On Thursday (21st May), US Senator Chuck Schumer announced the appointment of a Khalistani named Gunisha Kaur to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which has a notorious history of spreading canards about India and its internal affairs.
A ‘physician’ by occupation and alleged specialist in human rights research, Kaur is being presented as the ‘first Sikh’ (while concealing her anti-India and pro-Khalistani stance) to be appointed to the Commission. She will serve as one of the 9 Commissioners of USCIRF for a period of 2 years.
“I am confident that she will bring her deep medical, academic, research, religious and leadership expertise to her service on the Commission,” Senator Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
Pro-Khalistani propaganda
Gunisha Kaur has been involved in peddling pro-Khalistani propaganda since at least 2009, under the guise of highlighting atrocities committed by the Congress party workers against Sikhs during the 1984 riots. To this effect, she published a book titled ‘Lost in History: 1984 Reconstructed.’
In the book, Kaur had described terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as “a charismatic and influential leader of the Sikhs in the 1970s and early 1980s.” She also referred to him as a ‘religious leader‘, who was supposedly being framed as an extremist and secessionist by the Indian government.
In the book, the new USCIRF commissioner attributed anti-Hindu attacks, committed by Khalistanis under the supervision of Bhindranwale, to the Indian government.
“During this time, acts of violence that occurred against Hindus, whether staged by the government or perpetrated by independent parties, were generally attributed to Jarnail Singh,” Gunisha Kaur had claimed.
Further in her book, she alleged that the Indian government somehow ‘vilified’ Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to gain political support
of the Hindu population of northern India.
To shield the terrorist, Kaur wrote, “The charges against Jarnail Singh were minor – the most serious among them accused him of giving inflammatory speeches. This gives us a sneak peek into her radical mindset that rationalises a terrorist in every way possible.
In June 2013, Gunisha Kaur published an article (archive) along the same lines on the Huffington Post Contributor platform. The website says, “Contributors control their own work and post freely to our site.”
Interestingly, the caption of the article’s featured image describes terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as ‘Sant’ (saint) and ‘Sikh leader.’ At the same time, Khalistan has been referred to as “the name given for an envisioned independent Sikh state.”
Gunisha Kaur and her anti-India rhetoric
Fast forward to December 2020, the new Commissioner of USCIRF was busy peddling an anti-India narrative in foreign leftist publications like the Cable News Network (CNN). Gunisha Kaur co-authored an article (archive) falsely alleging that the 3 farm laws, which were enacted by the Modi government, somehow ‘hurt small farmers and benefit large corporations’.
Besides exaggerated accounts of ‘police brutality’, the agenda of the creation of Khalistan was rationalised as ‘a segment of Sikhs in Punjab engaged in a years-long armed uprising for self-determination.’ In an article supposedly meant to highlight farmers’ distress, the propagandist Gunisha Kaur managed to sneak in Khalistani propaganda.
Realising the inadequacies in the existing Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC)acts of various states to offer a proper marketing mechanism for the farmers to sell their produce, the Narendra Modi government in 2014 had announced a unified National Agriculture Market (NAM).
NAM is a pan-India electronic trading portal that seeks to connect existing APMCs and other market yards to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities. Continuing the reform agenda, the Modi government introduced three farm laws to promote easier trade in farm produce and to provide a competitive market for producers outside the existing APMC system.
The three bills introduced by the Modi government were – The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020. They were later withdrawn to ensure internal stability.
3 years later, in December 2023, Gunisha Kaur co-authored a malicious piece in The Time magazine in an attempt to tarnish the global image of India. The vicious article was titled, ‘Why India Is Targeting Sikhs At Home and Around the World.’
She peddled lies to propagate the Khalistani claims that the Indian government supposedly commits atrocities against Sikhs living abroad. Kaur reiterated the unfounded claims of India’s involvement in the assassination of the terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Interestingly, Nijjar, who ran terrorist camps as per The Globe and Mail, was referred to as just ‘a Canadian citizen’ by the new USCIRF Commissioner. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a wanted terrorist in India who runs the banned ‘Sikhs for Justice’ outfit, was also described as ‘a Sikh activist and American citizen.’
While batting for Khalistan, Gunish Kaur wrote, “Why does Modi’s government feel so threatened by calls for Sikh self-determination that they would risk relations with world superpowers like the U.S. and Canada?“
She did not fail to eulogise terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale here as well by referring him again as a ‘charismatic Sikh leader from a religious seminary.’
With a seasoned Khalistani cheerleader now appointed to the USCIRF, India can expect more anti-India rhetoric, interference in its internal affairs and attempt to malign its image as one of the fastest growing nations in the world.
