Page after page, filled with flimsy details, the indictment unsealed in New York this week describes a chilling plot: a criminal operative, on orders from a government official in India, tried to arrange the killing of a Sikh American US soil.
As the plan developed, according to court documents, it became more and more brazen. When a prominent Sikh was gunned down in Canada in June in what prosecutors said was a related killing, the officer was told to speed up in New York, not slow down, the indictment says. And they were ordered to proceed just as the Indian prime minister was on a red carpet visit to Washington.
The plot was ultimately foiled, the indictment says. But his damning account leaves open a burning question: Why would the Indian government take such a risk?
The Sikh secessionist movement targeted in the plot is a shadow of what it once was and poses no more than a small threat to India’s national security, even as Indian officials see a new generation of Sikhs in the diaspora as more supportive supporters. radicalized by the cause. Prosecuting an active American activist in the movement would appear to be a risk to the momentum of US-India relations as New Delhi expands its trade and defense ties with Washington in unprecedented ways.
The United States’ intense courtship of India to counter China may give the Indian government a sense that there is little it can do to sever ties. But many diplomats, former officials and analysts in New Delhi are examining two other possible explanations for the plot: either that it was sanctioned from above with an eye on India’s domestic political calendar, or that it was the work of a government element scoundrel trying to satisfy the desire of the political leaders.
The US reaction to the plot so far, in which officials have expressed their concerns to India privately, suggests it may just be a wrinkle in the relationship. This measured response, according to some diplomats in New Delhi, is a sign that US officials may have information to suggest that the plot did not reach very high in India.
Those diplomats also point to the sloppiness of the plot, as detailed in court documents, which seems at odds with the sophistication of some senior Indian security officials. The indictment claims that the plan was foiled by a US government informant.
Those who suspect a more coordinated plot note that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as he prepares for elections early next year, has had his tough-guy image bruised by major Chinese incursions into Indian territory that have laid bare the relative military weakness of his country.
By pursuing Sikh separatists on Western soil, officials may have been seeking small victories on new frontiers to help bolster Modi’s strongman image among his supporters, diplomats, former officials and analysts said.
And by operating in the gray areas of crime and intermediaries, they said, India would be able to plausibly deny wrongdoing while still sending signals of Modi’s strength to supporters at home.
India’s intelligence services have long been accused of orchestrating targeted killings in the country’s immediate neighbors, where a chaotic environment usually ensures few consequences.
But India has now shown arrogance in thinking that what worked in places like Pakistan would also work in places like the United States, said some observers, most of whom asked not to be identified because of the atmosphere of fear and retaliation in India. Today. The result – a plot against an American citizen, foiled by a US government informant and exposed in federal court – is an embarrassing and damaging development.
Analysts said the Modi administration’s structure could potentially explain elements of recent developments. Modi’s top lieutenants are often isolated and sometimes act unilaterally. And his national security adviser, Ajit Doval, a deeply knowledgeable and fixture on India’s political scene, is known not as a shaky military scholar and diplomat, but as a former domestic intelligence chief with a penchant for operations. secrets in the field.
“The crucial Parliament elections are months away,” said KC Singh, a former Indian ambassador. “The BJP’s hypernationalism plays well at the national level,” he added, referring to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Singh said the Modi government’s amplification of the Sikh separatist issue, and pursuit of its most explicit elements as worthy objectives at all costs, was part of a pattern to project Modi as the nation’s protector. While the discovery of the conspiracy may be embarrassing globally, within India it sends the message that its government is working to neutralize the threats.
India has declared Sikh separatists abroad as terrorists, while Western nations see them as activists who have sometimes crossed the line with calls for violence but whose right to free speech is protected by law. The activists’ belligerence, however, including targeting Indian diplomats with “overt and implicit violence,” made matters worse, Singh said.
“The stage was set for an accident,” he said.
India’s foreign ministry said it considered the allegation a matter of concern and that the government had appointed a high-level commission of inquiry to look into it.
An Indian security official familiar with the developments rejected the idea that any plot was officially sanctioned and said Indian agencies exercise strong controls to avoid rogue elements.
Opinions were divided among analysts and diplomats in New Delhi over how much the top leadership would have known of a plot like the one described in the indictment. Some have said details in the court documents could indicate the work of a rogue element. But most said that, because of the risks involved and the context – a friendly country of strategic importance at a particularly delicate time – such a plot would require authorization at very high levels and would be difficult for the perpetrators to hide. dishonest actors.
At these higher levels there are officials who sometimes seem to operate on different tracks.
S. Jaishankar, Modi’s foreign minister, is the face of India’s diplomatic rise and strategic calculations, and is widely acclaimed for his geopolitical acuity. In speeches and interviews, he eloquently makes the case for India charting its own path by dismantling arcane and unjust global structures.
But as a former diplomat who joined Modi’s party and administration only after the prime minister won a second term in 2019, he remains a newcomer to the inner political circle.
In the center sits a more trusted and shadowy lieutenant, who has been at Modi’s side since he took office in 2014. The official, Doval, the national security adviser, occupies a unique position: a great strategic thinker, though. one with his fingers still dipped in security operations after working for decades as an intelligence officer.
Like many senior spies, Mr. Doval, 78, is the subject of many legends. He made a name for himself precisely on the issue that is re-emerging now: countering the Sikh secessionist movement. Doval was reportedly a key officer of the local intelligence bureau involved in operations to quell the Sikh insurgency in the Punjab region at its bloody peak in the 1980s.
After a storied career filled with stories, true or exaggerated, of secret triumphs, he retired as head of India’s Intelligence Bureau, which handles national intelligence, in 2004.
Since Modi hired him as national security advisor, Doval has preferred the field approach to work rather than the traditionally academic one that is familiar to the American system, and especially also to the Indian one.
It has often appeared in the remaining Kashmir region and neighboring countries plagued by political maneuvering. He is seen as India’s top voice on issues bordering India and in the wider region stretching to Central Asia and Russia, essentially duplicating some of Jaishankar’s work as a top diplomat.
“Just to be clear: Modi is his ‘brains’ on all political issues. And officials like Doval and Jaishankar are just enforcers,” Bharat Karnad said, an Indian national security expert associated with the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research. “That said, the prime minister never deals with trivial matters.”
An article written by Doval in 2011, when he was out of government service, may offer a window into his thinking on Sikh separatism, which diplomats say remains an emotional issue for his generation of officers, witnesses to an era of violence. He advocated an active approach to national security, focused on countering and responding to threats, rather than an approach that emphasized more the analysis of the same.
“We focus disproportionately on the threat: its intensity, its manifestations, the damage caused, etc. – rather than on the required response,” Doval wrote. “National security is essentially about what the state does, or should do, to effectively address anticipated threats, at both the strategic and tactical levels.”
Yasir himself contributed to the research.