Price of Singh’s misstep is unfair
It’s odd, but a millstone around the neck of the Liberal prime minister is dragging down the leader of the NDP instead. What a windfall for the Conservatives. The issue of Khalistani separatism — long since subdued by force in India — burst back into mainstream Canadian consciousness after about three decades of existing in private conversations and in-group rallies.
It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of the issue of a Sikh homeland. Was it about independence or greater autonomy? Was the preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, whose posters appear at rallies in Canada, a terrorist or a saint? Should the mass murders of Sikhs following the murder of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 be labelled genocide? Is armed resistance/ violence justifiable in the cause of selfdetermination?
For thousands of Canadians, these questions are not just academic, they are legally fraught and weighed by trauma for the families of innocents killed — whether by Sikh separatists, or of Sikh separatists and others caught in the crossfire.
In a CBC interview in October, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who has publicly held positions on Sikh grievances against the Indian government, was asked for his views on Talwinder Singh Parmar, widely considered the mastermind behind the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 381 people. He did not denounce Parmar directly, something he belatedly and only recently corrected with a statement.
That was a major misstep, suggesting an ideology contradictory to his charismatic “love and courage” stance.
A wholesale piling on ensued: Here he is at this rally with Bhindranwale on posters; there he is at a speech with someone next to him espousing violence; oh look, here is a Khalistani rapper who is his best friend.
His attachment to a political Sikh issue is being upheld at the centre of a storm, sidelining all issues he campaigned on: pharmacare, dental care, ban on racial profiling (and carding), unemployment and other established NDP policy priorities.
The price of that misstep isn’t just political for Singh. The cloud of shadiness casts the Sikh part of Singh’s identity as suspicious, somehow inimical to his ability to prioritize Canadian interests ahead of those of that community.
That is blatantly unfair. Canadian- born Singh made it clear that he was ready to represent all Canadians when he put his hat in the federal leadership ring.
We can’t afford to be naive about any terrorist sympathies in Canada. Nor can we taint as terrorists all those Sikhs who support Khalistan, particularly since there has been no sign of such violence in the past three decades.
For Canadians not well-versed with Indian-Punjabi-Khalistani politics, the renewed interest in Khalistan tars all Sikh Canadians as people unable to leave their problems “back home.”
But this has precedent. Like white settlers who came before him, Singh has emotional ties to issues in the homeland of his ancestors.
Military conscription in the First World War, for instance, led to fierce and divisive debates in which English Canadians felt moved to fight for a cause that involved their ancestral land.
“French-Canadians, as well as many farmers, unionized workers, non-British immigrants, and other Canadians, generally opposed the measure,” according to the Canadian War Museum. “English-speaking Canadians … as well as British immigrants, the families of soldiers, and older Canadians, generally supported it.”
The Boer War was fought in South Africa, but Canadians volunteered in large numbers in support of mother England.
Fully independent, Canada chose to enter the Second World War, a war not at its shores, because it merited participation based on shared values with their ethnic homeland.
There’s no question of war in Singh’s case. Under media attack, Singh has fought back, painting the broad strokes of trauma from — and resistance to — persecution by India that would align the experience of a group of Sikh Canadians with the experiences of Black and Indigenous people.
“Would we ask a Black president to condemn someone like Malcolm X?” he asked Carol Off on CBC’s As It Happens.
Singh would do well to draw another parallel to Barack Obama and replicate Obama’s efforts that led to the 1995 publication of the memoir Dreams From My Father, when he was starting his political campaign for the Illinois Senate.
An honest, meditative reflection by Singh on the harrowing experiences and the wounds inflicted on the Sikh psyche would mean a fresh opportunity to get into the nuances of his positions. It would also provide an authentic insider alternative to the narrative of Sikh separatism as being synonymous with terrorism.