Does the Honour of Canadian Sikhs Require Defence?

"Support for the extreme ideologies of such groups remains."
"For example, in Canada, two key Sikh organizations, Babbar Khalsa International and the International Sikh Youth Federation, have been identified as being associated with terrorism and remain listed terrorist entities under the Criminal Code."
Public Safety Canada annual report, Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada

"Rather than defending the reputation of Canadian Sikhs and denying these baseless allegations, it appears that the Canadian government is content to capitulate to Indian demands to crack down on the Sikh activists."
Ontario Khalsa Darbar, Mississauga gurdwara

"Our government would never equate any one community with extremism. The annual Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada is prepared by officials to describe the current terrorist threat environment."
"The report noted that the National Terrorism Threat Level remains unchanged."
"But words matter and being precise matters. So I have invited my officials and the others they work with right across Canada to examine the descriptors that are used in relation to terrorism and extremism and violence to make sure those descriptors are appropriate and proper."
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale

"Since 1985, when I was ten years old, I have seen how Sikhs in Canada have had to wear the stigma of 'Sikh extremist'."
"Finally, after 30 years, these words stopped being headlines on our newspapers, and Sikh Canadians were seen simply as Canadians, regardless of what was on their heads." 
Member of Parliament Randeep Sarai

Following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's trip to India with an entourage of elected Sikh Members of Parliament, ostensibly to persuade the Indian government that a free trade deal with Canada would be in both countries' best economic interests, the fallout of the trip along with Trudeau's selection of a good many Sikh MPs to sit in his cabinet leading him to boast that Canada had more Sikhs in Parliament than India does, India's media portrayed those members of Trudeau's cabinet as Khalistani "sympathizers".

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stands beside Surrey Centre MP Randeep Sarai, right in white turban, for a group photo at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

It was, in fact, Khalistani "sympathizers" of a severely virulent bent who perpetrated a deadly plot on Canadian soil in support of Khalistan separation as a sovereign homeland for Sikhs that ended with the death of 330 passengers and crew of the bombed Air India flight in 1980. This event represented the deadliest terrorist attack that Canada ever experienced and in a search for justice the following RCMP investigation failed to produce sufficient evidence to convict all of the perpetrators of that atrocity.

That Justin Trudeau chose to visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India during his February trip surrounded by Sikh members of his parliamentary caucus who accompanied him on his trip cannot have sat particularly well with the government of India. Indeed, the reaction of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Trudeau ensemble en famille was decidedly cool and it was not until the end-stage of the Trudeau trip that an engagement was arranged for the two leaders to meet. Trade deal? Not likely.

It was the very Randeep Sarai whom Trudeau had appointed as the Pacific caucus chair who had invited terrorist Jaspal Atwal -- former member of an outlawed Sikh separatist group who had been criminally convicted on charges of of attempted murder of an Indian cabinet minister visiting Canada and charged as well with the brutal assault of former British Columbia Sikh Premier Ujjal Dosanjh who vehemently opposed the Khalistan movement -- to join that very same trip to India in February of this year. A colossal snafu that must really have impressed Prime Minister Modi.

And on the other hand, there is Balraj Deol, a journalist in Ontario who is also a critic of the Khalistani movement. He has pointed out that "martyr" portraits of Sikh terrorists; those of the Air India plot suspects included, are hung in Sikh temples and have been given prominently proud display in parades representing Sikh heroism. "It [the Public Safety report] does not offend me, it does not offend a lot of people who I am talking to", he emphasized.

In 2015 a report was issued by the Senate of Canada's national security and defence committee citing the Sikh martyr portraits. That report proposed that a new law be adopted to prohibit such "terrorist glorification". A proposal that was obviously never acted upon. Yet MP Randeep Sarai claims to have been unable to find any evidence in the body of the document he decries to justify the passage linking Sikhs along with Sunni and Shia Islamists with terrorism.

"It is deeply disappointing to see the addition of imagined 'Sikh extremism' to the 2018 Public Report on the Terrorism Threat to Canada.  There is no explanation for this addition other than Public Safety Canada having tacitly accepted the false Indian rhetoric around rising extremism in the Sikh community.  Sikhs in Canada have repeatedly denied these allegations and no evidence has ever been provided to substantiate them.  Advocacy for Sikh human rights or Khalistan is not extremism and to suggest that it poses a danger to Canada is absolutely ludicrous."
"Rather than defending the reputation of Canadian Sikhs and insisting that freedom of speech is a constitutional right, the Government of Canada has taken the route of appeasement- to the detriment of Sikhs in Canada. Accepting Indian allegations of ‘Sikh extremism’ deeply maligns the reputation of the community and has a real impact on the everyday lives of Canadian Sikhs."
World Sikh Organization of Canada President Mukhbir Singh