The postcards began being dropped into mailboxes across the province in British Columbia in the summer of 1978, together with advertisements for supermarket sales, nutritional supplements, and cheap electronics. Talwinder Singh Parmar, clutching two crossed swords and wearing an imposing blue robe tied in the middle with a saffron sash, had started marketing himself to the faithful. The postcards called on Sikhs to be reborn into their faith through the ritual of Amrit Sanskar—and then go to war for Khalistan.
“All modes of redressing a wrong having failed,” the postcards read, quoting from scripture, “the raising of the sword is a pious duty.”
The legacy left behind by those postcards lies at the heart of the diplomatic crisis Canada has set off by claiming that Indian agents were responsible for the assassination of pro-Khalistan terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Evidence for Canada’s claims is, so far, thin. Even as the Justin Trudeau government ordered the expulsion of Pavan Kumar Rai, an Indian Police Service officer serving as head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) station in Ottawa, the PM said that authorities are still investigating “credible allegations”. Foreign minister Mélanie Joly, for her part, said, “If proven true, this would be a great violation of our sovereignty.”
Canadian investigators have not publicly identified the assailants who killed Nijjar — hired and paid, journalist Kim Bolan has revealed, on an online organised crime website.
Little doubt exists, though, that pro-Khalistan terrorists like Nijjar, accused by India of organising multiple acts of terrorism in Punjab, have been causing deep concern within India. Even though Canada’s Anti-terrorism Act has enabled several prosecutions for advocating terrorism, law scholars Michael Nesbit and Dana Hagg write, authorities have been reluctant to use it against groups celebrating violence — even the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in June 2023.
The success of the postcard-marketing campaign that claimed hundreds of lives has led some in India’s intelligence community to wonder if they shouldn’t be using more direct means.
Also read: ‘Air India ki flight mat lo’ — how Canadian neglect led up to Kanishka…
The rise of the ‘jathedar’
Like hundreds of thousands of other immigrants from around the world, Parmar was drawn to Canada by wealth. He wasn’t driven there by conflict. Together with his wife, Surinder Kaur, and their three-year-old daughter, Parmar arrived in Canada in May 1970. Early on, he found a job at the L&K Lumber Works in Richmond, while Surinder began working at a fish-packing plant. Within a year, he plunged into the real estate business, selling refurbished properties.
According to acquaintances interviewed by journalists Zuhair Kashmiri and Brian McAndrew, Parmar was not religiously observant and did not wear an untrimmed beard or turban.
Following savage violence between the Akali and Nirankari sects in 1978 in India, though, Parmar abandoned Western clothing and drinking and re-embraced his faith. He co-founded the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) militia, which carried out a string of assassinations of government officials, Hindus, and Nirankaris in Punjab. Parmar arrived in India in 1980 to join the campaign. In November 1981, Parmar is alleged to have been involved in a shootout with police near the village of Daheru, adjacent to Ludhiana, which claimed the lives of two police officers.
Later that month, Parmar returned to Canada and resumed fundraising for the BKI. Then, in 1983, on a fundraising tour in Europe, he was arrested by German authorities for the killing of the police officers. Parmar’s lawyers, though, produced immigration records from Nepal, which showed that the Sikh militant had been in that country on the date of the shootout. He was released in the summer of 1984 after spending 53 weeks in prison.
Arriving home just days after Operation Blue Star, Parmar no longer needed to advertise himself using postcards. Funds flowed in for the jathedar of the war against ‘Hindu imperialism’. Living in an eight-bedroom house, with a four-car garage, Parmar vowed vengeance for the storming of the Golden Temple by Indian soldiers.
Also read: West can’t allow Khalistan’s revival in its backyard and expect normal relations with India
The warnings Canada ignored
Even though the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was aware of the threat posed by Parmar, a judicial investigation by former Supreme Court judge John Major would establish that authorities did little to act on what they knew. CSIS agents conducting surveillance even watched Parmar, his associate Inderjit Singh Reyat, and a third man who was never officially identified, test the explosive device that would later be used to blow Air India flight 182, the Kanishka.
The investigation records led CSIS agent Larry Lowe to hide behind a tree, thinking he was being shot at. His colleague Lynne Jarrett, also startled, jumped out of her seat. The surveillance teams did not possess a camera, so could not photograph the suspects.
Earlier, counter-narcotics officials in Vancouver were told by an informant that he had been offered 200,000 CAD to plant a bomb on an Air India flight. A second informant told authorities that the plot involved two separate bombs, one a backup in case the principal device failed.
Further ‘highly classified’ intelligence became available to the CSIS—provided, Indian government officials say, by the Intelligence Bureau—later that month. There was no action, though. Parmar evaded arrest, eventually dying in a controversial shootout with the Punjab Police years later.
Arriving in Toronto in 1997, using a fake passport identifying him as ‘Ravi Sharma’, Nijjer built on the legacy of figures like Parmar. The Canadian authorities, it is clear, did not welcome his arrival. Even though Nijjar claimed to have been tortured in police custody, journalist Steward Bell has reported, the militant’s application for asylum was denied by officials who disputed the medical statements he offered as evidence. A fresh application, claiming citizenship by virtue of marriage, was also denied.
Even as his applications for citizenship made their way through the immigration bureaucracy, Nijjar seems to have focussed on building his livelihood and opened a successful plumbing business.
From 2007, though, Nijjar’s name began to regularly surface in Indian counter-terrorism investigations. Ludhiana Police named him as one of the plotters who organised the bombing of the Shringar movie theatre in 2007. The prosecution, however, collapsed, with a trial court acquitting three accused, while a fourth passed away in prison. The collapse of the trial led to questions being raised in Canada about the credibility of the charges against Nijjar.
From 2013—by then he had acquired Canadian citizenship—Nijjar became increasingly associated with pro-Khalistan activism, notably participating in plans to hold a so-called referendum among the diaspora on secession from India.
The authorities in India, meanwhile, brought multiple new cases of terrorism against Nijjar, including the bombing of a temple in Patiala and a plot to murder the cult leader Piara Singh Bhaniara, the author of a Dalit-focussed alternative to the Guru Granth Sahib. The Punjab Police claims Nijjjar operated through organised crime groups in Canada, notably that of gangster Arshdeep ‘Arsh Dalla’ Singh.
Arshdeep is believed to live in Canada, where he disappeared while on a tourist visit in 2017.
No looming insurgency?
From the data, it is clear that pro-Khalistan terrorism in the West today exists in a milieu fundamentally different from the one Parmar capitalised on. For all the funding raised in the diaspora, and alleged supplies of weapons from Pakistan, incidents of terrorism and fatalities remain negligible, data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal establishes. Few of the attacks that have taken place, moreover, involve ideological recruits. Instead, pro-Khalistan financiers have been forced to rely on criminals to execute acts of violence.
These are not signs of a looming insurgency. In 1984, Parmar succeeded in turning his low-grade marketing campaign into a movement due to political missteps in Punjab, which empowered revanchists like the preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
Efforts by next-generation figures like Amritpal Singh to claim Bhindrawale’s mantle might have acquired traction on social media—but their impact on ground has been negligible. As Anchal Vora has noted, history might seem to be repeating itself—but it is mostly a farce. The ghost of Parmar no longer needs to be feared.
The author is National Security Editor, ThePrint. He tweets @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)