Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s support for pro-Khalistan elements in his country is clear. His government relies on the backing of New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh to survive. Jagmeet Singh is not only an open admirer of the Khalistan project, but also regularly instigates hate-filled protests against India and Hindus. With his popularity ratings among Canadians very low, as per a survey by the news organization Global News, where sixty percent of Canadians want him to resign, Trudeau desperately relies on Jagmeet Singh to somehow survive.
However, Ottawa’s pandering to the proponents of Khalistan and Khalistan-related violence elements even goes beyond Justin Trudeau’s political compulsions. Canada has been a haven for anti-India and pro-Khalistan elements even before the incumbent Prime Minister took office. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s father, routinely looked the other way as Khalistan leaders and supporters caused mayhem and violence in the streets of Canada and openly called for the breakup of India and the death of Indian citizens who did not espouse their cause.
Soon after the Indian Army’s action in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, thousands of Sikhs gathered in Vancouver to protest the action. One of the leaders in the crowd was Inderjit Singh Reyat, a mechanic from Vancouver Island, who would later be recruited to build the bombs that downed the Air India Kanishka plane. On that day, he was seen furiously hacking Mrs. Gandhi’s burning effigy with a long sword. His supreme leader, Talwinder Singh Parmar, was busy collecting funds from people all over Canada for the Khalistan cause. Pierre Trudeau’s government did nothing about these anti-India protests.
Pierre Trudeau was well aware of Parmar’s violent intentions but remained silent. After Parmar returned to Canada following his detention in Germany, the Indian government sought his extradition, but Canada turned down the request in 1982 on the strange argument that India, although a member of the Commonwealth, had been insufficiently deferential to the Queen—New Delhi did not recognize the Queen as the head of its state, it pointed out!
The Sikhs in Canada who dared to openly challenge the idea of Khalistan and its hate campaigns have had to pay a price. Lawyer and community activist Ujjal Dosanjh, who minced no words in criticizing the Khalistanis, was attacked with an iron rod as he was opening his car in his office’s parking lot in Vancouver in 1985. The iron bar was repeatedly brought down on Dosanjh’s head and body, and he would have surely died had help not arrived from his law partner, who fortunately appeared at the scene of the crime. Dosanjh’s fingers were broken, his jaw was knocked out of line, and he needed eighty-four stitches to hold his scalp together. His attacker was later identified and nabbed—but freed on technical grounds. The Canadian government did nothing to ensure justice.
This was not an isolated case. In another incident that occurred a few months later, one Kulwinder Singh Malhi brutally assaulted Balraj Deol of the Hindu-Sikh Forum in Toronto. Deol’s crime? He had hailed the Rajiv Gandhi-Harchand Singh Longowal Accord. No action was taken against the culprit. Malhi later attended a Pakistani training camp for terrorists and crossed into India. In 1987, he was involved in the cold-blooded killing of 38 Hindu bus passengers in Punjab. The hapless Hindus were herded in the middle of the bus and then shot from both sides. Malhi was eventually shot dead by the police, but to this day, he is glorified in Canada—the country’s biggest gurdwara, the Dalton Gurdwara, displays his portrait along with his guns. Justin Trudeau finds nothing wrong in the glorification of terrorists, neither did his father.
The infamous case of the Kanishka bombing is an instance of how Canada has been impervious to anti-India terror activities. An Air India Kanishka flight operating on the Montreal-London-Delhi-Mumbai route disintegrated in midair on 23 June 1985 due to an explosion from a bomb placed by Canadian Sikh terrorists. All 329 people on board perished, and the debris fell from a height of 31,000 feet, with only 131 bodies recovered. The investigation into the terror attack continued for nearly two decades. A commission set up to probe the incident spoke of a ‘cascading series of errors’ by Canadian authorities. Only a few accused were apprehended, and just one, Inderjit Singh Reyat, was convicted. But after a few years behind bars, he was released and allowed to live as a free man; later, even the condition that he would have to stay in a halfway house was lifted.
Terry Milewski, who wrote an authoritative account of Canadian indifference to Khalistan activities against India from Canadian soil over the years, says in his book, ‘Blood For Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project,’ that Canadian authorities were aware that something significant was about to happen before the Kanishka tragedy but did nothing about it. While the commission released a censored report of its findings, ‘the uncensored conclusion of the report was that, “There is no doubt that the Government of India warned Canada on a number of occasions that Air Indian operations were about to be attacked.”‘
Milewski wonders why Canadian politicians, like Trudeau, pander to Sikh extremists and explains, ‘The short answer is that it is not easy to look out at a throng of 100,000 on Vaisakhi Day, knowing they might vote for you if you keep your mouth shut, and then to open it instead and risk losing the votes.’
The cold-shouldering of Justin Trudeau during his recent visit to India for the G-20 meeting, and earlier during his official trip in 2018, was not unexpected, given Canada’s track record. But it is for the first time that India has gone beyond firm words and shown firm action. The recent spate of decisions that the Modi government has directed against Canada shows that India’s patience has run out.
Rajesh Singh is the author of ‘Sikh Separatism: A History of Conflicts,’ published by Garuda Prakashan, 2023
