New Delhi: Amid ongoing diplomatic friction between New Delhi and Ottawa, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau admitted that supporters of Khalistan are indeed present in Canada. Trudeau’s admission, made during Diwali celebrations with the Indian Canadian community at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, affirmed India’s position that his government has been a haven for Khalistani extremists.
Relations between India and Canada deteriorated when Trudeau alleged that Indian agents might have been involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a pro-Khalistan extremist, claims that India immediately dismissed as “absurd” and “baseless.”
Furthermore, Trudeau labelled Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma as a “person of interest” in an unspecified investigation, a term suggesting suspicion without formal charges. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reacted firmly, labeling Trudeau’s accusations “preposterous” and, in response, expelled six Canadian diplomats, setting an October 19, 2024, deadline for their departure.
Later, testifying before the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Ottawa, Trudeau conceded that he had not provided India with concrete evidence to back his claims regarding Nijjar’s assassination.
A couple of days back, Ujjal Dosanjh, a Sikh himself and former federal cabinet minister under Prime Minister Paul Martin, in a column for Canadian newspaper National Post argued that Trudeau’s approach has empowered Khalistani extremists and created fear among moderate Sikhs.
“Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is “sociologically and politically” an “idiot” who has never truly understood that the vast majority of Sikhs are quite secular in their outlook and want nothing to do with Khalistan”, Dosanjh said.
The 78-year-old former NDP premier of British Columbia blamed Trudeau of being responsible for what the column describes as the Canadian Sikh population, the largest Sikh diaspora in the world, being “co-opted by the Khalistanis to the point where this obscure separatist movement has become a Canadian problem”.
“A silent majority of the Sikhs do not want to have anything to do with Khalistan. They just don’t speak out because they’re afraid of violence and violent repercussions,” he asserted.
Dosanjh said Trudeau “never really understood the vast majority of Sikhs are quite secular in their outlook, despite the fact that they go to the temple”.
“Khalistanis are not a majority, and the fact nobody speaks against them is out of fear,” he said. Khalistani supporters control many of the temples in Canada. And it’s Trudeau’s fault, Dosanjh said, “that Canadians now equate Khalistanis with Sikhs, as if we are all Khalistanis if we’re Sikhs”.
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