By Sonia Sarkar
An international student asked to leave Australia after allegedly assaulting members of the Sikh community received a hero’s welcome on his return to India.
A roadshow greeted Vishal Jood, 24, “an unlawful non-citizen” of Australia as he arrived back in his home state of Haryana on Sunday. A fleet of cars drove through the streets of the city of Karnal in celebration, while a garlanded Jood appeared from a sunroof, waving the Indian flag and smiling.
To foreign eyes, such a welcome – for a convicted criminal fresh from serving six months of a one-year jail term – might seem jarring. But to seasoned observers of the India of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the twisted logic behind it was all too recognisable.
Jood was arrested in April in connection with attacks that took place on Sikhs in September 2020 and February 2021, including one in which he was armed with a baseball bat. He was also charged with hate crimes, but these were dropped by the New South Wales’ department of public prosectors. While he admitted three charges related to assault, actual bodily harm and being armed with intent, he and his supporters have portrayed his acts as patriotic. Jood claims that at the time of the attacks he was trying to prevent the Indian flag from being desecrated by Sikhs demanding the creation of a “sovereign state” consisting of land that currently forms Punjab on both sides of India and Pakistan to be known as Khalistan.
It’s a narrative of events that – despite not winning the sympathy of the Australian justice system – has been faithfully parroted both by sections of the Indian diaspora in Australia and New Zealand and various BJP politicians in India, who portrayed Jood on his arrival home as a “hero” and a “victim”.
In Australia and New Zealand, members of the diaspora flooded social media with videos showing Jood’s grand welcome by his Ror community; in India, Jood had the honour of meeting the Haryana Chief Minister (and BJP politician) Manohar Lal Khattar. Khattar had previously urged India’s Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar to press Australian authorities to release Jood on the grounds he was protecting the Indian flag. Meanwhile, the BJP lawmaker representing the Ror community, Harvinder Kalyan, said anyone who raised his voice to defend the country’s pride “deserved” to be welcomed by the community.
This story first appeared on scmp.com