36 THE CARAVAN
model minority · reportage
“It’s Trudeauism,” Naveen Girn, the communi-
ty-relations director for the mayor of Vancouver,
told me. The task before Jagmeet, he said, is “how
to respond to Justin Trudeau and frame himself in
comparison to that.”
Separating his politics from Trudeau’s is tricky,
but Jagmeet’s skin colour and appearance do
create a clear contrast. Indeed, Jagmeet’s most
famous moment of progressivism came from
a misreading of his appearance and religious
identity.
During his campaign for the NDP leadership,
Jagmeet was interrupted by an Islamophobe ac-
cusing him of being part of the Muslim Brother-
hood and wanting to implement Sharia law. As his
supporters jeered the protestor, Jagmeet preached
tolerance.“What do we believe in?” Jagmeet asked the
crowd. “We believe in love and courage.”
The crowd responded by chanting “love and
courage,” Jagmeet’s campaign slogan. A video
recording of the event went viral. The politician
was widely praised for the way he handled the
situation—and also for the way he did not.
“Many people have commented that I could
have just said I’m not Muslim. In fact, many have
clarified that I’m actually Sikh,” he later ex-
plained. “While I’m proud of who I am, I purpose-
ly did not go down that road because it suggests
their hate would be OK if I was Muslim.”
Jagmeet went on to win the election handily.
“I’ve got other friends and relations that work in
politics or in the political arena in some capacity,”
Dhaliwal said. “Jagmeet is the first candidate for
whom I’ve come out in a really vocal way.”less than 24 hours after winning the race to
lead the NDP, Jagmeet sat down for an interview
with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
journalist Terry Milewski. Aired on “Power &
Politics,” CBC’s prominent evening news show, the
conversation was arguably Jagmeet’s most impor-
tant to date. It did not go as planned.
To begin with, Jagmeet’s campaign tried to get
hold of the list of questions beforehand. “Jagmeet
Singh soon on @PnPCBC after threatening to
cancel if not told the questions first,” Milewski
tweeted out hours before the programme. “He
reconsidered on being told no.”
It was an embarrassing moment for Jagmeet,
whose public persona was thus far largely built on
his own team’s astute use of social media and on
flattering press coverage (the writer who conduct-
ed Singh’s fawning GQ interview later joined his
campaign). Another CBC correspondent replied to
Milewski’s tweet, noting that it is “against CBC’s
journalistic standards to give questions. Party
comms ppl know that.”
As the interview unfolded, it became clear why
Jagmeet’s team preferred staged interviews with
Jus Reign to professional journalistic question-
ing. In general, news stories discussing Jagmeet’s
mixing of Sikh identity and politics had depicted it
as an uncomplicated good. But during the conver-
sation with Milewski, it became evident that there
were some dark elements of Sikh politics that
Singh would rather not discuss.
“Do you think that some Canadian Sikhs go too
far when they honour Talwinder Singh Parmar as
a martyr of the Sikh nation?” Milewski asked.
Parmar was once the leader of Babbar Khalsa
International—a Sikh militant group dedicated
to carving out an independent Khalistan. Bab-
bar Khalsa orchestrated the bomb attack on Air
India Flight 182 in 1985 to retaliate against thebelow: Talwinder
Singh Parmar, the
chief architect of
the Air India 182
Bombing, which is
Canada’s deadliest
terror attack, is
controversially
regarded by some
as martyr of the
“Sikh nation.”
tony bock / toronto star / getty images