Chandigarh: Recently, when Mr Sergio Gor took charge as the US Ambassador to India, the Dal Khalsa wrote a letter seeking his attention to a matter of urgent regional concern and the challenges being faced by the people of Punjab.

Trade and technology partnerships are important, and India is a vast market. Yet I must also record a concern that—no corridor, no semiconductor chain, no market access—should be placed above core human values, dignity and fundamental rights and freedoms, said the party’s secretary for political affairs, read the communique.

Expressing serious concern, the body quoted statements attributed to India’s Army Chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, “that ‘Operation Sindoor‘ remains ongoing,” the Sikh organisation based in Punjab believes that whatever the operational specifics, such declarations reinforce the sense that war clouds continue to hang over India and Pakistan. Our concern was direct and existential: escalation risks converting Punjab into a theatre of war—an outcome with catastrophic humanitarian consequences, said Kanwar Pal Singh.

The letter signed by Kanwar Pal Singh urged the US Ambassador and special envoy for South and Central Asian Affairs to see not only the facilitation of commerce, but also the upholding of human dignity, to speak consistently for rights where they are contested, and to help ensure that the people of Punjab are not swallowed up by the ambitions and insecurities of warring states that have struggled to find a truce for far too long.

“Punjab today presents a state under attack by the ruling Punjab government and by the right-wing government of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While the friendship between PM Modi and US President Trump lasts, it is time to use it to smash the façade of lies and deceit of India in the treatment of the rights of the people of Punjab, Kashmir and Nagaland”, reads the letter.

Referring to the US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he had stopped the war between two warring nuclear powers -India and Pakistan using “trade and tariffs.” Dal Khalsa urged the US senior diplomat to consolidate those efforts so that there was lasting and permanent peace in South Asia.

Pro-self determination Sikh organisation Dal Khalsa letter states that the US has deep experience in this region—India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan alike—and is acutely aware that strategic competition, including China’s growing interest and influence, complicates every local flashpoint. In that environment, Punjab cannot be ignored—or sacrificed at the altar of trade. Stability in South Asia is not a side issue to economic diplomacy; it is the condition that makes every economic promise credible.

The inclusion of India into the Pax Silica initiative, as announced by the US ambassador in his introductory speech on assuming office, was labelled as a concession to India by the Dal Khalsa. In the same vein, the Sikh body said that the US should not lose sight of the fact that war mongering and long-standing disputes in the region can upset the applecart, as admitted by India’s Chief Economic Adviser in his Survey report for the last year, where he candidly admits, “India is a victim of geopolitics”.

We keep close to our chest the concerns expressed by the United States during the extrajudicial and extra-territorial killings of Sikh activists in Canada and an attempted assassination in the US in the recent past.  Your role under the Five Eyes arrangement was noteworthy; we have, however, not seen a conclusion of the same with the perpetrators being indicted and punished.