Modi's Indian government and its allies accused of spying, silencing Sikh critics and pushing its far-right ideology in Australia

16/06/2024

Harjinder Singh. (Four Corners: Mridula Amin)

The long arm of the Indian state is reaching Australians and threatening national security.

Late one night in January 2023, Harjinder Singh's phone rang while he drove his taxi around Melbourne. It was a man he'd never met, speaking Punjabi, with a veiled threat: Stop the referendum going ahead or "the result will be bad".

A flag blows outside Harjinder's house for a nation that doesn't exist. The Australian citizen is part of a group of Sikhs fighting for a state to secede from India and become its own country: Khalistan.

The non-binding referendum Harjinder was helping organise — designed to gauge support for Khalistan — had headed to Brisbane a few months later when his phone rang again.

"I got a call at midnight, and I was scared … [He said], 'You're not listening to us, so be careful.'"

Harjinder wasn't deterred.

Then, he said, Indian authorities sent people to his parents' home in Punjab saying they should get their son to "stop" his activism in Australia.

"[They said], 'We got orders from the Indian authorities. If anyone's doing the opposite against the country, we got orders to kill them,'" Harjinder said. His parents were scared.

Two months later in Vancouver, fellow Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was executed outside a Sikh temple in broad daylight. The Canadian government has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration of orchestrating the assassination, which India denies.

Harjinder's wife Simerdeep Kaur says she's constantly worrying about what could happen. "I'm thinking about Nijjar, the family, like how [will] they survive now," she said.

"It's scary. I feel so scared sometimes."

As the federal government embraces Narendra Modi and his administration as an important partner, the long arm of the Indian state is reaching Australia, silencing critics and threatening members of the diaspora.

A Four Corners investigation has uncovered the promotion of far-right Hindu ideology, the quiet amassing of political power, and never-before-reported details of a "nest of spies".

Spies

In 2020, India-Australia relations seemed better than ever. Trade deals were blossoming and a range of defence alliances were being signed in response to China's growing power in the region.

In secret though, Australia was unhappy with India's spy operations in the country.

Indian intelligence officers were trying to gain access to sensitive defence technology and airport security protocols. They were targeting former and current politicians as well as a state police service. Crucially, they were also accused of monitoring the Indian Australian community.

In 2021, Australia's intelligence chief Mike Burgess, without naming India, said his agency had investigated a "nest of spies".

"We confronted the foreign spies, and quietly and professionally removed them," Burgess said.

Four Corners has confirmed at least four intelligence officers were asked to leave Australia. Some had been posing as diplomats in India's high commission.

The expulsions were done secretly. They left one by one. The Modi government, laser-focused on turning India into a respected and strong player on the world stage, thought it had gotten away without public embarrassment.

Greens senator David Shoebridge said Australia should have condemned India over the incursion.

"Not only would've [it] been good to have an honest baseline for our relationship with India, but it would've also sent a message to the diaspora communities here that we've got your back," he said.

Politicians watching this closely say the sheer number of expulsions could put India on par with countries such as Russia and China, notorious for breaking protocols overseas.

Since Modi came to power a decade ago, he's amped up India's intelligence operations. In Modi's telling, it's defending the country from separatist groups, which his administration has labelled "terrorists".

Two alleged assassination plots may show how far his government is willing to go to achieve that.

The diaspora

Moninder Singh is a man with a target on his back.

Canadian authorities have told the Khalistan movement leader he could be killed at any moment.

He arrived at Sydney airport and was soon flanked by four men — his around-the-clock personal protection. Even in Australia, Moninder believes the Indian government is watching.

"We know the risks. When you leave your house to the moment you get back … everything is coordinated," he said.

Moninder is composed and compelling when he speaks, clutching steel beads in his palms. But behind the exterior is a painful memory — the activist killed in Canada last year was his close friend.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Vancouver in a highly coordinated hit involving two cars and six people.

Months earlier, the Indian foreign secretary sent a secret cable to Indian consulates across North America ordering a "sophisticated crackdown" on pro-Khalistan groups it had designated as terrorists.

The memo described Nijjar as an extremist against whom "concrete measures" must be taken, and instructed consulates to cooperate with India's foreign spy service.

The Indian government said the memo was fake, and rejected Canada's accusation it orchestrated the killing. Indian authorities had accused Nijjar of a range of crimes such as leading a terrorist group and transporting ammunition, all of which he denied.

Gurpatwant Pannun, the leader of separatist group Sikhs for Justice, was also the target of an alleged assassination plot by an Indian intelligence officer. US authorities said the hit failed because the hit man hired to carry out the murder was an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Agency.

Moninder now visits Australia frequently for crisis meetings with the Sikh separatist community and to sound an alarm.

"I think in Australia it's brewing," he said of Indian intelligence operations on Australian soil.

"They're already here, they're already interfering and it's very dangerous for the Sikh community here.

"If something isn't checked soon, a country like Australia could be in the same position as Canada in a few years."

Being accused of assassinating a foreign citizen who supported the Khalistan movement is the most extreme of the allegations against India. But Four Corners has uncovered an insidious pattern of threats against Australian critics of the Modi government.

Several Australian Sikh separatists have told Four Corners that Indian authorities have visited their families in India and threatened them due to their loved ones' activism overseas
Two Australians said they were detained in India and questioned after accusations they were involved in the Khalistan movement — one said he was even stopped from returning to Sydney for several days
One man said he had received calls from an Indian intelligence officer while in Australia
Another man claimed he was slapped with criminal charges in India when he did not stop his Sikh activism in Australia. He said he was eventually granted a personal protection visa because the Australian government deemed his life would be in danger if he returned to India

This pattern of threats from Indian authorities has forced some Australians to take a step back from their political work, and many did not want to speak publicly because of fears for their own and their family's safety.

Others, like Harjinder Singh, said they wouldn't be stopped. "Why would we be scared? We are not doing anything wrong," he said.

When the Indian government banned the group Harjinder is a part of, Sikhs for Justice, it said it was drawing on many troubled events in the country's past.

In the 1980s and 90s, the Khalistan movement turned into an armed militancy.

The Sikh bodyguards who assassinated prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 were incensed by her decision to order Indian military to storm Sikhism's holiest site. Thousands of Sikhs were then killed in riots across the country.

Sikh separatists were also accused of being behind the bombing of Air India Flight 182.

Some in the movement haven't ruled out taking up arms again, if necessary, but researchers say it doesn't currently pose any threat.

"We would actually use any means available to protect our movement and people, so I think it's a question for India as to how they want to deal with us," Moninder said.

"At the moment we feel like there's much more we can do on the political front, on the international lobby front, to get to a place where our people would have to actually defend themselves in a different way."

Political inroads

The Modi government's impact is being felt in Australia in other ways.

The Indian diaspora is now one of the largest in Australia, second only to those born in the UK. It's become a powerful force for Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to tap into for support in elections. That's done through a group called the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP), which has a presence in Australia.

Sources have told Four Corners the OFBJP's strategy is to infiltrate politics by first getting elected to local government, then state and ultimately federal parliament.

Four Corners has discovered one of the organisation's founding members in Australia, Rahul Jethi, is a major player in the Liberal Party in the north-west of Sydney.

Jethi attended the organisation's events with India's foreign minister this year.

Jethi is one of former immigration minister Alex Hawke's close deputies. He holds the powerful position of federal electoral conference president, supervising the branches in the federal MP's seat of Mitchell.

Four Corners has been told that Hawke and his allies successfully lobbied councillors in the Hills Shire in Sydney to vote for Jethi's wife Reena as deputy mayor in 2019. Jethi denies this. Four Corners has also linked Jethi to a fundraising war chest for Hawke called The Mitchell Club. Flyers for The Mitchell Club feature an email address accessed by Jethi, although he and Alex Hawke say Jethi has never had access to this email address.

Leaked data shows that in the past five years, Indian-Australians made up a substantial proportion of the new members in about half of the branches of Hawke's electorate. Four Corners has spoken to several branch members who have said Rahul Jethi signed them up.

"Rahul was one of the guys who influenced my decision to join. He said if you listen to us and think about things in the community then you should join the branch," one member said. Another said he and 20 others were recruited into two branches by Jethi.

Jethi told Four Corners he had no current leadership roles in the OFBJP Australia, and that his "responsibilities are the same as any Liberal Party office bearer".

He denied recruiting members to Liberal branches.

Matthew Camenzuli, who was a senior Liberal Party member until he was expelled, called on the Liberal Party to investigate.

"It's entirely possible that he could tell Alex Hawke that he can roll him in his next preselection," Camenzuli, a long-time rival of Hawke, said.

"The member for Mitchell has to answer to this," he said. "It doesn't look good."

Alex Hawke said his branches had followed the rules and that he was not aware of any conflict of interest with Jethi's role in the Liberal Party and the OFBJP.

On his branches, Hawke said: "There is no particular influence from any one person or group of any significant percentage. Any assertion to the contrary in this regard is false."

He said under his tenure, he was "modernising" the membership of the Liberal branches in his seat.

OFBJP is not registered as a foreign agent in Australia. In the US, the organisation is declared as one and has to disclose all its political activities.

The BJP has a head of foreign affairs who says his role is to coordinate with the OFBJP, meaning the organisation appears to be directly linked with the party in India.

OFBJP members in Australia downplayed its significance and denied it was trying to infiltrate politics.

"Being a citizen, obviously we exercise our rights here, but other than that there is nothing," group office bearer Ankur Patel said.

"We are a fan group. It's just like Manchester United. There is a lot of Aussies. They might be supporting those particular teams, right? It's the same thing."

Youth camps

Narendra Modi's party grew out of an organisation called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which researchers say is the largest far-right organisation in the world. While the BJP is now more mainstream in its ideology, the RSS rejects secular India and wants it to become a Hindu state, and its founders were inspired by fascist groups like the Nazis.

The organisation has a sister group in Australia called the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, or HSS, which has at least 30 branches across Australia and runs camps for kids and adults.

When Arjun Nidigallu moved to Australia as a kid, his parents sent him to the HSS children's camps.

"My parents, like most migrants, were concerned that I wasn't getting a cultural upbringing," he said.

"There are people you meet who go through similar issues around racism and bullying … you come back feeling like you're not alone."

He later became a camp instructor, until parts of Hindu nationalism began to sit uneasily. Nidigallu said he saw children being instructed to chant a slogan that translated to "India belongs to the Hindus".

"I had to walk away after that," he said.

The camps take place in parks and halls across Australia, and the ABC has seen videos where many have a tribute to two influential historical figures in the Hindu nationalist movement. One of them, MS Golwalkar, said minorities such as Muslims were a threat to India and the country could learn from the Nazis' killing of Jews.

HSS camp participants are being taught a martial art called Danda, which involves large, heavy bamboo sticks. These sticks have been used by Hindu nationalist mobs in anti-Muslim riots in India.

Nidigallu said the practice was meant to be about self-discipline, self-defence, and being "prepared for any invaders".

"The way it plays itself out in the real world in India when it comes to minority treatment, when it comes to tearing down the places of worship of minorities, this does play itself in a violent way."

An HSS spokesperson said the practice was "similar to many self-defence training arts across Australia … it is a skill set used for improving spatial awareness and motor coordination".

"HSS takes inspiration from RSS with respects to character development in serving our local society."

They said the organisation carried out charity work across Australia, ingrained Hindu values in its volunteers and trained them to be "responsible Australian citizens".

Supporters say these organisations are reclaiming a lost Hindu identity. Others criticise them for politicising the religion.

"The BJP seeks to conflate a very pluralistic religion … into a very narrow form," said Priya Chacko, an international politics researcher at the University of Adelaide.

Australia and India

This month's election handed Modi a win, but a setback.

He kept the prime ministership, but his party didn't win as many seats as he'd expected, meaning this once all-powerful leader will have to work in a coalition with smaller parties.

Whether this tempers Modi's approach, or hardens his resolve, Australia is keen to stay close to this emerging superpower.

India offers Australia an important bulwark against China, and access to one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

It also means tough decisions about how to respond to its pressure and power.

Priya Chacko said the Australian government had chosen to stay quiet, even when it involved its own citizens.

"I think an autocratic India is an unstable India … so it's in Australia's interest to ensure that there's pressure on the Modi government to correct its course," she said.

"I think there needs to be some really clear red lines drawn here, particularly in terms of foreign interference."

The Indian government didn't respond to Four Corners' requests for comment.

Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Home Affairs Minister Claire O'Neil declined an interview. In a statement, a spokesperson said the government was deeply concerned by these allegations.

"Australia values diversity and inclusion, where people should be safe and free to express who they are, including their faith and heritage. We do not tolerate violence or threats of violence," the statement said.

"Australia's foreign interference laws are unequivocal."

Greens senator David Shoebridge said close ties should be forged, "but it's bloody foolhardy to do it and not protect yourself when you know there's an active threat in play".

"We have a very recent case study in Australian history about what happens when all you see is money and trade and a growth economy and you don't see any of the kind of concerns. We did it with China. It turns out we are repeating many of the same mistakes with India and that's just setting us up for trouble."

Watch Four Corners' documentary "Infiltrating Australia – India's secret war" from 8:30pm Monday on ABC TV and ABC iview.

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