

Pannun, the US-based general counsel of the banned-in-India group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), recently released a video calling on diaspora Sikhs to participate in a so-called Khalistan “Referendum” in Indianapolis, the capital of the US state of Indiana. He also floated the idea of a “Sikh Homeland Security” force, or Khalistan Army, according to a report in ‘Khalsa Vox’.

“These are not abstract political arguments. They are calculated provocations aimed at restless young men already navigating the pressures of migration, identity, and easy money. The result is visible and ugly: a small minority of Sikh youth in the United States and Canada drifting into drugs, illegal guns, and gang life, damaging their own communities and the cities that host them,” the report stated.

“Pannun’s messaging does not create every troubled youth, but it supplies a ready-made narrative that romanticizes defiance and externalizes every failure onto India. When a young man already exposed to street culture hears that the real war is against the Indian state and that arming or ‘securing’ the community is legitimate, the leap from online rhetoric to real weapons becomes

Canadian intelligence has previously identified Khalistani extremists as a national security concern. It said the pattern of inflammatory videos followed by displays of force raises concerns about the potential for extremist rhetoric to overlap with criminal activity.

Highlighting what it described as evidence on the ground, the report said, “Across the Greater Toronto Area and British Columbia, Indo-Canadian organized crime networks — many drawing recruits from Punjabi and Sikh backgrounds — have become major players in drug trafficking, extortion, and targeted shootings. Canadian police operations have repeatedly netted young men of Punjabi origin in drive-by shootings, home invasions, and firearms seizures in Brampton, Mississauga, and Surrey.”

“In one recent case, three Punjabi youths received sentences ranging from 25 months to five years after a shooting and explosive incident in Surrey. Extortion rings have systematically targeted Sikh-owned businesses, filming the attacks and circulating the footage to terrorize the community. Youth as young as 16 and 17 have been charged with pointing loaded guns at officers or participating in contract-style shootings,” it noted.

The report stressed that extremists must be called out for what it described as forces of division that ultimately endanger the communities they claim to defend. It further said Canadian and US authorities should take seriously the overt display of paramilitary activity and networks that draw young people into transnational criminal activity.

“Sikh community leaders, gurdwaras, and families have an equal duty to reject the glamorization of guns and the politics of permanent grievance. The future of Sikh youth in the diaspora will be decided not by referendums staged for cameras, but by whether the next generation chooses education, enterprise, and peaceful citizenship over the dead-end of drugs, gangs, and imported radicalism,” ‘Khalsa Vox’ said. (IANS)