43model minority · reportageFEBRUARY 2018When I asked Sikhs in Punjab about 1984, it
was clear they do share many opinions with
their counterparts in Canada. The violence still
haunts many, and locals were anguished by the
state’s failure to punish many of its perpetrators.
Sandhu, the journalist turned legislator, said he
was impressed with how states such as Canada
and the United Kingdom were handling internal
dissension, including threats of secession. Aulakh,
whose grandson lives in Toronto, praised Canada’s
relative harmony when compared to India’s own
history of internal conflicts. “We want more har-
mony—Hindu, Sikh, Muslim,” he said. “We are all
Indians. We should be like brothers.”
Despite its turbulent past, Punjab is now one
of India’s most affluent regions. The state has the
second-highest human development index of any
Indian state. Most of the people I spoke with in
Punjab listed unemployment and the state’s ongo-
ing struggles with drug addiction and suicide as
their main concerns. None brought up Operation
Blue Star or the 1984 pogrom until I specifically
asked. No one expressed any desire—on the record
or otherwise—for an independent Sikh state. “Sikh
separatism was always stronger in the diaspora,
and specifically in Canada, than it was in India
itself,” Narendra Subramanian, a political-science
professor at McGill University who studies India,
said. He added that most estimates suggest sepa-
ratism did not enjoy majority support among Sikhs
at any point.
In India, communal violence is unfortunately
routine and its perpetrators usually go scot-free.
Expending energy on 1984 thus makes little
strategic sense. “When you are living in India,
every day there are new issues,” Gurpreet Singh,
a 47-year-old journalist who moved from Punjab
to Canada in 2001, explained. “It’s like a roller
coaster. So 1984 wasn’t the first black mark, and it
wasn’t the last.”
Sandhu argued that Indian Sikhs talk less about
1984 and human rights than Canadian Sikhs do,
not because of fear but out of practicality. “Here,
the element of pragmatism sets in. After all, if you
are living in Punjab, there is local politics, you
have work, you have business, you have relation-
ships, you have normal life to carry on,” he said.
“It does kind of come up again and again, but not
very prominently.”
Rachna, who migrated to Canada in 2001 along
with Gurpreet, her husband, told me she was
caught off guard by the intensity with which
second-generation Canadian Sikhs focus on 1984.
This was especially true with her son, who grew
up in Vancouver. “We had never talked to him
about 1984 and what had happened to Sikhs. But
he goes to school—I think he was in grade seven—
and he says, ‘Oh, you know what happened in
1984 to Sikhs and how they were killed,’” she said.
“Gurpreet and I were very surprised by this. Kids
are talking about this in school.”
Rachna attributed the comparative prominence
of the discussion on 1984 within Canada to dif-
ferences in Indian and Canadian politics. She said
that for children reared in Canada, a state with
strong rule of law and a reputation for peaceful ac-
commodation, it is “beyond their comprehension
that nothing was done.” She added that though the
1984 pogrom was a horrible human-rights viola-
tion, many Sikhs born and raised in Canada—a
group that includes Jagmeet—do not fully appreci-ate the communal context from which the atrocity
arose. “There’s no way I rationalise 1984, but I
have another perspective of what was happening
in the 1980s,” she told me. “I know what kind of
terrorism was there.”
The political discrepancies between Canada and
India are part of why Jagmeet Singh’s language,
while innocuous to most Canadians, sounds
far more threatening in Delhi and Chandigarh.
Jagmeet “is emphasising all of the positives of
multiculturalism,” Karen Bird, a political scientist
at McMaster University in Toronto, said. “And
we know there is a dark underside. I think that in
India there’s much more familiarity with that dark
underside and much less so in Canada.”
It is in this context that the Indian govern-
ment’s decision to deny Jagmeet a visa became a
flashpoint. Balpreet Singh compared India’s stance
towards Jagmeet with Canada’s willingness to let
Indians accused of crimes, such as Kamal Nath,
into the country. “Alleged human-rights viola-
tors—alleged murders—can get Canadian visas,”
he said. “Canadian Sikhs are regularly threatened
with and denied visas exclusively on their freedom
of speech. I think it’s kind of ironic.”
Jagmeet’s relationship with the Indian official-
dom has not thawed since 2013. During the NDP
leadership election, he told a major Canadian
daily, the Globe and Mail, that someone with links
to the Indian high commission in Ottawa was tell-
ing Indo-Canadians not to support or contribute
to his campaign. Neither the Indian high com-
mission nor its Toronto consular office responded
to my calls and emails. The office of Akhilesh
Mishra, the former consul-general in Toronto andThe political discrepancies between
Canada and India are part of why Jagmeet
Singh’s language, while innocuous to most
Canadians, sounds far more threatening in
Delhi and Chandigarh.