Un­mind­ful of the in­ter­na­tional op­pro­brium against In­dia as it slipped to Rank 161 in 2023 on the World Press Free­dom In­dex of Re­porters Sans Fron­tiers, the Naren­dra Modi-led right-wing Bhar­tiya Janata Party gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to play Or­wellian Big Brother through arm-twist­ing so­cial me­dia plat­forms into block­ing truth­ful doc­u­men­taries about Pun­jab and In­dia. The lat­est to be blocked is the For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent -Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion -ABC doc­u­men­tary en­ti­tled Sikhs, Spies, and Mur­der, which in­ves­ti­gates In­di­a’s ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing plans on for­eign soil. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh analy­ses the role of the In­dian state and records the view­point of Dal Khalsa which fea­tures in the doc­u­men­tary from the home­land Pun­jab.

Caught on the back­foot with the speech of Cana­dian Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau in the Cana­dian Par­lia­ment about the mur­der of Hard­eep Singh Ni­j­jar, a Cana­dian cit­i­zen on Cana­dian soil, fol­lowed by the US in­dict­ment of an In­dian op­er­a­tive in the at­tempted mur­der of Sikh sov­er­eignty ac­tivist Gur­pat­want Singh Pannu, fur­ther fol­lowed by raised eye­brows by Five Eye Group coun­tries, barely a week ago, In­dia vir­tu­ally owned-up its role even though it tried to cir­cum­vent the is­sue by pass­ing on the blame to so-called rogue el­e­ments. This high­lights In­di­a’s mount­ing frus­tra­tion with ex­poses about high-pro­file killings and at­tempted mur­ders by West­ern gov­ern­ments and the world me­dia.

As the is­sue gar­nered in­ter­na­tional at­ten­tion, ma­jor in­ter­na­tional chan­nels have vis­ited the Pun­jab -the home­land of the Sikhs, and in­ter­acted with gov­ern­men­tal of­fi­cials in Canada and the United States, with of course, the In­dian gov­ern­ment al­ways un­avail­able to an­swer dif­fi­cult ques­tions of trans­parency and hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions -tak­ing cue straight from Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi for whom me­dia per­son­nel are un­touch­ables.

In­di­a’s Re­port Card of Cen­sor­ship of Doc­u­men­taries First, the BBC doc­u­men­tary In­dia -The Modi Ques­tion Sec­ond, the CBC doc­u­men­tary -Con­tact to Kill Now, ABC doc­u­men­tary Sikhs, Spies and Mur­der Which will be the next?

First, the BBC -British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion doc­u­men­tary In­dia –The Modi Ques­tion was blocked in Feb­ru­ary 2023, then early this week the CBC -Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion doc­u­men­tary in The Fifth Es­tate sec­tion en­ti­tled Con­tact to Kill was pre­vented from be­ing screened on YouTube and now a day ago For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent ABC -Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion doc­u­men­tary Sikhs, Spies and Mur­der has been told to be off air af­ter be­com­ing vi­ral on YouTube in three days since re­lease.

I viewed the doc­u­men­tary Sikh Spies and Mur­der as soon as it was on YouTube and was to write about it in de­tail. Want­ing to see it an­other time, I was con­fronted by the Google-owned YouTube say­ing “The con­tent is cur­rently un­avail­able in this coun­try be­cause of an or­der from the gov­ern­ment re­lated to na­tional se­cu­rity or pub­lic or­der. For more de­tails about gov­ern­ment re­moval re­quests, please visit Google Trans­parency Re­port.”

Sur­pris­ingly, Google’s YouTube com­plied rather eas­ily. YouTube in­formed ABC that they had re­ceived an or­der from In­di­a’s Min­istry of In­for­ma­tion and Broad­cast­ing over the up­load of Sikhs, Spies, and Mur­der.

YouTube said the spe­cific or­der was “con­fi­den­tial” but said it came un­der In­di­a’s In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Act (2000). Does Google have a choice?

The In­dian re­ac­tion is decades old –“Do not med­dle in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of In­dia. We do not do such things.” While this seemed to hold wa­ter with the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity for In­dia some decades ago, in this day and age, with am­ple trans­parency in pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal af­fairs world­wide, In­dia has re­duced it­self to be the laugh­ing stock of the world by putting bar­ri­ers over free­dom of ex­pres­sion.

For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent ABC doc­u­men­tal­ist Avani Dias says in the video that the ABC crew faced pres­sure and ques­tion­ing from In­dian crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cials and de­spite per­mis­sion were not al­lowed to film a pub­lic func­tion at the Wa­gah bor­der.

If In­dia goes in­ter­na­tional in its killing spree, how dif­fi­cult it is for In­dia to ac­cept that the in­ter­na­tional me­dia and world pow­ers will thor­oughly ex­am­ine their hu­man rights and civil lib­er­ties prin­ci­ples and prac­tices?

For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent ABC doc­u­men­tal­ist Avani Dias says in the video that the ABC crew faced pres­sure and ques­tion­ing from In­dian crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cials and de­spite per­mis­sion were not al­lowed to film a pub­lic func­tion at the Wa­gah bor­der.

As their web­site says, “ABC stands by the story.” ABC spokesper­son said, “It was metic­u­lously re­searched and bal­anced, sought an ar­ray of per­spec­tives, and up­holds the high­est ed­i­to­r­ial stan­dards. We de­fend the au­di­ence’s fun­da­men­tal right to ac­cess this story, re­gard­less of their lo­ca­tion.”

ABC stands by the story. It was metic­u­lously re­searched and bal­anced, sought an ar­ray of per­spec­tives, and up­holds the high­est ed­i­to­r­ial stan­dards. 

Visit the ABC web­site to see the video to see Sikhs, Spies, and Mur­der and dis­cern the fa­cade be­hind which In­dia hides.

For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent ABC doc­u­men­tal­ist Avani Dias toured Pun­jab and spoke ex­ten­sively to the fam­ily of slain Sikh ac­tivist Hard­eep Singh Ni­j­jar and Sikh sov­er­eignty ad­vo­cate and Dal Khalsa leader Kan­war Pal Singh. Cov­er­ing the whole can­vas, she spoke to for­mer In­dian spies and ex­perts for their un­der­stand­ing. In con­trast, the In­dian gov­ern­ment chose to re­main silent and turned down her re­quests for an of­fi­cial ver­sion.

Kan­war Pal Singh of the Dal Khalsa dur­ing his long in­nings in the doc­u­men­tary spoke with a straight bat, with­out minc­ing words. He stated head­long, “We want our in­de­pen­dent coun­try Khal­is­tan.” When asked whether he feared death, he said, “No.”

Asked about the ban on the ABC doc­u­men­tary, Dal Khalsa leader Kan­war Pal Singh told me that, “The days of In­dia fool­ing us and the world are over. Modi or his shenani­gans can­not ab­solve him or his gov­ern­ment of dic­ta­to­r­ial func­tion­ing. Dis­sent can­not be crushed by despots.”

“In­dia is caught in its web of anti-mi­nor­ity lead­ers, in­com­pe­tent spies, and ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings by state and non-state ac­tors. In­dia be­came a fas­cist state when they at­tacked Dar­bar Sahib in June 1984 and since then the de­gree of fas­cism has grown ex­po­nen­tially. Des­per­ate moves like ban­ning of doc­u­men­taries ex­poses them even more,” he added.

In­dia can­not fool the world any­more. Modi or his shenani­gans can­not ab­solve him or his gov­ern­ment of dic­ta­to­r­ial func­tion­ing. Dis­sent can­not be crushed by despots.

Kan­war Pal Singh, Se­nior Leader, Dal Khalsa

In his re­ac­tion to the YouTube ban on the ABC doc­u­men­tary, Dal Khal­sa’s Work­ing Pres­i­dent Paramjit Singh Mand told WSN, “The Modi gov­ern­ment can­not si­lence our voices. Such cheap and child­ish tac­tics are signs of ar­ro­gant and un­de­mo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship. They have tried such moves in the past but to no avail. Our re­solve and de­ter­mi­na­tion to Sikh sov­er­eignty is stead­fast. No gov­ern­ment can stop us from ex­pos­ing their mis­deeds, de­signs, ma­neou­vres and mur­ders.”

Which will be the next doc­u­men­tary to be banned by In­dia? What will be In­di­a’s Rank in the World Press Free­dom In­dex in 2024?