India to continue denying visas to pro-Khalistanis despite criticism

TILL 2016, DELHI MAINTAINED A SIGNIFICANT BLACKLIST OF SEPARATISTS WHEN NAMES OF SOME WERE TAKEN OFF IT AMID INDIA'S OUTREACH EFFORT

- Anirudh Bhattacharyya

TORONTO: A recent article in a Canadian media outlet argued that India was interfering in the country's domestic affairs by withholding visas from pro-Khalistan elements unless they disavowed separatism. The piece cited a visa refusal in 2016 for a person who refused to disassociate himself from the secessionist movement.

What the apparently investigative piece missed, beyond the obvious that visa issuance is a sovereign right of any country including Canada, was context. Prior to 2016, New Delhi maintained a significant blacklist of pro-Khalistan figures abroad who were not permitted visas. That list, first came into existence in the 1980s and expanded until New Delhi decided on an outreach effort aimed at weaning away separatists from a cause that had little resonance in Punjab.

That process began in late 2015, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited London and met with, among others, Jasdev Singh Rai, director of the Sikh Human Rights Forum based in the United Kingdom, who later began back-channel discussions with separatists in Canada, visiting the Greater Toronto Area or GTA and the Metro Vancouver region. In a statement released in April 2016, Rai said he "raised issues of black lists and visas with representatives of Indian High Commission in Canada" and that "These are being taken seriously. Some people have already been taken off the lists".

It was part of an attempt to reset the relation between New Delhi and Khalistani sympathisers overseas, particularly in Canada, by the new government after it assumed office in 2015. There was plenty of suspicion present. The secessionists sought a neutral venue for the dialogue, outside India, "in a place where all parties are free to express themselves".