Sanket Kiraati
In 2020, Australian government found a nest of spies had uncovered secret surveillance of the local Sikh community and expelled two Indian operatives from Australia. This has been confirmed with Australian intelligence agency that the spies were operating for the Indian foreign intelligence service, this “nest of spies” had monitored Australia’s diaspora community, tried to obtain classified information about Australia’s trade relationships, and asked a public servant about “security protocols at a major airport”.
The identification of the spies comes after concerns about India’s ostensible targeting of the Sikh community in countries around the world. Sikhs originate from the Punjab region of India and follow the religion of Sikhism. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Indian government suppressed a movement for a separate Sikh state, called Khalistan.
Australia’s Indian diaspora was dominated by Sikhs and others from the Punjab region.Punjabi was the fastest-growing language in Australia between 2016 and 2021, increasing by 80 per cent, according to the Census. Around 210,000 people in Australia identified their religion as Sikhism in 2021, a number that has almost tripled since 2011. While there did not seem to be much momentum for Khalistan in India, support appeared to have risen among diasporas in countries like Australia, the United States and Canada in the past decade.
This is a transnational movement and they’ve been doing things the Indians consider to be provocative, like holding these so-called referendums amongst the Sikh community to gauge the amount of support for a separate Sikh state in India. These referendums have no official standing but that makes the Indian government pretty unhappy and it stirs up parts of the Sikh community as well. People could understands why the Indian government may not want to see another Sikh insurgency, which brought a lot of suffering to people in India, but now this is in Australia, sending spies to Australia and ordering monitoring Australia local Sikh community cannot be acceptable.
India ‘s nest of spies has the ability to monitor people’s social media, to target their devices, to breach their cybersecurity which allows for them to target a wider range of people, and at a pretty low cost. The Sikh community and other diasporas in Australia have “good reason” to be concerned about being targeted, especially as technology makes it easier to surveil and harass diaspora communities. It’s not just Sikh communities that are being targeted.
The evidence shows that surveillance of those in the Chinese, Persian, African and Myanmar communities has also been documented. Australia is a multicultural country and welcomes in diaspora communities, new Australians cannot be harassed and curtailed in the freedoms they should have as Australians, there’s a responsibility on the Australian government to put in place strong policies to address foreign interference. There’s no doubt that India has crossed the line in these areas, and it has caused big problems. It’s a huge threat to Australia.
