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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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And now, another killing.

I did once visit a gurdwara in Auckland a few years ago, it had an open donation box with call for support for Khalistan in Indian Punjab. No matter how dead the movement is in India, there does seem to be somewhat of a resurgence among the Sikh diaspora. I'm not convinced yet that the Indian government would pull this off on North American soil, but suffice to say that this really has seemed to have united all major political parties in India. I'd hardly call it a "Modi issue" anymore.

Either way, such a public call out is shocking, to say the least. Posting this from /r/geopolitics:

Also it’s common courtesy between so called allies that you do not name or call-out in public press conferences the station chiefs or the intelligence liaison of friendly nations that are posted in each other embassies and also actually known to the respective govts. Its mostly official communique done through the Ambassador asking for a recall and expulsion. These folks are generally present not to Spy on Canada but to run interface and share threat information , potential terror attack perceptions and/or any harm to citizens between the intelligence agencies of both countries. The Canadian FM went to a press conference and not only humiliated the diplomat by naming the expulsion but also exposed his intelligence alignment. Immature. When India did a tit-tat for expulsion , the communication only mentioned high ranking Canadian diplomat, though everybody would have guessed by know that he was the Canadian Intelligence station chief. Now all these intelligence sharing channels would have gone dark.

India and China who have fought wars never did that to each other. Even India and Pakistan who fought 5 wars have never done that.

There are certain unwritten diplomatic protocols that you breach only deliberately to pass a message .

The language here is very hostile, equally aggressive was the MEA's response and the aforementioned Shashi Tharoor statement. I feel like what people gleamed from what they see of India/Modi from the media has at least partially allowed this to erupt to this extent.