37model minority · reportageFEBRUARY 20181984 massacre. The bombing, Canada’s deadliest
terror attack, killed 329 people—mostly Canadian
citizens. Police in Punjab killed Parmar, a natu-
ralised Canadian citizen, while he was on a visit to
India in 1992. His portrait is displayed in certain
Canadian gurdwaras and, occasionally, during
Canadian Sikh parades.
Jagmeet responded somewhat tangentially to
Milewski’s question, saying he was offended by
the idea there was any conflict between Hindus
and Sikhs, something he has repeated many times.
“I grew up with a lot of close friends and dear
family friends that were from the Hindu faith,” he
said. “One of my goals was to erase this narrative
of a false Hindu-Sikh conflict, and what I really
believe in—”
“Forgive me,” Milewski interrupted. “You could
do that right now by saying, ‘No, it isn’t appropri-
ate to put up posters of Canada’s worst-ever mass
murderer.’”
“Well let me just clarify a point here,” Jagmeet
replied. “We’ve been living in existence as neigh-
bours, as—”
“Third time I’m asking,” Milewski interjected.
“It’s not a hard question.”
In the following 60 seconds, Singh tried awk-
wardly to shift the subject to 1984 and Hindu-Sikh
relations. But Milewski kept pressing.
“What about putting up posters of Parmar, the
architect of the Air India bombing, as a martyr,”
Milewski said. “Is that appropriate, yes or no?”
Jagmeet demurred, criticising “the heinous
massacre that was committed.”
“So you won’t denounce those posters of Par-
mar?” Milewski asked, for the fifth and final time.
“I don’t know who was responsible,” Jagmeet
said. “I think we need to find out who was truly
responsible and make sure the investigation actu-
ally results in a conviction of someone who was
actually responsible.”
Though Parmar was never convicted, a govern-
ment inquiry—overseen by a retired justice of the
Canadian supreme court—had determined that he
masterminded the attack.
The exchange caused outrage. Some journalists,
activists and academics criticised Milewski, argu-
ing his line of inquiry was racist, unnecessary and
betrayed the Western media’s double standards
around politicians of colour. “Why is he being
put in that position?” Chandrima Chakraborty,
a professor at McMaster University in Ontario
who studies memories of Air India Flight 182,
said. “Why is he not being questioned about the
decriminalisation of marijuana?”—one of Jag-
meet’s policy proposals. “Why is it always about
Sikhism?”
But others found Jagmeet’s response, or lack
thereof, equally troubling. The Toronto-based
writer Jonathan Kay said Jagmeet’s failure to
assign blame for the bombing was tantamount
to “an American politician saying he had no idea
who was responsible for Sept. 11.” Bal Gupta, the
chairman of the Air India 182 Victims Families
Association, was similarly critical. “He should
have disowned the glorification of terrorism, even
suspected terrorism or promoters of terrorism,”
he said.
In response to the controversy, the CBC’s om-
budsman, Esther Enkin, launched an inquiry into
Milewski’s questioning. She concluded that while
the questions could have been better structured,
they were journalistically appropriate given Jag-
meet’s longstanding relationship to Sikh activism
and identity politics. “He was asked this question
because he is a national leader who has taken posi-tions on issues related to the Sikh community and
its on-going grievances against the Indian govern-
ment,” she said.
While the Western media probed this contro-
versy as one of implied racism against an elected
official from Canada’s visible minorities, it largely
missed the underlying contradictions regarding
Sikh identity politics. Milewski alluded to the
“Sikh nation” in the course of the interview, with-
out qualification, as if it were an existing entity,
and not a deeply contested idea—with relatively
strong currency in the West but practically anach-
ronistic in present-day Punjab.
“Numbers had always been the chief problem
of the Sikh community,” the Indian journalist
Khushwant Singh wrote in his essay “Genesis of
the Hindu-Sikh divide.” Punjab is home to more
than 16 million Sikhs—the largest Sikh population
in the world, around 35 times the size of Canada’s.
Sikhs form the majority of the state’s population,
but roughly 38 percent of Punjab’s residents are
Hindus. And the story of how Punjab became ma-
jority-Sikh is complex. “Sikh politics has always
had a bit of an identity crisis,” Kanwar Sandhu, an
MLA in Punjab and an erstwhile journalist who
covered India’s conflict zones, said. “I don’t think
this area has enjoyed comparative peace for too
long, ever.”While the Western media probed
Milewski’s controversial interview
with Jagmeet as one of implied racism
against an elected official from Canada’s
visible minorities, it largely missed the
underlying contradictions regarding Sikh
identity politics.