The Assassination That Reshaped South Asian Diaspora Politics

The Assassination That Reshaped South Asian Diaspora Politics

On the morning of June 19, 2023, I was at home in Punjab, the northwestern state in India, enjoying a quiet day reporting for BBC Punjabi, when a journalist friend from Vancouver, Canada, called. His voice was tense. “A Sikh separatist leader has been shot dead,” he said. At first, I didn’t think much of it; every crime has a possible context. But within hours of the murder, it dawned on us that it was not just another routine killing. The assas…