Firstever project to document, memorialise Kanishka tragedy
TORONTO: In 2010, then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, marking the 25th anniversary of the Air India Flight 182 “Kanishka” tragedy, apologised for the “institutional failings” that led to the country’s worst act of terrorism. That statement is now unavailable on the Canadian government’s website, or if still there, it has been buried so deep it can’t be found.
This year, a pair of new projects documenting the tragedy will be launched by Mcmaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, which will make this apology available to for easy public access, among other material.
These projects are being spearheaded by Chandrima Chakraborty, associate professor of English and Cultural Studies at the university, who said the principal objective is to make Kanishka “part of a larger public memory”.
Chakraborty became aware of the ignorance among young Canadians about this terror attack, which claimed 329 lives, during interactions in her classroom. The first of the projects, a website memorialising the tragedy, is expected to launch this spring. The second initiative, will be a “physical and digital repository” of artefacts linked to the tragedy at the university library, the first of its kind in the country. That will formally come into being around autumn .
“The effort is to fill the silence that is there and to have a sustained public debate on the events as well as to broaden a sense of inherit- ance and responsibility for the bombings, because it is not just an Indo-canadian tragedy,” Chakraborty said.
The attempt is to “reach an audience beyond those directly affected” by the tragedy, she said.
The testimonies of members of the victims’ families were videotaped at the conference and will feature in the archives, along with others gathered since. But the archives will remain “a work in progress”, she said, since new material will be added as it becomes available.