India should make it costly for UK to still use such colonial-era puppets – Firstpost

When Khalistani thugs breached the security cover of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar last week, it brought into the open what was until then an open secret: That Britain had become a safe haven for anti-India outfits of all hues. Maybe the authorities in London might be just a shade better than those in Ottawa in curbing the dangerous tendencies of these radical groups openly targeting India and its territorial integrity, but the situation in the UK has been equally precarious.

There are several reasons for this. The most obvious being Britain’s failure to come to terms with the loss of its colonial grandeur. Maybe it hasn’t yet forgiven India for pulling the colonial rug under its feet in 1947, when the colossal British empire fell like a pack of cards in one country after another in Asia and Africa.

From being an “empire without sunset” to a “random nation”, as US Vice President JD Vance reportedly said during a recent meeting, Britain’s decline has been too drastic, too soon. It so happens sometimes, especially when the fall is too steep, that the physical body gets transitioned into a third-rate state, but the mind still carries the impression of its imperial grandeur of the yore!

Then, of course, Britain’s relations with India have a Pakistani angle. London has traditionally seen itself as a self-appointed guardian of Islamabad and its interests in the global arena. The British ruling class’s empathy with, first, the idea of Pakistan, and then its conspiratorial act to get this done in the real world, makes it a relationship for all seasons. Historically, the role Mohammed Ali Jinnah played in the creation of Pakistan was paramount, but so was the support provided by Winston Churchill so that Britain could “keep a bit of India” after the latter’s independence.

As Narendra Singh Sarila writes in his seminal book, The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition, the British, and even Americans, by the mid-1940s, were quite wary of growing Soviet influence in the region, and since they were uncomfortable with Jawaharlal Nehru’s Leftist worldview, they, especially the British, gave their blessings to Jinnah’s Pakistan project. This created a sense of sympathy and support for Pakistan, especially vis-à-vis India, in the British ruling class—and this continues till date.

Rising Khalistani spectre in Britain

Justin Trudeau’s Canada has gained global notoriety for its Khalistan connections, but Britain isn’t far behind. Parties across the political divide have been deeply sympathetic towards the Khalistani cause. In fact, some of the key ministers in the Keir Starmer Cabinet, currently engaged in the Free Trade Agreement with India, openly participate in Khalistani events.

In November 2024, for instance, Preet Kaur Gill, a British Member of Parliament for Edgbaston and Parliamentary Private Secretary to UK Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, attended, along with others, a Gurpurab event organised by a pro-Khalistan outfit. Interestingly, Reynolds has been a key negotiator in the India-UK free trade agreement (FTA) with the Indian counterparts. Before anyone gives Gill, and by extension Reynolds, a benefit of doubt, saying the attendance might have been the result of an honest mistake, one needs to be reminded that the former, in 2020, had openly called for the right of ‘self-determination’ for Sikhs in India and even accused the Indian government of threatening Sikhs in the UK.

Given this close nexus between Britain’s political class and Khalistanis, it was only a matter of time when the latter openly attacked India and its leadership. In fact, in March 2023, the Khalistanis had attacked the Indian High Commission in London. Later that very year, in September to be precise, they had even stopped an Indian envoy from entering a gurdwara in Scotland. Britain did nothing—all in the name of freedom of expression!

Britain’s, and for that matter Canada’s, tryst with Khalistanis too has historical roots, going as far back as the early 20th century when the Ghadar movement was at its peak. Alarmed by the growing influence of the Ghadar, the British intelligence network both in India and Canada hired one William Hopkinson, who had previously worked for the police in Calcutta before moving to Canada. His brief was “to infiltrate the Indian community, particularly the gurdwaras, to gather information and subvert any anti-British movement from the inside”, as Sanjeev Sanyal writes in his book, Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won its Freedom.

Hopkinson was provided with enough resources to infiltrate pro-British elements both within the Sikh community as well as in gurdwaras. The pro-India, nationalist elements were systematically targeted and weeded out, with some even killed. The British colonial government steadily invested in the separate identity of Sikhs, wedging a deep divide between Hindus and Sikhs. It was Colonial Britain, thus, which fathered the so-called Khalistani movement, just the same way it had helped the idea of Pakistan gain ideological as well as political currency. This explains why it is so difficult for the West, especially Britain, to cut its ties with Pakistan and Khalistan.

So, what should India do? To begin with, India should call off the FTA talks, which would hurt the UK more. But in the long term, the country, taking a cue or two from Donald Trump’s America, should come up with a policy of reciprocity in the India-UK relationship.

Let the British get the same visa and other treatments as they give to Indians. And yes, the policy of reciprocity should also apply to the security of the British high commission, diplomats, and political leaders. If Khalistanis can be allowed to breach the security cover of an Indian leader, a Russian protester too can do the same to a visiting British leader in Delhi.

The UK has had it too easy with India thus far. It should now be said, in no uncertain terms, that diplomacy cannot be a one-way traffic. Britain isn’t a colonial power now and should stop behaving like one. Above all, it needs to get real and shun its ties with its colonial-era puppets. Else, it should be ready to pay for such colonial hangovers, which have long lost their purpose as bargaining chips for the West, especially the UK.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.