46 THE CARAVAN
model minority · reportage
It is not just polls that are concerning. The NDP
has performed poorly in all six of the special par-
liamentary by-elections that have occurred after
his elevation. Even Jagmeet’s supporters, such as
Gurpreet, were worried. “Jagmeet, who won the
leadership this year, couldn’t make an impact in
these elections,” Gurpreet said. “He never even
came once for door-knocking.”
Trudeau’s Liberals performed best in the by-
elections, and the current prime minister may
be the most formidable obstacle to Jagmeet’s
ambitions. Though not as popular as he once was,
Trudeau retains substantial support, and polls
suggest his Liberal Party would win again were
the election held today.
Jagbir Singh, who runs the Social Educational
Welfare Association and was responsible for
Jagmeet’s selection as “Sikh of the Year” in 2013,
was effusive in his praise of the politician when
we spoke. But when asked whom he would support
in the federal election, Jagbir—a naturalised Cana-
dian and a liberal satisfied by Trudeau’s perfor-
mance—was not ready to commit.
“I can’t really decide right now,” he said.and then there is jagmeet’s identity. For all its
protestations as a progressive nation, for all the
immigrants and visible minorities in government
cabinets, is Canada ready for a turbaned Sikh
prime minister?
“Put me in front of people, and I’ll win them
over,” Singh told a crowd at an NDP debate. A
poll in October found that nearly 70 percent of
Canadians would vote for a national party leader
who wears a turban and carries a kirpan. But half
of the respondents said that some or most among
their family and friends would not vote for some-
one who looks like Jagmeet.
Jagmeet is often likened to Barack Obama, who
inspired millions of young voters and became the
first black president of the United States. It is a
comparison many, including some of Jagmeet’s
supporters, reject. “Obama didn’t come from a
civil-rights kind of movement or from a history of
slavery,” Girn said. He noted that Obama, raised
by a single, white mother, was both deeply familiar
with the history of race in the United States and
able to “speak as someone who understands a
Caucasian’s perspective.”
Jagmeet’s activism, by contrast, is firmly rooted
in his understanding of Sikhism. “With Jagmeet,
the difference is that when he speaks about issues
of civil rights or things like that, he comes from a
tradition—religiously—of calling for social-justice
change,” Girn said.
Furthermore, Obama never tried to be an
identity politician, and he oriented himself firmly
within the United States’ self-professed integra-tionist ideology. His most significant achievement,
dramatically expanding the US healthcare system,
was designed to benefit all middle-class and poor
Americans equally, irrespective of race, religion or
et h n icit y.
And yet, Obama’s aspirations for “change you
can believe in” did not stop him from becoming
bogged down in issues of identity and belonging.
His successor, Donald Trump, got his political
start by vigorously promoting the lie that Obama
was not born in the United States—a lie that a sub-
stantial percentage of Americans still believe.
Trump himself is a case study in the downsides
of ethnicity-oriented politics. An identity politi-
cian to the core, he won the 2016 US election by
appealing to disgruntled white Americans. Part
of this involved pledging to crack down on im-
migration—particularly Muslims and Mexicans,
the latter of whom he branded as “drug dealers,”
“criminals” and “rapists.” Since taking office,
Trump has stepped up deportations and curtailed
immigration—including by attempting to stop
wholesale the entry of people from a number
of Muslim-majority countries. He has singled
minorities out for attack, and once stated that a
federal judge hearing a fraud complaint against
his businesses should not be allowed on the case
because of his “Mexican” heritage.
The rise of Trumpism and the general upsurge
in majoritarian identity movements across the
world have some worried that the rise of identity
politics in Canada could lead the country down a
similar path. “If you engage in minority identity
politics, it leads to its exact opposite—majority
identity politics—and that’s dangerous,” Dosanjh
said. “I’m worried a majoritarian backlash is com-
ing in Canada.”
He is not alone. Virtually every person I
interviewed, regardless of her or his opinion on
Jagmeet, agreed that Canada’s multicultural
reputation was not by itself enough to protect the
country from majoritarian exclusion. “Canada is
given a little too much credit because of its brand,”
Dhaliwal said.
These fears are particularly salient in the prov-
ince of Quebec, where the majority of residents
speak French and view themselves as culturally
distinct from all other Canadians. The province
has had two referendums on whether it should se-
cede from the country, both of which have failed.
But its political values often clash with those of
Anglophone provinces. Most Quebec residents
subscribe to the French concept of secularism,
called laïcité. Unlike in Indian secularism, in la-
ïcité the state enforces religious neutrality by ban-
ning the open display of faith in public spaces. The
Quebec provincial government recently passed
a law that restricts the use of religious headwearopposite page:
In the run-up to
the 2019 Canadian
election, Jagmeet
is looking to be
two “firsts”—the
country’s first prime
minister from a
visible minority,
and its first prime
minister from the
N D P.
mark blinch / reuters