“I hope it is not loss of strategic trust but there is certainly not much faith in the Biden administration,” stated Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a Senior Research Fellow, Nuclear Security Programme (NSP), at New Delhi-based think tank Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS).
There are widespread concerns in India that the Biden administration is turning a blind eye to activities of people like Pannun, who this month threatened to blow up Air India planes and has incited calls to violence against Indian diplomats in the US and Canada.
“It is not only the Khalistan matter. In the case of Russia, the kind of hostility that Indian encountered from the American establishment in the initial days of Ukraine conflict, from February to July 2022, was intense,” the think-tanker recalled.
India-US Ties Hit Because of Biden
"Voicing support for a separate Sikh state of Khalistan might not be terrorist for the US. But publicly calling for bombing a passenger plane should be treated as terrorism in every jurisdiction,” he opined.
“I don’t believe that there could be different definitions of terrorism for India and the US, more so since they have in recent years found their views increasingly converging on the issue of terror," Singh stated.