diaspora

All over Los Angeles, Zachary Asdourian hunted for the music of an Iran that could have been.

The co-founder of the L.A. record label Discotchari scoured for dust-caked Persian pop records at Jordan Market in Woodland Hills; scanned the fliers for shows at Cabaret Tehran in Encino, and combed shops in Glendale looking for Farsi-language tapes cut in L.A. studios in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Most of the songs he and his label partner, Anaïs Gyulbudaghyan, sought were long-forgotten dance tracks, culturally-specific twists to the era’s disco boom. They’re poignant reminders of a time in L.A.’s Westwood “Tehrangeles” neighborhood when, in the years just after the 1979 Iranian revolution, immigrants here made music while their homeland roiled with ascendant theocracy.

Discotchari’s new crate-digger compilation “Tehrangles Vice” collects some of the best of them. Its 12 tracks were made in L.A. and circulated within the Iranian diaspora, then smuggled back into Iran on dubbed tapes and satellite broadcasts. They’re largely lost to time here, but fondly recalled there as bombastic dispatches from a cosmopolitan yet heartbroken immigrant community in L.A.

The music has lessons for artists watching the revanchist conservatism creeping over the United States today.

“These songs were supposed to represent the next step in Iranian music,” Asdourian said. “These artists were geniuses at shaking up what was happening in the ‘80s and ‘90s to produce an Iranian version of it. This music was meant to be heard at a party while dancing and drinking in Tehrangeles, but it also provided solace during the Islamic revolution, the Iraq war and the Iran-Contra affair. For citizens of Iran, this was giving hope as bombs were literally falling.”

The music scene this compilation documents came after a period of more stable relationships between the U.S. and Iran. Thousands of Iranian students immigrated to L.A. in the ‘60s and ‘70s and stayed, some opening restaurants and nightclubs in Westwood, Glendale and the San Fernando Valley where they could hear Iranian music.

“A lot of these clubs in L.A. pre-dated the revolution. Artists like Googoosh were already coming in from Iran to perform. Many musicians who were in U.S. when the revolution happened thought they were having a little sojourn and intended to go back someday,” said Farzaneh Hemmasi, a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto who wrote the book “Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California’s Iranian Pop Music” and contributed the liner notes for “Tehrangeles Vice.”

An insert from a cassette tape that Farokh “Elton” Ahi previously worked on.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

“But after the 1979 revolution, musicians in Los Angeles were told by family in Iran not to go back, that they were rounding up artists, that people associated with westernization and immorality will be targeted,” Hemmasi said. “So they stayed and worked.”

One of them was Farokh “Elton” Ahi, who came to L.A. at 17 to study architecture at USC, but left that career to produce for Casablanca Records, the premier disco label of the era. He DJ’ed at Studio 54 in NYC and elite nightclubs in L.A., and produced for the likes of Donna Summer and Elton John at his Hollywood studio, Rusk (Ahi got his nickname from an interviewer who called him “Elton Joon,” a Farsi-language term of endearment).

Even in the decadent disco era, he felt an obligation to champion Iranian music in L.A.

“We wanted kids to enjoy the link between our culture and western culture,” Ahi said. “But we were also trying to bring what was happening in Iran to people’s attention with our music, which was one reason I could never go back there. Kids who had come from Iran loved Prince and Michael Jackson and were becoming super American, so we had to do something to keep them engaged in our music as well.”

During the 1979 hostage crisis, Anglo nightclubs and radio in L.A. were not keen on Persian pop music, to say the least. Ahi led a double life as an Americanized disco producer, while also writing for his immigrant community.

“Those days, because of the hostage crisis, it wasn’t fun and games having Iranian music in the club. People were against Iranians and it wasn’t a happy time,” Ahi said. “But we were making quality music with limited resources. There were not many musicians here who could play Iranian instruments, so I had to learn a bunch of them. I felt a duty to keep our music alive.”

Two ‘80s-era tracks he produced, Susan Roshan’s “Nazanin” and Leila Forouhar’s “Hamsafar,” appear on “Tehrangeles Vice,” which brims with the only-in-L.A. cultural collusion of mournful Persian melodies and lyrics about exile, paired with new wave grit and ‘80s synth-disco pulses. Aldoush’s “Vay Az in Del” has sample-blasted horns right out of the ‘80s TV show that gives the compilation its name. There’s even a strong Latin percussive element on tracks like Shahram Shabpareh and Shohreh Solati’s “Ghesmat,” which showed how Iranian artists dipped into the global crossroads of Los Angeles.

Even if this music didn’t make an impact on the charts here, it found its way back to post-revolution Iran clandestinely, on tapes and music video satellite broadcasts. Club-friendly pop music made in L.A. took on new potency abroad.

“The official culture in Iran in the ‘80s was very sorrowful because of the war, and Shiite Islam was very oriented towards mourning. Ramadan was a sad time with no music,” Hemmasi said. “But in L.A., you’ve got Iranians dancing and singing, which was not happening within the country where people needed to sing and dance even more. This music had a contraband quality that was underground in Iran itself.”

“A lot of Iranian artists wouldn’t like this comparison, but this music was really punk at its core,” Asdourian agreed. “You’d have people standing on street corners in trench coats selling cassettes. People had illegal satellite hookups to hear news and ideology from the diaspora that contradicted what they were being fed. This music was a means to restore values they felt were lost in the revolution.”

Top to bottom, Farokh “Elton” Ahi with record label Discotchari founders Zachary Asdourian and Anais Gyulbudaghyan in Los Angeles.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

As contemporary Angelenos rallying for this era of Iranian music, Asdourian and Gyulbudaghyan of Discotchari will stop at nothing to ship murkily-sourced tapes from Iran, western Asia and the Caucasus for their label. “In January, we went to Armenia and met a guy who knew a guy at a restaurant in Yerevan who had someone drive tapes in from Tabriz in Iran,” Asdourian said. “They sent us GPS coordinates to pick them up, and we ended up in this abandoned former Soviet manufacturing district getting chased by a guard dog. But he had 30 cassettes, all still sealed in their boxes.”

Yet some of the acts on “Tehrangeles Vice” are still active, living and working in California. After a long hiatus, Roshan recently released new music inspired by Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom Movement, and Ahi is a sound engineer and mixer for film (he worked on “Last of the Mohicans,” which won an Oscar for sound mixing). He recently contributed to a remix of Ed Sheeran’s “Azizam,” which sprinkles Farsi phrasing into upbeat pop and became a global hit. “Ed reached out and asked me to write some melodies that matched Googoosh’s singing to make it more international, we put our minds together and I’m so proud of it,” Ahi said.

As the United States now reckons with its own powerful right-wing religious movement in government, one eager to clamp down on cultural dissent, “Tehrangeles Vice” has lessons for musicians in the wake of a backlash. The compilation is both a specific document of a proud music culture clamping down at home and flowering abroad. But it’s also a reminder that, whether made in exile or played under attack, art is a well of possibility for imagining another life.

“Even if the geographical location isn’t same, for Iranians, L.A. represents this exiled piece of history, an Iran that could have been,” Hemmasi said. “It’s a message in a bottle from another time.”

Moldova’s ruling pro-West governing party won a majority in the country’s tense Sunday elections, beating pro-Russian parties by a wide margin amid reported attempts to violently disrupt the vote and allegations of interference by Russia.

Results from more than 99 percent of the polling stations counted by Monday noon showed the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) clearly in the lead, despite analysis and opinion polls before the vote suggesting that pro-Russian parties would come close and possibly upset the ruling party’s parliamentary majority.

The small country is located between Ukraine and Romania. One of Europe’s poorest states, it was part of the Soviet Republic until 1991. The breakaway, semi-autonomous region of Transnistria, which lies along the border with Ukraine, has traditionally supported ties with Russia.

As a result, in recent years, Moldova has emerged as a battleground for influence between Russia and the West.

In a September 9 speech at the European Parliament, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, founder of PAS, declared that this election would be “the most consequential” in the country’s history.

For Moldovans, the elections represented a crucial turning point. The small country with Russia’s war in Ukraine on its doorstep could either continue on its current path towards European Union membership, or it could fall back into the old fold of Russian influence.

Ultimately, despite reports of pro-Russian groups threatening violence, with at least three people arrested in Moldova, and several bomb scares reported at polling booths abroad, the Moldovan diaspora played a key role in delivering a pro-EU victory.

What was the outcome of Moldova’s election?

Nearly all votes cast at polling stations had been counted by Monday. Some 1.6 million people cast their votes, making about 52.2 percent of eligible voters, which is higher than in previous elections.

The ruling pro-EU PAS, led by parliament president and PAS cofounder, Igor Grosu, won 50.16 percent of the vote and about 55 of the 101 seats in parliament, translating to a comfortable majority government, according to the country’s election agency.

The current prime minister, Dorin Recean, appointed by Sandu in February 2023, is expected to retain his position.

The pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP), an alliance of four parties led by former president and Russian ally Igor Dodon, came in a far second with 24.19 percent of the vote. The party won 26 seats in parliament. Two parties within the bloc, Heart of Moldova and Moldova Mare, were banned from participating in the election amid allegations they had received illicit funding from Russia.

In third place was the Alternative Party, which is also pro-EU with 7.97 percent of the vote, securing eight parliamentary seats.

Our Party, a populist group, and the conservative Democracy at Home party, respectively, won just more than 6 percent and 5 percent of the vote. That allowed them entry into parliament for the first time with 6 seats each.

What had polls predicted?

Opinion polls had suggested a much tighter race between the ruling PAS and the BEP, which was predicted to come a close second. That scenario would have disrupted PAS’s present control of parliament, potentially forcing it into an uncomfortable coalition with the BEP, and slowing down pro-EU reforms.

Before the Sunday polls, politicians and their supporters on both sides of the debate campaigned intensely on the streets and on TV, but also on online platforms such as TikTok, in an attempt to reach young people who make up about a quarter of the population.

What were the key issues?

EU accession was the single most important issue on the ballot this election. Under President Sandu, Moldova applied to join the EU in early 2022, just after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine. Chisinau’s goal, alongside a better economy, has been to obtain security guarantees like its neighbour, Romania, which is a member of the EU and of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO).

In July 2022, the EU granted Moldova – as well as Ukraine – candidate status, on the condition that democracy, human and minority rights, and rule of law reforms are made. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the time declared that the future of Moldova was in the EU.

However, while President Sandu’s PAS is eager to achieve Moldova’s EU membership by 2028 when her term expires, she has accused Moscow of attempting to scupper this plan in order to continue wielding influence over a country it once controlled.

Russia has considerable support in Moldova, and backs a breakaway, autonomous enclave – Transnistria, located along its border with Ukraine. About 1,500 Russian troops are present there, and the enclave’s government has requested Russian annexation several times.

In a referendum vote last October, just more than 50 percent of Moldovans voted “yes” to joining the EU, a tight margin of victory that was seen as a predictor of this week’s parliamentary elections.

At the time, President Sandu blamed “dirty interference” from Russia for her camp’s thin victory.

Did Russia interfere in these elections?

During the run-up to Moldova’s election, the authorities have repeatedly accused Moscow of conducting a “hybrid war” – offline and online – to help pro-Russian parties to win the vote. Moscow denies meddling in Moldovan politics.

Russia is specifically accused of being behind a widespread “voter-buying” operation – through which voters are bribed to vote for particular parties – and of launching cyberattacks on Moldovan government networks throughout the year.

The authorities have also claimed that Moscow illicitly funds pro-Russia political parties. Two pro-Russia parties – Heart of Moldova and Moldova Mare – were barred from the vote on Friday over allegations of illegal financing and vote buying.

According to researchers and online monitoring groups, Moldova was flooded with online disinformation and propaganda in the months leading up to the vote that attempted to tarnish PAS and raise doubts and concerns about the EU. Researchers found that these campaigns were powered by artificial intelligence (AI), with bots deployed in comment sections on social media or fake websites posting AI-generated content deriding the EU.

International security professor Stefan Wolff, from the University of Birmingham, told Al Jazeera that Russia had indeed tried to influence Sunday’s elections to bring Moldova back under its influence.

“There is very little doubt in my mind and quite convincing evidence that Russia has done basically two things: Tried to bribe Moldovans literally with cash to vote for anti-European parties, and it has exerted massive campaigns of disinformation about what a pro-European choice would mean,” he said.

Wolff added that Russia also attempted to “discredit” President Sandu and PAS’s parliamentary candidates. “This really was a massive Russian operation, but it also, I think, shows the limits of how far Russia can push its influence in the post-Soviet space,” he said.

Google, in a press statement last week, said it had noticed coordinated campaigns targeting the Moldovan elections on YouTube. “We have terminated more than 1,000 channels since June 2024 for being part of coordinated influence operations targeting Moldova.”

What other disruptions to the election were there?

Two brothers and a third man had been arrested in Chisinau on suspicion of planning riots during the election on Sunday, Moldovan police said. According to local media, the police found flammable material in the possession of the suspects.

Last week, police arrested 74 people during 250 raids of groups linked to alleged Russian plans to instigate riots during the vote. Authorities said the suspects, who were between 19 and 49, had “systematically travelled” to Serbia, where they received training for “disorder and destabilisation”.

How did the Moldovan diaspora vote?

Some 17.5 percent of the votes – 288,000 – were cast by Moldovans living abroad, mostly in Europe and the US.

Bomb scares were reported at polling units in Italy, Romania, Spain and the US. Some polling units in Moldova also reported similar scares. The elections agency did not break down how the diaspora voted.

Voters in the enclave of Transnistria – where many people hold dual citizenship with Russia – faced logistical challenges, as they had to travel to polling stations 20km (12 miles) outside Transnistria. Media reports noted long car queues at Moldovan checkpoints on Sunday morning.

Some pro-Russian voters from the enclave told reporters they had been sent back and forth between polling stations because of bomb scares.

How has PAS reacted to the election result?

Speaking to reporters at the PAS headquarters in Chisinau on Monday after the party’s win, PAS leader Grosu reiterated the allegations against Russia.

“It was not only PAS that won these elections, it was the people who won,” Grosu said.

“The Russian Federation threw into battle everything it had that was most vile – mountains of money, mountains of lies, mountains of illegalities. It used criminals to try to turn our entire country into a haven for crime. It filled everything with hatred.”

Prime Minister Dorin Recean also said Moldovans “demonstrated that their freedom is priceless and their freedom cannot be bought, their freedom cannot be influenced by Russia’s propaganda and scaremongering”.

“This is a huge win for the people of Moldova, considering the fully-fledged hybrid war that Russia waged in Moldova,” Recean added. “The major task right now is to bring back the society together, because what Russia achieved is to produce a lot of tension and division in society.”

Last November, Romania cancelled its own presidential elections after authorities alleged that Russian interference had helped a far-right leader win the polls. A second election was held in May this year, which was won by the centrist and pro-EU candidate Nicusor Dan.

What happens next?

The election result was immediately denied by BEP leader Dodon, who called for protests at the parliament building in Chisinau after claiming – without providing evidence – that PAS had meddled with the vote.

In an address on national TV late on Sunday before the results were declared, Dodon claimed his party had won the vote. He called on the PAS government to resign, and asked supporters to take to the streets.

“We will not allow destabilisation,” the politician said. “The citizens have voted. Their vote must be respected even if you don’t like it”.

On Monday, dozens of people gathered to protest the results. It is unclear if the politician will launch a legal challenge.

Meanwhile, President Sandu will now have to nominate a prime minister who will form a new government. Analysts say the president will likely opt for continuity with Prime Minister Recean, who is pro-EU and previously served as Sandu’s defence and security adviser.

Sacramento, California – On a sunny August morning, 60-year-old Gurtej Singh Cheema performed his morning prayers at his home in Sacramento. Then, the retired clinical professor of internal medicine made his way downtown to join more than 150 other Sikh Americans at California’s State Capitol.

He was there to speak in support of a state bill that, to many Sikhs, represents a matter of safety for the community.

California is home to an estimated 250,000 Sikhs, according to the community advocacy group, Sikh Coalition. They represent 40 percent of the nation’s Sikhs – who first made California their home more than a century ago.

But a spate of attacks and threats against community activists in North America over the past two years, which United States and Canadian officials have accused India of orchestrating, have left many Sikhs on edge, fearing for their safety and questioning whether law enforcement can protect them.

That’s what a new anti-intimidation bill seeks to address, according to its authors and advocates: If passed, it would require California to train officers in recognising and responding to what is known as “transnational repression” – attempts by foreign governments to target diaspora communities, in practice. The training would be developed by the state’s Office of Emergency Services.

“California can’t protect our most vulnerable communities if our officers don’t even recognize the threat,” Anna Caballero, a Democratic state senator and author of the bill, said in the statement shared with Al Jazeera. “The bill closes a critical gap in our public safety system and gives law enforcement the training they need to identify foreign interference when it happens in our neighborhoods.”

But the draft legislation, co-authored by California’s first Sikh Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, and Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria, has also opened up deep divisions within an Indian American community already polarised along political lines.

Several influential American Sikh advocacy groups – the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Sikh Coalition and Jakara Movement among them – have backed the bill. Groups representing Indians of other major faiths, such as Hindus for Human Rights and the Indian American Muslim Council, have also supported the draft legislation, as has the California Police Chiefs Association.

But in the opposite corner stand Hindu-American groups like the Hindu American Foundation and the Coalition of Hindus of North America, as well as a Jewish group, Bay Area Jewish Coalition and even a Sikh group, The Khalsa Today. The Santa Clara Attorney’s office and Riverside County Sheriff’s Office have also opposed the bill.

Critics of the bill argue that it risks targeting sections of the diaspora – such as Hindu Americans opposed to the Khalistan movement, a campaign for the creation of a separate Sikh nation carved out of India – and could end up deepening biases against India and Hindu Americans.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office said that it had “concerns regarding the bill’s potential implications, particularly its impact on law enforcement practices and the inadvertent targeting of diaspora communities in Riverside County”.

But as Cheema stood with other Sikh Americans gathered at the state legislature on August 20 to testify before the Assembly Appropriations Committee, the urgency felt by many in the room was clear: Some had driven all night from Los Angeles, 620km (385 miles) away from Sacramento. Others took time off from work to be there.

“Any efforts that help a community feel safe, and you are a part of that community – naturally, you would support it,” Cheema, who also represented the Capital Sikh Center in Sacramento at the hearing, told Al Jazeera.

‘Harassment by foreign actors’

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines transnational repression as the acts of foreign governments when they reach beyond their borders to intimidate, silence, coerce, harass or harm members of their diaspora and exile communities in the United States.

The bill marks the second major legislation in recent years that has split South Asian diaspora groups in California. A 2023 bill that specified caste as a protected category under California’s anti-discrimination laws was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom after several Hindu-American groups lobbied against it. They argued that the state’s existing anti-discrimination laws already protected people from caste-based bias, and that specifying the new category was an indirect attack on Hinduism.

The California Assembly has now passed the new anti-intimidation bill. It will now return to the California Senate – which had passed an earlier version of the legislation – for another vote, expected this week. If it passes in the upper house of the California legislature, the bill will head to Newsom’s desk for his signature.

Thomas Blom Hansen, professor of anthropology at Stanford University, said the bill addresses concerns around online trolling, surveillance and harassment of individuals based on their political beliefs or affiliations – often influenced by foreign governments or political movements.

“The bill doesn’t name any specific country – it’s a general framework to provide additional protection to immigrants and diaspora communities from harassment by foreign actors,” Hansen told Al Jazeera.

But the backdrop of the bill does suggest that concerns over India and its alleged targeting of Sikh dissidents have been a major driver. Hansen noted that Senator Caballero comes from the 14th State Senate district, which has a significant Sikh population.

In 2023, Canada officially accused India of masterminding the assassination in June that year of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia. India has rejected the accusation, but relations between the two nations plummeted as a result – and remain tense, as Canada continues to pursue the allegations against individuals it arrested and that it says worked for New Delhi.

In November that year, US prosecutors also accused Indian intelligence agencies of plotting the assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a New York-based Sikh activist. That plot was exposed after an alleged Indian agent accidentally ended up hiring an FBI informant for the hit job. Pannun leads Sikhs of Justice, a Sikh separatist advocacy group that India declared unlawful in 2019.

Several other Sikh activists in Canada and the US have received warnings from law enforcement agencies that they could be targeted.

Even Bains, the co-author of the new bill, has faced intimidation. In August 2023, after California recognised the 1984 massacre of thousands of Sikhs in India – following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards – as a genocide, four men, apparently of Indian origin, visited her office. They allegedly threatened her, saying they would “do whatever it takes to go after you”.

Harman Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition, said the bill was timely.

“If a gurdwara committee leader calls the police to report a man who claims to be from the government of India coming to the gurdwara asking about other committee members’ immigration status, the trained officers will react to that very differently than those who aren’t,” Singh told Al Jazeera.

Vivek Kembaiyan of Hindus for Human Rights echoed Singh. The majority of crime is investigated at the local level, he said, and local law enforcement needs training to investigate transnational crimes.

Could ‘institutionalise biases’

But not everyone agrees.

Some groups argue that the bill is primarily meant to target India and Indian Americans, and especially suppress opposition to the Khalistan movement.

Samir Kalra, the 46-year-old managing director at the Hindu American Foundation, has emerged as one of the bill’s most vocal opponents.

“I believe that they have not gone far enough in providing adequate guardrails and safeguards to ensure that law enforcement does not institutionalise biases against groups from specific countries of origin and or with certain viewpoints on geopolitical issues,” Kalra, a native of the Bay Area, told Al Jazeera.

Kalra pointed to the supporters of the bill.

“The vast majority of supporters of this bill who have shown up to multiple hearings are of Indian origin and have focused on India in their comments and press statements around this bill. India is listed as a top transnational repression government,” he said. “It’s very clear that the true target of this bill is India and Indian Americans.”

Many Hindu temples, he said, had been desecrated in recent months with pro-Khalistan slogans.

“How can the Hindu American community feel safe and secure reporting these incidents without fear of being accused of being a foreign agent or having law enforcement downplaying the vandalisms?” he asked.

But Harman Singh rejected the suggestion that the bill was dividing the Indian American community along religious lines. “The coalition of groups supporting includes both Sikh and Hindu organisations as well as Muslim, Kashmiri, Iranian, South Asian, immigrants’ rights, human rights, and law enforcement organisations,” Singh said.

Some critics have expressed fears that activists training officers in recognising transnational attacks could institutionalise biases against specific communities.

But the Sikh Coalition’s Singh said those worries were unfounded. The training, he said, “will be created by professionals within those organisations, rather than ‘a small group of activists,’ so this criticism is not based in reality.”

‘My voice is being heard’

Rohit Chopra, a professor of communication at Santa Clara University in California, said critics of other governments “are all too routinely harassed, threatened, or even assaulted by foreign governments or their proxies within the US”.

“Even if the bill has some deterrent effect, which I believe it will, it will be well worth it,” Chopra told Al Jazeera. He emphasised that the bill does not restrict its ambit to any one country or a particular group of nations.

To Stanford University’s Hansen, that in effect raises questions about why some groups are opposed to the bill.

“When an organisation comes out strongly against such a bill, it almost feels like a preemptive admission – as if they see themselves as being implicated by what the bill seeks to prevent,” Hansen said.

Back in Sacramento, Cheema remains hopeful that the bill will pass. For him, the bill represents something far more significant than policy – recognition and protection on US soil.

“I could be the next victim if the law enforcement in my community is not able to recognise foreign interference,” Cheema said. “It doesn’t matter who is indulging in it or which country, I would naturally like my police officers to be aware of the threats.”

“If any group feels threatened, then all sections of society should make efforts to protect their people. This reassures me that my voice is being heard”, Cheema said.

Professor Nitasha Kaul, an academic specialising in politics and international relations at the University of Westminster, has been in the United Kingdom since she came to the University of Hull for postgraduate study in 1997. In the years since, she has published several books and more than 150 articles on topics like democracy, right-wing politics, Indian politics and Kashmir.

A British citizen, Kaul retained her connection to the country of her birth as an overseas citizen of India (OCI) until recently. The OCI is a special status granted to individuals of Indian origin who have acquired foreign citizenship. It grants them a multiple-entry, lifelong visa for visiting India, allowing them to travel and stay without restrictions. OCI status is held by more than 4 million people worldwide.

In May, Kaul’s OCI was summarily cancelled. OCI cancellation is allowed under Section 7D of the Citizenship Act 1955 in circumstances of (1) fraud, (2) “disaffection towards the Constitution of India”, (3) communication or trade with an enemy India is engaged with during a war, (4) imprisonment for more than two years or (4) if ‘it is necessary so to do in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of India, friendly relations of India with any foreign country, or in the interests of the general public’.

Although the government is not breaking the law, its actions raise serious legal and human rights concerns. Its actions often blur the line between lawful revocation and punitive censorship. The revocations frequently lack transparency and procedural fairness – thus risking violation of legal norms. Overall, this trend raises significant concerns about freedom of speech, proportionality and adherence to the rule of law. It should be noted that domestic courts are resisting government actions.

In Kaul’s case, she was informed that her OCI status had been revoked with an official notice saying she has been “found indulging in anti-India activities, motivated by malice and complete disregard for facts or history” without referring to any particular such incident. Kaul has been a strong advocate for democracy in India and has often criticised the government for its minority bashing and the right-wing Hindu organisation RSS for its divisive politics.

An examination of global democracy indicators shows that Kaul’s analysis disregards neither facts nor history. Freedom House’s global freedom index ranks India as “partly free” and describes how “the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has presided over discriminatory policies and a rise in persecution affecting the Muslim population.” This trend can also be seen in relation to religious and press freedoms. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said: “India’s media has fallen into an ‘unofficial state of emergency’ since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.” ​

Kaul is not alone in facing retribution for her outspokenness. In the past nine years, the OCIs of more than 120 individuals have been cancelled by the Indian authorities. According to the independent Indian outlet The Wire, this is a trend that is ramping up.

Nearly half (57) were revoked in 2024 alone, and a further 15 were cancelled in the first five months of 2025. Most of those who have had their OCIs cancelled are journalists, activists and academics who have criticised the ruling party and challenged the rhetoric of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism).

In 2022, Ashok Swain, a Sweden-based academic, had his OCI cancelled over his social media posts. The authorities accused him of “hurting religious sentiments” and “destabilising the social fabric of India” but provided no specific evidence. Swain successfully challenged the cancellation in the Delhi High Court in 2023, an example of domestic courts resisting government actions.

In December 2023, Raphael Satter, a United States-based journalist for the Reuters news agency who covers cybersecurity, espionage and abuse of power, lost his OCI after critical reporting and is now suing the Indian government.

In recent years, India has witnessed relentless attacks on its democratic institutions. Those who criticise or question the ruling party – whether they are politicians, NGO representatives, campaigners, journalists or community leaders – have often been silenced.

Every week brings new reports of imprisonment, intimidation, physical assault, defamation or deplatforming of critics. This silencing has intensified particularly after India launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in response to an attack in Pahalgam in India-administered Kashmir that killed 26 tourists. In its aftermath, the government ordered X to block nearly 8,000 accounts, many of them belonging to journalists and media outlets, such as Free Press Kashmir, BBC Urdu and The Wire. As critical voices are being silenced at home, the Indian government is turning its attention to the country’s diaspora.

The Indian authorities’ weaponisation of immigration controls is part of a growing pattern, designed to create fear among diaspora members and stifle criticism.

A 2024 report by the RSF found that Indian authorities use the OCI to “effectively blackmail” journalists into silence.

A survey conducted last year by the Platform for Indian Democracy revealed that 54 percent of British Indians are concerned about India’s current trajectory.

From my interactions with members of our community, I can clearly see that many are reluctant to speak out about India’s violations of human rights, fearing it might stop them from travelling to India.

As British Indians – many among us OCI card holders – we must push back against these misuses of immigration controls. British Indians remain deeply connected to India through our families, friends, culture and community. The current treatment of diaspora members by the BJP and the curtailment of their freedoms goes against the values enshrined in India’s post-independence constitution, which guarantees justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.

The UK, despite being home to more than 2 million British Indians, recently concluded a significant trade deal with India without any reference to issues of democratic backsliding in the country. Given the UK’s unique relationship with India and the size and sentiments of its British Indian population, it is in a strong position to ask challenging questions of the current political regime. Silence serves only to strengthen the position of the BJP.

As Modi calls for Indians abroad to contribute to the country’s development, this must include the right to criticise and question without fear of retribution. If the increasing hostility and repression of those who challenge the Indian government continues, we will only be allowed to visit our homeland on the terms of the ruling party, and our ability to be part of India’s progress will diminish. The roots that connect the diaspora to home are key to India’s democratic fabric. Chipping away at them only leaves India’s democracy diminished.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

On 1 December, Netflix began streaming Farha (2021) worldwide, despite immense pressure directed at the platform to prevent its debut. The film is director Darin J. Sallam’s first full-length feature and chronicles the coming-of-age story of its heroine, Farha, a 14-year-old Palestinian teenager who possesses a voracious appetite for books and learning. Farha’s cultural background is that of a villager – her Arabic dialect infused with the authenticity often associated with Palestinian grandparents, particularly the generation born in the decade just before or that of the Nakba itself. Yet, what makes Farha a distinguished heroine isn’t necessarily her linguistic veracity, it is her bravery and her desire to pursue her education at a school in the neighbouring city. At the start of the film, she is seen at one with the land, collecting water from the local spring, eating figs straight from the communal trees and collecting almonds in her satchel, still intact and unpeeled. She goes through the motions of her chores in the village, but her mind often wanders into the literary worlds of the books she reads, novels gifted to her by her best friend Fareeda, who is from a city-dwelling family not far from the village from which Farha hails.

The first scenes of the film show Farha as a dreamer, a girl who urges her father, a man of mayoral standing, to register her in the city’s school. Her father is hesitant as he believes her economic livelihood is best secured through the arrangement of marriage and that the local Quran recitation learning groups provided by the Sheikh are a sufficient education. Still, Farha fights for her desire to learn and secures the support of many an ally in her extended family and community to finally convince her father. On the eve of the Nakba, he signs her enrolment certificate. Throughout the film, there are peripheral present-absent signifiers of just how troubling the situation in Palestine has become. Talk of resistance tactics and meetings between rebels and the officials hint that the historical events of the Nakba and its tragedy are on the cusp of eruption. These more politicised characters weave in and out of frames of the film, infiltrating the scenes with reminders, only to give way to Farha’s experience, which remains at the centre. Slowly but surely, the viewer’s understanding expands organically with Farha’s, and we see that this curious girl, who had very little understanding of the depth of this dire situation, is forced to contend with its brutality as a witness and as a survivor of violence, loss and dispossession. In fact, Farha’s father hides her in a closet where she remains trapped throughout the most violent moments that befall her village, and she is left alone to deal with the aftermath.

The film was produced by TaleBox, a production company co-founded by Sallam and producer Deema Azar. Ayah Jardaneh also served as the producer of the film. The film likewise received support from Laika Film & Television, Chimney, The Jordan Film Fund – Royal Film Commission, the Swedish Film Institute and the Red Sea Film Fund (an initiative of the Red Sea Film Festival). It remains a largely Jordanian-based initiative, highlighting the lived experience of Palestine and Palestinians, with support from European-based organisations. On a political level, Farha has depicted the tragedy of the Nakba for the first time through film and employs what the late Palestinian American scholar, Edward Said, has called the “permission to narrate” the Palestinian experience against many odds.

OPINION: Israel’s terror against Gaza’s children on Netflix

In response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath, Said penned “Permission to Narrate” for the Journal of Palestine Studies in 1984. In it, he notes: “A disciplinary communications apparatus exists in the West both for overlooking most of the basic things that might present Israel in a bad light and for punishing those who try to tell the truth.” In short, Said’s argument can be summed up as such: despite declassified archives, countless human rights reports, international organisation inquiries and both official and ethnographic accounts of Palestinian plight and dispossession from Nakba to diaspora and from Nakba to military occupation, the Palestinians have been denied the right to narrate their own stories. They have also been denied the privilege of seeing their experience reflected back at them through film and literature and, by extension, preventing them from experiencing the catharsis that comes with artistic acknowledgement and representation. Farha has granted the Palestinian diaspora permission to narrate this story on one of the world’s largest entertainment streaming platforms. More importantly, Farha’s story has been recounted, in numerous iterations and manifestations, 700,000 times by the first generation of the dispossessed. The trauma of that memory remains forever fixed in the minds of the descendants of those who were forcibly displaced – a global diasporic population of nearly six million people and counting – approximately half of the total population of 12 million Palestinians across the historical homeland and outside of it. This population has been classified by the international community, despite its many failures towards it, as ipso facto stateless.

Palestinian’s culture and heritage is the best weapon against the Occupation – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

While on the one hand, Farha has been hailed by many viewers as an incredible feat, it comes as no surprise that the film has been targeted by Israeli officials and has caused outrage. Israel’s Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued a statement condemning Netflix, stating his belief that: “It’s crazy that Netflix decided to stream a movie whose whole purpose is to create a false pretence and cite against Israeli soldiers.” Though Farha has been screened globally in many film festivals and series since its debut in 2021, at venues such as Dubai-based Cinema Akil and intentional film festivals, including the Toronto Film Festival, the Red Sea Film Festival and others, it is its recent reincarnation on Netflix and its screening at Saraya, a theatre in Jaffa that has caused the most outrage towards the film. The Israeli government has threatened to act against Saraya and has encouraged a mass exodus of subscribers to Netflix. While many regional and international news networks hail the film for its artistic and historical merits, there is also a cacophony of discordant opinions about it, with publications like Fox News and The Times of Israel labelling the film as “terrible” or as “lies and libels”, whilst other major publishers such as The New York Times tiptoe around the film’s representations, selecting its words carefully to maintain its readership. Sites such as IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes have seen an onslaught of divided reviews: either five-star glowing recommendations from the film’s supporters or comments of rage and disbelief from its detractors.

In all the opinions emerging in the now global conversation surrounding this film, there has been no mention of Sallam’s other smaller work, The Parrot, a 2016 short film she co-directed with Amjad Al-Rasheed. In eighteen powerful minutes, The Parrot follows the story of a Tunisian Jewish family who arrives in Haifa and takes up residence in a home belonging to a Palestinian Greek-Orthodox family. Their clothing, blue-tinted walls and Christian iconography, which borrow heavily from the aesthetic and colour-scape of local churches, are left behind by the displaced family. The breakfast and tea on the table are still hot, and the new occupants, played by Tunisian actress Hend Sabry as Rachel and Palestinian citizen of Israel Ashraf Barhom as Mousa, are haunted by the spectre of the family that once lived there and by the constant echoes of the parrot that was left behind and calls out after the Palestinian boy who owned him asking for a kiss. The parrot also repeats “where are you?” and “why are you looking at me like that” incessantly.

OPINION: Healing with humour, Palestinian comedians strike a chord in occupied cities

Yet, for viewers who are unaware of the Nakba, this imagery and the story of Palestinian displacement remain subliminal. Instead, what takes centre stage is the othering of Eastern Jews who find themselves in Euro-Israeli modernity, one that they can’t quite figure out. As such, by the end of the short film, many viewers would engage in a conversation about the depiction of an intense encounter between the Tunisian Jewish family and their Ashkenazi neighbours, who look at the architecture and structure of the house in Haifa with envy, bewildered at how Eastern Jews, othered and orientalised, had acquired such luck. The film is as much a critique of ethnic relations among Israelis as it is about the Palestinian exodus, and, like Farha, it tells a tragic tale through beautifully directed cinematography and crafted set and costume designs. The pleasing nature of Sallam’s use of pastels, verdure and white stone almost works as an antidote to the harsh emotional blow to the nerves that her cinematic tales have delivered thus far and will continue to do in the future.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.