The Tashkent Report

Whispers of Khalistan? Trudeau’s visit to India can reopen old wounds by Aalap Trivedi Air India 182 took off from Montreal to go to Bombay via London and Delhi. Just off the coast of Ireland, a bomb on board exploded and killed 329 people. The main suspects for the bombing were Sikh separatists “Babbar Khalsa”. The date was 23 June 1985. More than three decades later, this incident still haunts people from both nations. They have started to talk about it again(in whispers) as the charismatic, young Canadian PM, Trudeau visited India. Not a lot can go wrong for you if you're Canada. It is one of the few countries in the world which is universally liked. On closer inspection though, it is clear that it has had some trouble with its largest Indian diaspora i.e. the Sikhs. As with the people, the roots of the problem lay in India. “Operation Blue Star” was something I’d heard a lot of, growing up as a 90s kid. It was something unprecedented in India’s history and g...

Trouble in paradise By Aalap Trivedi Why does the emergency declared in Maldives mean so much to India? Maldives has been making the headlines for all the wrong reasons across all the news channels this month. Located south of the Lakshadweep islands, for India this is worrying. An unstable Maldives is a ticking time-bomb in the Indian Ocean. How can a nation of 26 atolls have the potential to destabilise the Indian Ocean? The History India was one of the first countries to recognise Maldives after it gained independence from the British. Since then India and Maldives have built upon those ties economically, culturally and militarily. Maldives acts to counter the rise of Sri Lankan dominance in the region just south of India in the Indian Ocean. This made Maldives an attractive proposition for India. Indian Ocean is home to one of the most navigated shipping routes. This is due to fact that the energy need of all the Asian economic powerhouses is shipped along these rout...