In India, Sikh separatism often cited as scare tactic
Angry rhetoric is still directed at Canada
JALANDHAR, India — During his first trip to India as Canada’s prime minister in 2018, Justin Trudeau made a visit to the northern state of Punjab, where he got a photo op in full Punjabi dress at the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion.
He also got, courtesy of the Indian government, an earful of grievances — and a list of India’s most-wanted men on Canadian soil.
The killing this summer of one man on that list, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, has turned into a diplomatic war between India and Canada. Trudeau claimed this month that Indian agents had orchestrated the assassination inside Canada. India rejected the assertion and accused Canada of ignoring its warnings that Canadian Sikh extremists such as Nijjar were plotting violence in Punjab in hopes of making the state into a separate Sikh nation.
But beyond the recriminations, a more complex story is unfolding in Punjab, analysts, political leaders, and residents say. While the Indian government asserts that Canada’s lax attitude toward extremism among its politically influential Sikhs poses a national security threat inside India, there is little support in Punjab for a secessionist cause that peaked in deadly violence decades ago and was snuffed out.
Violence in Punjab that the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi attributes to Sikh separatists is, in fact, mostly gang-related, a chaotic mix of extortion, narcotics trafficking, and score-settling. The criminal masterminds, often operating from abroad, take advantage of economic desperation in a state where farmers are crushed by rising debt and many youths lack employment or direction — problems compounded by a feeling of political alienation in minority Sikh communities.
For Modi, the pursuit of a small but noisy assemblage of criminals in a faraway country — India had been pushing for the extradition of 26 before Nijjar’s death — and the amplification of the separatist threat provide an important political narrative before a national election early next year.
It furthers his image as a strongman leader who will go to any extent to protect his nation. It has prompted even some of his staunchest critics to rally around him in the face of Canada’s accusation. And it offers a fresh threat to point to after Modi capitalized on violent Islamic militancy emanating from Pakistan before the last election, in 2019, to create a political wave.
On Tuesday, the Indian foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, said that Canada had seen “a lot of organized crime” related to “secessionist forces,” while adding that targeted killings were “not the policy of the Indian government.”
Stoking the threat of Khalistan — the would-be Sikh homeland — as a national issue once again has pushed India’s 25 million Sikhs into a difficult space. Old wounds of prejudice against them have been reopened, and they now find themselves in the middle of a diplomatic clash that separates them from family in the large Sikh diaspora.