Trudeau Does Bhangra With Khalistanis

Attenuated over the years, Sikh separatism is given a fillip for cheap political gains even by the Canadian PM

- Anirudh Bhattacharya

In certain quarters of new Delhi, at least among those who are engaged in the bilateral dialogue between India and Canada, a curious question may have arisen lately: Who knew helmets could be so dangerous? That reference is to motorcycle helmets. The Canadian province of British Columbia offers an exemption from wearing helmets to a person “who practises the Sikh religion” and “has unshorn hair and habitually wears a turban composed of five or more square metres of cloth”.

That facility, though, is not provided in the province of Ontario, agitating Sikhs, bikers or otherwise. Ontario’s premier, Kathleen Wynne, isn’t willing to concede ground but, with elections due in another year, the community required some pandering to.

As a result, a young MPP (Member of the Provincial Parliament), Harinder Malhi, part of the ruling Liberal Party of Ontario caucus, moved a motion in the Assembly in April, terming the 1984 antiSikhs riots as ‘genocide’. That motion was carried with 34 ayes, in a House of 107 members, since the majority, including Wynne herself, absented themselves from the vote; a convenient separation from an issue that stung and surprised India. As one Indian official said, “All of us thought this was a dead issue. But this is that politics of election dynamics.”

That marked this as a spring of discontent for India. At the end of the month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared at a Khalsa Day celebration at Toronto’s Nathan Philips Square; the first sitting PM to attend the annual event since 2004. While that seemed innocuous on the surface and part of Trudeau’s shtick of signalling the virtues of diversity, that event routinely features a parade with floats honouring the likes of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and Khalistani flags. Its 2017 iteration was no different.