For Australia’s anti-China lobby, there’s no such thing as being too close to India. Celebrations of its economic success, in contrast to the growing narrative of doom around China, and the importance of cultivating ever-closer relationships with the government of Narendra Modi, flow from the pens of our most senior media Sinophobes.
You can only imagine the high dudgeon that would erupt from Peter Hartcher or Greg Sheridan if China followed the path of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and began murdering critics and opponents in other countries, with little effort to disguise it — indeed, the very point being to signal that nowhere is safe from the regime.
Except that’s exactly what Australia’s Five Eyes partner Canada — which like Australia has been deeply unpopular with the Chinese government for daring to criticise its interference in Canadian politics — believes the Modi government has done.
According to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, there are “credible allegations” that India was involved in the shooting of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Vancouver. There are now claims Canadian intelligence services had warned Nijjar that he had been targeted for assassination by “mercenaries”. Trudeau kicked out India’s chief spy from India’s high commission in Ottawa, to which Modi, who has furiously denied the allegation, retaliated by expelling a Canadian diplomat.
An interesting absence from the response to and coverage of the incident is that no-one is shocked that the Modi government might actually engage in murdering its critics abroad — certainly not in the way that, say, the idea of Trudeau having a political opponent shot on the streets of Mumbai would be shocking.
That’s because, for all the glowing coverage of India’s economic growth and Modi’s popularity, we know his government is murderous and fascist. Modi is directly implicated in the 2002 Gujarat riots that saw at least 800 Indian Muslims murdered. Under Modi, anti-Muslim hate rallies are a routine feature of Indian life — often led by members of Modi’s party. Modi has pursued laws intended to disenfranchise Muslims. Vigilantism, lynching and mob violence against Muslims, fuelled by far-right figures as well as BJP party members, are increasingly common.
Modi’s party has also been working to drive political opponents out of Parliament, as part of a litany of human rights abuses which saw the US State Department last year issue a lengthy report detailing:
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful and arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by police and prison officials; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners or detainees … restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence or threats of violence, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression … restrictions on freedom of movement and on the right to leave the country; refoulement of refugees; serious government corruption; harassment of domestic and international human rights organisations; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including domestic and intimate partner violence, sexual violence, workplace violence, child, early and forced marriage, femicide and other forms of such violence; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of national/racial/ethnic and minority groups based on religious affiliation, social status or sexual orientation; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex persons; and existence of forced and compulsory labor.
With such a record, would extrajudicial killing in another country be a significant step further?
Had China engaged in it, the loud denunciations of such conduct would be all over the op-ed pages of our newspapers. Instead, the Albanese government has merely spoken of “concerning reports” — continuing its policy of ducking for cover on the human rights abuses of the Modi government.
Problem is, Canada is a Five Eyes partner, so there can be no plausible deniability or wilful ignorance on the part of Australia about the intelligence the Canadians have gathered. Which leaves the problem of what Australia does if its carefully cultivated bulwark against Chinese aggression turns out to be a fascist state that engages in acts of terrorism in Western countries.
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Indeed. This is more or less the same as the excuses used by Western democracies for turning a blind eye to the thuggery and murders committed by the German government in the 1930s. The unfortunate excesses of that regime were seen as mere peccadilloes when set against its value as a staunch and reliable opponent of Stalin and the Soviet Union. This attitude persisted all the way through the Night of the Long Knives, Krystallnacht, the Anschluss and much more. It only ended with the revelation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Germany and the USSR in 1939, which secretly included an agreement on both invading Poland together and sharing it between them. Bit of a sickener, that was.
The roots of Modi’s extreme Hindu nationalist political party and its paramilitary wing have direct links to European far-right parties of that time (which I would like to simply name but the ModBot gets over-excited). If history follows the same lines our government will continue to grovel to Modi until the day he signs a military cooperation pact with China, which if it follows the precedent will include secret protocols on a carve-up of the region giving various territories to each. That would be a bit of a sickener too.
The modbot stops you naming far-right European parties? Let’s test: Conservative and Unionist Party. There, said it.
Most amusing. However, at that time, the Conservative and Unionist Party, for all its faults, was pretty much what it says on the tin, and was not in sum far-right. It’s shift to that position is much more recent.
Agh! Sorry! Correction: Its shift…
How do I put this sensitively (though is still expect a strong reaction).
In my local area, there are numerous Chinese restaurants of different varieties – I have never seen one with Chinese government livery, though happy to be corrected if others have seen this.
On the other hand, I was very excited for a new vegetarian indian restaurant opening near by, until it put up posters and banners festooned with pictures of Modi.
While we cannot guess the motivations of every migrant coming to Australia, the pro-Modi indian group is far more visible, and I suspect a substantial electoral issue in several Australian electorates. That could well be part of the problem.
I agree with what you say, with a comment on the first part though. Indian is a nationality, whereas Chinese is also an ethnicity – many people of Chinese ethnicity have little to do with the PRC.
Less than half the Indian population is Hindi .
The rest of the majority is made up of people who prefer their own language or English (more widely spoken than any other language throughout the subcontinent – walk through any bazaar when there is Test and it’s the BBC on every radio) to being forced to speak and deal in a foreign tongue when conducting in official business.
Fun fact – there are almost as many muslims there as in Pakistan and few, if any, have the slightest desire to emigrate to the soi-disant Land of the Pure (as named by the alcoholic Jinnah).
Irrelevant.
Chinese is not an ethnicity, but a nation and diaspora.
There are many ethnicities in China, the Han people being currently the majority and the Zhuang people being the largest minority. They prodominantly reside in Guangxi province which borders Vietnam and where I was lucky enough to live for six years.
It is an autonomous region that contains the aforementioned Zhuang minority but also the greatest number of other minorities in China.
Fun fact: the One Child Policy only applied to the Han people of China and the minorities were free to have as many kids as they want.
The usual hyperventilating, a few years back, about white racism when a couple of Indian students were beaten up in Victoria went very quiet when the perps. turned out to be RSS wannabes – hindutva nutters supporting Modi who remains an active member of the…err, activist tendency hiding beneath the skirts…err, lungi…of the BJP (hint,it’s IN the name!).
We have over 2.1 million people of Indian birth in Australia, right now.
Thanks to Howard, Abbott, and Morrison/ Dutton, the temporary migration was also streamlined so that IT worker and baggage handlers……….. These people don’t actually count in the 2.1 million who can vote and charter trains and who have given Modi a rock star welcomes.
A large political problem………
Sadly, Albo’s initial response on this issue – burbling something about a Bruce Springsteen concert – was incoherent and embarrassing.
Modi’s BJP is linked to the extremist RSS movement, and has been trying to sanitize its terrorist past, just as some of Modi’s own MPs have been trying to rehabilitate the Hindu extremist who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi (see Nathuram Godse: The mystery surrounding Mahatma Gandhi’s killer – BBC News).
I have personally met Indian historians who have survived being physically assaulted by rock-throwing Modi supporters for questioning Modi’s distortions of Indian history.
Rhetoric about Modi’s India being a bulwark of democracy in the region is about as credible as arguing that, say, Victor Orban’s government in Hungary is a leader in human rights. Both Orban and Modi are authoritarian ultra-nationalists.
The way I remember it, a little more than a decade ago
Israeli terrorMossad operatives murdered a Palestinian, having entered Dubai using a variety of forged passports. A number of these were Australian, hence putting Australian travellers under suspicion and potentially in danger.The Australian government, of course, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel and denounced them as a terror state.
Just kidding!! The Australian government expelled a single Israeli diplomat as a pro-forma response and continued to support “the only democracy in the Middle East”. I think we can see from our recent history pretty just how Australia is likely to… what’s the opposite of “react” again?
Look, I don’t think Greg Sheridan can be used as an exemplar of the ultra-hawk foreign policy pundit anymore. Why? Well after reading his lengthy hagiography of some big shed happy clappy pastor in Perth (via the Loon Pond of course) I think he has gone beyond the lunatic fringe and is currently walking the streets of Sydney clutching a spittle flecked bible and screeching that the end is nigh. So, Bernard, you’ll have to find someone else keep company with Hartcher in the dim recesses of the right foreign policy echo chamber.
Well done Patrick I read about half of it and thought Yeah, Nah