Rising India and a Murder in Canada
Canada is embroiled in an increasingly bitter diplomatic argument with India. As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused India of murdering a Canadian citizen on Canadian territory, this is hardly surprising. For many observers the most curious aspect of the scandal is a lack of support for the Canadian position, apparently due to the failure of Justin Trudeau to present convincing evidence. But there is more support than meets the eye, and Trudeau has moves yet to make.
The murder in question was the shooting of Hardip Singh Nijjar on 18 June in Surrey, a southern suburb of Vancouver, BC. The incident was recorded on security cameras that confirmed the involvement of at least 6 individuals and 2 vehicles. Nijjar died at the scene. The assassins, who were masked, drove away and have not been apprehended. The identity of the individuals or institutions behind the murder has not been revealed. The evidence is closely guarded, although the Canadian government claims to possess signals intelligence as well as human intelligence that confirm the involvement of Indian diplomats or agents in Canada.
Nijjar was a plumber. He was also the president of Surrey’s Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, a “residence of the guru” that contains a copy of the Sikh scriptures known as the Guru Granth Sahib. Nijjar was not only the president of a gurdwara, he was also a Sikh nationalist who claimed to support a peaceful referendum in India but had been designated a “terrorist” by India.
More Sikhs live in Canada than in any country other than India and 82 gurdwaras have been built in British Columbia alone. The number of Sikhs in Vancouver is almost a quarter of a million, nearly 10 percent of the total population. They are there, in the main, as a response to persecution in India.
The Sikh community emerged in the Punjab at the end of the 15th century and follows the teachings of Guru Nanak and the nine Sikh gurus who succeeded him. As their beliefs were distinct from those of Hindus or Muslims, they have been subject to intense persecution throughout their history. They have responded by emphasizing military prowess, creating a Sikh ideal that embodies the virtues of soldier as well as saint.
Hopes for a separate Sikhistan were discussed formally in 1944 while plans were being prepared for a post-colonial India. They were never ratified. Sikh aspirations were frustrated by official indifference and corruption, as well as by the narrow confessionalism of political parties such as the RSS and the inability of the Congress Party to counter it. Attempts by successive governments to suppress Sikh militants reached a bloody climax in 1984, when Indira Gandhi sent troops into the Golden Temple at Amritsar to remove fighters who had gathered around Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and turned the shrine into a military complex.
Two months later, Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards, an event that provoked anti-Sikh riots across northern India. Sikhs sought refuge in Canada, where they retained their dreams of an independent Khalistan, or “Land of the Pure.” They brought the conflict with them. In June 1985, Air India Flight 182 from Montreal to London was destroyed by a bomb that caused the death of 329 passengers. The attack was often seen by Canadians as a foreign affair and is barely remembered, although the casualties were mostly Canadian and the atrocity was planned in British Columbia. It has not been forgotten in India.
Since 1985, Indian politics have changed dramatically, the ideals of an earlier generation of Indian politicians replaced by the more rigid ethnic and religious nationalism of Hindutva. Narendra Modi’s agenda offers citizens who are not Hindu – such as Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs – little more than a second-class status. But if the hopes of Sikhs in India for an independent Khalistan have been suppressed, they survive in British Columbia.
How important a question is Sikh political aspiration for Canada or India? Is it of any significance to anyone else? The Sikh community is undoubtedly a political force in Canada. The 33rd premier of British Columbia, Ujjal Dosanjh, was a Sikh who also served as a federal member of Parliament and cabinet minister. More important at the moment is the prominence of Jagmeet Singh, an MP from Burnaby, a Vancouver suburb. He is the national leader of the New Democratic Party, on whose support Trudeau’s minority government depends. Trudeau, no less than Modi, sees the Sikh community in terms of domestic political issues rather than international diplomacy.
Elsewhere, however, interests vary. India is being courted because of its economic power, huge markets, its strategic position in Asia generally and its rivalry with China in particular. With so much at stake, there is little desire outside India and Canada to enter an argument over the death of a plumber in Surrey. Nevertheless, the US ambassador to Canada stated “there was shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners that helped lead Canada to making the statements that the prime minister made” and that US intelligence in particular had been sent to Ottawa.
This was an unusually explicit commitment that could make the case even more difficult to address. Would Modi be any more likely to admit culpability if detailed evidence were released? The activities of Sikh militants have been murky and may have included affiliation with Pakistan intelligence as well as international crime syndicates. The Indian position has been that the death of Nijjar involved enemies among the latter. What if this position were no longer tenable because the involvement of the Indian government was exposed?
The various parties involved have relatively weak motivations for fueling the controversy, India and Canada having now gone through some diplomatic tit-for-tats over the case. But releases of evidence could interrupt the desire to move on.