Will Zohran Mamdani transform New York into a Khalistan safe haven?

On August 12, 2025, Harjinder Singh, an illegal immigrant who obtained a commercial driver’s licence in California, made an illegal and reckless U-turn on a Florida highway, killing three people who were unable to stop in time for the unexpected obstacle his 18-wheeler suddenly posed. Video from inside his cab showed little remorse upon the collision, contributing to the decision to charge Singh with three counts of vehicular homicide.

That Singh received his licence in California did not surprise. Decades of Democratic control have led California to become permissive not only to illegal immigration but also to the normalisation and empowerment of illegal residents. Progressive attitudes also lend credulity to those who feign grievance or assert that they are oppressed.

Khalistan militants have seized upon the naïveté of California politicians and their lax approach to federal law to establish cells and root their organisation in the United States. Indeed, Harjinder Singh’s social media accounts, and the fact that he met Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice known for his violent rhetoric, terror apologetics, and advocacy for Khalistan, suggest a deeper connection to the Khalistan movement. Many American liberals accept at face value the grievances voiced by Khalistan activists who argue that repression is so great in India that they need a separate state carved out of India’s Punjab.

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Most Americans—including the political leadership of California—have no clue that mainstream Sikhs reject both the idea of Khalistan and the veracity of the grievances upon which Khalistani militants make their case. Rather than being an organic movement, Khalistan advocacy is a project of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the same institution that for equally cynical reasons cultivated the Taliban. The irony of the Khalistan movement’s origin is that while Sikhism thrives in India, Pakistan has virtually eradicated Sikhs in Pakistani Punjab.

Politicians like California Governor Gavin Newsom, a likely Democratic frontrunner in the 2028 presidential race, no more understand this than former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Rather, they accept the fiction that men like Pannun peddle and so accept the truthfulness of asylum claims. They never question why Harjinder Singh says he fears for his life in India when his mother and brother live comfortably there and own eight acres of land.

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With the rise of Zohran Mamdani to the mayorship of New York City, Khalistan extremists will sink roots on the East Coast as well. Mamdani can use slush funds and channel city contracts to Sikh extremist organisations, helping them grow both financially and in prominence. For several decades, Khalistani extremists have sought to hijack gurdwaras and other Sikh institutions. Mamdani’s engagement with the most extreme Khalistan elements will only hasten that pattern to the detriment of Sikh rank and file.

Mamdani embraces cosmetic diversity, but his record with the Democratic Socialists of America and at Bowdoin College suggests he is intolerant of diversity of views. At the small, progressive, and sheltered Maine campus, he founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a group notorious for harassing Jewish students, disrupting lectures, and amplifying Hamas propaganda. While many students cast their polemical college politics aside when they enter the real world, Mamdani doubled down when he entered the New York State Legislature.

He was the primary sponsor of the “Not on Our Dime! Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act,” which New Yorkers understood as a direct legislative assault on mainstream Jewish and pro-Israel philanthropic organizations in New York. During a mayoral debate, he refused to answer affirmatively a question about Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. He also amplified the “Israeli apartheid” calumny. One of the biggest financial backers of Mamdani’s campaign was the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front that openly supports Hamas.

India is not Israel, but they share many of the same detractors. Both India and Israel are religiously diverse, but their opponents reject the legitimacy of any Hindu or Jewish rule over Muslims and resent the unabashed civilisational pride embodied in both countries. Their opponents use similar tactics to oppose them. Students for Justice in Palestine and Sikhs for Justice seem to borrow from each other’s playbook. CAIR’s attacks on Jews and Zionists are not dissimilar to Khalistani extremists’ attacks on India. Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair, may be a well-known filmmaker, but her politics trump her heritage. She accepted Qatari financing for many of her projects, including the entire budget for her 2012 film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

India’s supporters should be as wary as Israel’s advocates. Mamdani will roll out the red carpet for Khalistani activists and Sikh militants, just as he does for Hamas supporters and Israel boycotters. He promises today he will arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he come to the United Nations, but he will likely extend that threat to Prime Minister Narendra Modi should Pannun demand it. Meanwhile, he will not only recommit New York as a sanctuary city for illegal immigration but as an anchor for the same illegal immigration schemes that transformed San Francisco and Vancouver into Khalistani terror havens.

During his second term, President Donald Trump has gratuitously dismantled the decades of work his predecessors invested to build a strong US-India partnership. The question is now whether Washington and Delhi can cast their distrust aside to prevent Mamdani from making their relations far worse by cultivating a grave and growing terror threat in America’s largest city.

(Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)