Gurpatwant Pannun supports Rahul Gandhi’s statements on Sikhs in India

Archive photo of Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun | Photo source: AP

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American pro-Khalistan lawyer, has supported Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s stand on the Sikh issue in India, stating that Mr Gandhi “has justified the SFJ’s global campaign for a Khalistan referendum”.

Mr. Pannun is the lead attorney for the U.S.-based Sikhs for Justice (SFJ).

In its statement issued on Wednesday (September 11, 2024) — which Indian saw — Mr. Pannun said Mr. Gandhi’s quip about the “existential threat to Sikhs in India” was bold and historically accurate.

Mr. Pannun was referring to a speech Mr. Gandhi delivered on Monday (September 9, 2024) at a Hindu-American gathering in Herndon, Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington, DC, in which the Congress leader accused the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of considering some religions, languages ​​and communities inferior to others and said that the fight in India was about that, not politics.

“Addressing a rally in Washington, attended by a large number of Khalistan Sikh supporters, Rahul Gandhi justified the SFJ’s global campaign for a referendum on Khalistan by stating, ‘The fight in India is whether a Sikh will be allowed to wear a turban and kada and go to gurudwara,’” Mr Pannun’s statement read.

“Rahul’s statement on the ‘existential threat to Sikhs in India’ is not only bold and pioneering but also firmly rooted in historical facts of what Sikhs have had to face under successive regimes in India since 1947 and also reaffirms SFI’s stance on the justification for the Punjab independence referendum aimed at establishing a Sikh homeland, Khalistan,” he added.

Mr. Pannun, wanted in India on terrorism charges, is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Last November, U.S. federal prosecutors charged Indian citizen Nikhil Gupta with working with an Indian government employee in a foiled plot to kill Pannun in New York.

In response to these allegations, India set up a high-level commission of inquiry to investigate information provided by the United States about the conspiracy.