The word ‘Khalistan’ is back with a bang in the news, decades after it was dealt a body blow with the killing of several Sikh militants in the Golden Temple during Operation Blue Star in 1984, and Operation Black Thunder in 1986.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s accusation of a “potential link” between Indian “agents” and the assassination of Khalistani leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada’s British Columbia province on 18 June has not just deeply affected the bilateral India-Canada relationship, it constitutes one of the most serious foreign policy challenges to the Narendra Modi government.
In Delhi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met Prime Minister Modi Wednesday as the issue hogged headlines around the world. In Ottawa, a spokesperson of Canadian foreign minister Melanie Joly dismissed as false a Washington Post report which said that Canada’s allies had “rebuffed” a request to condemn Nijjar’s murder.
The US, UK and Australia—all members of the Five Eyes Alliance which shares intelligence information worldwide—issued statements on the Nijjar affair, saying they were “deeply concerned” with the serious allegations against India.
The Western world seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place — to listen to their fellow alliance brother in Canada and put pressure on India, or tell Trudeau to go slow and not rock the boat with Delhi.
Certainly, the public accusation also puts pressure on India. Modi’s successful piloting of the G20 summit also means that the credit has accrued to him personally—besides burnishing India’s reputation. But if the Western world is going to come down harshly on India for, allegedly, targeting foreign nationals on foreign soil, then India’s carefully nurtured reputation as a serious player from the Global South could be seriously damaged.
As India readies for a series of elections over the next few months, Modi’s big foreign policy successes, if not properly handled with the world’s most powerful nations, could become tainted.
Over the last 48 hours, India is fighting back — it has reportedly suspended visa services for all Canadian nationals to India.
Moreover, the view in India is increasingly veering around to exposing the shocking hypocrisy displayed by several Western nations. They have carried out targetted assassinations in recent decades as well as invasions of nations in flagrant violation of the United Nations such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US which substantially shifted the political mood in large parts of the Islamic World.
Even in the case of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Western sanctions against Russia are wholly Western—they have not been permitted by the UN, no matter that the Russian invasion is an unjustifiable act.
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Terrible diplomacy
Meanwhile, the New York Times, Canada’s national security advisor Jody Thomas and its intelligence chief David Vigneault had travelled to Delhi in recent weeks to “confront Indian intelligence agencies” with the information. Foreign minister Joly has said that she intends to take up the matter with her G7 counterparts on the margins of the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York.
Speculation about why Justin Trudeau had to make such a dramatic splash over his accusations against the Modi government is rife. They range from his minority government’s dependence on the New Democratic Party (NDP) led by Sikh leader Jagmeet Singh to the belief that freedom of speech is fundamental to all Canadian citizens, including what may be perceived by other nations as calls for secessionism.
At the very least, it smacks both of grotesque taste as well as terrible diplomacy.
In June this year, pro-Khalistan Sikhs in Canada sought to glorify the life of Talwinder Singh Parmar by holding a car rally in Toronto in his memory. Parmar was the mastermind of the Air India Kanishka bombing in 1985, in which 329 innocent people, including 88 children, were killed.
Earlier that month, the Canadian government took no action when pro-Khalistan Sikhs in Brampton, a town in Ontario province, showcased a tableau on the 39th anniversary of Operation Blue Star which featured a female mannequin, with a likeness to Indira Gandhi. The figure was positioned with her hands up and dressed in a blood-stained white sari and had while turbaned men pointed guns at it. A poster at the back of the tableau read, “Revenge for the attack on Darbar Sahib.”
Also in Brampton last year, a pro-Khalistani organisation called Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) claimed that more than 1,00,000 people attended a referendum event in favour of Khalistan. In 2022, according to Indian authorities, SFJ was linked to a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Punjab intelligence headquarters in Mohali, outside Chandigarh.
Also Read: Canada has crossed line by outing R&AW officer over Nijjar, breached unwritten espionage rules
Dragging feet on bombing report
On Tuesday, in the aftermath of Trudeau’s comments in Parliament on India and Nijjar, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh tweeted, “To all Canadians, this is my vow. I will leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of justice, including holding Narendra Modi accountable.”
But it was only in 2018 that Jagmeet Singh acknowledged that Parmar was the mastermind of the 1985 Kanishka bombing.
Indian governments over the decades have complained about Canada’s lackadaisical approach to terrorism — a commission of inquiry into the Kanishka terror attack was announced only in 2006 and the report published in 2010.
One reason why it took so long for the Canadian authorities to get their act together was because the recordings of conversations about the terror attack among the masterminds were destroyed allegedly by the authorities two years after the incident.
According to CBS News, a turf battle between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service prevented authorities from arriving at a conclusion sooner.
Parmar was never convicted — he was killed by the Punjab Police when he returned to India in 1992. Others involved in the bombing, Ripudaman Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted in 2005. Only one man, Inderjit Singh Reyat was held guilty.
“I stress this is a Canadian atrocity. For too long the greatest loss of Canadian lives at the hands of terrorists has somehow been relegated outside the Canadian consciousness,” said Justice John Major who prepared the inquiry report.
Jyoti Malhotra is a senior consulting editor at ThePrint. She tweets @jomalhotra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)