33model minority · reportageFEBRUARY 2018win over Sikh voters, giving them
significant influence. Parties make a
point of fielding Sikh candidates, and
provinces have been attentive to Sikh
rights. In 2008, the British Columbia
provincial government formally apolo-
gised for the Komagata Maru incident,
and the province unveiled a monument
to its victims in 2012.
“I think they’ve been really smart
about understanding the way that the
Canadian electoral system operates,”
Erin Tolley, a political scientist at the
University of Toronto, said. Their suc-
cess is evident in the composition of
Canada’s parliament. Out of 338 seats,
17 are occupied by Sikhs—forming a
share that outstrips the corresponding
percentage of Sikhs in Canada’s overall
population. Within three generations,
Canadian Sikhs have gone from dis-
enfranchisement to disproportionate
representation.
Rachna Singh, an NDP legislator for
British Columbia, chalked up the com-
munity’s relative success to its experi-
ence fighting adversity. “When people
came here on the Komagata Maru, they
were not political activists. They were
just trying to make a good living,” she
said. “But what happened to them—the
sheer black-and-white racism—it really
did affect them. It taught them that
they have to fight for their rights.”
jagmeet singh jimmy dhaliwal was
born on 2 January 1979, in Scarbor-
ough, Ontario—60 years after the Ko-
magata Maru incident and five before
India’s 1984 Sikh massacre. His mother,
Harmeet, moved to Canada in the
1970s, sponsored by her sister. She mar-
ried Jagmeet’s father, Jagtaran Singh
Dhaliwal, in Punjab, and he followed
her to Canada.
Though born in Ontario, Jagmeet
spent his earliest years living with his
grandmother in Punjab. He returned to
Canada after his father was admitted
to medical school, in Canada’s east-
ernmost province. When Jagmeet was
seven years old, the family moved back
to Ontario, where Jagtaran worked as a
psychiatrist and Harmeet as a teacher.
“He was always very outgoing, very
friendly, very social, and he cared a lot,”
Balpreet Singh, Jagmeet’s cousin and a
spokesperson and legal representative
for the World Sikh Organisation, said.
“Even throughout his childhood, he
was always someone who cared a lot
about the people around him.”
Like others who knew Jagmeet at a
young age, Balpreet said that the future
NDP leader was something of a mentor
when it came to embracing Sikh iden-
tity. “He was like an older brother to
me,” Balpreet said. “He definitely gave
me a lot of advice on turban-tying.”
Jagmeet’s appearance made him a
frequent target for teasing, even bully-
ing, in his childhood. To escape it, his
parents sent him to Detroit Country
Day School—an elite private school just
across the US border. Later, he studied
biology at the University of Western
Ontario. Jagmeet has said his style—the
custom-designed suits, the colourful
turbans—came about as a response to
unfriendly gawking. “If people are go-
ing to stare at me, I might as well give
them something to look at,” he told GQ.
Dressing up is an anti-discrimination
tactic that dates back to Canada’s first
Sikhs, many of who donned three-piece
suits at the instruction of Vancouver’s
Khalsa Diwan Society. This might
have done little back then to head off
incidents such as that of the Komagata
Maru, but it appears to have worked
better for Jagmeet, now an Instagram
phenomenon.
Yet, despite his style it has not fully
exempted him from North America’s
general suspicion of brown men. Jag-
meet was 22 years old on 11 September
2001, when members of the extremist
outfit Al Qaeda hijacked and crashed
four planes in the United States, killing
2,996 people. The event caused mas-
sive grief and expanded state surveil-
lance, and played a role in provoking
two wars. It also ushered in a new era
of Islamophobia in the West. Jagmeet,
of course, is Sikh, but white chau-
vinists typically do not distinguishbetween brown people with religious
headwear. One of the first retaliatory
killings to follow the hijackings was of
a Sikh man in the US state of Arizona.
Across the world, Sikhs were sub-
jected to acts of discrimination large
and small. Jagmeet—who has spoken
of having been needlessly stopped
by the police multiple times—was no
exception.
“9/11 resulted in a whole new wave of
extreme racism and hatred,” Jagmeet
told Macleans, a Canadian weekly
magazine. “People driving by yelling
‘Osama,’ physical confrontations. I was
able to stand up for myself. But it cre-
ated a lot of tension, a lot of negativity.
People would be afraid—literally—and
walk away in fear.”
The attacks helped orient Jagmeet’s
understanding of politics. Soon, his
education gave him the tools to act. He
had originally planned on becoming a
doctor, but went to law school instead
when his father became ill (Jagtaran
eventually recovered). Jagmeet’s deci-
sion to switch paths propelled him into
activism. One of his earliest political
forays was a campaign against tuition
hikes at Osgoode Law School, where
he was studying. After graduating, he
worked at a prominent Toronto law
firm before creating his own practice.
“The groups I worked with—fighting
against poverty, against tuition fees,
and for immigrants and refugees—felt
unsupported,” his website says. “They
didn’t have an ally they could turn to
in government.” This, the website con-
tinues, is part of what drew him into
politics.
Events overseas were also critical to
Jagmeet’s growing activism.
“People have asked me the story
about how I got into politics. Let me
tell you the real story,” Jagmeet said in
a speech at his campaign advisor and
close friend’s Sikh wedding in 2017,Out of 338 seats, 17 are occupied by Sikhs—
forming a share that outstrips the corresponding
percentage of Sikhs in Canada’s overall
population. Within three generations, Canadian
Sikhs have gone from disenfranchisement to
disproportionate representation.