What’s behind ‘mounting tensions’ in the Indian diaspora in Canada? – National | 24CA News
As a metropolis of tents sprang up exterior India’s capital metropolis New Delhi in December 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waded right into a debate round protests going down midway internationally.
From Ottawa, he promised that Canada would “always stand up” for the fitting to peacefully protest.
“We believe in the importance of dialogue and that’s why we have reached out through multiple means directly to the Indian authorities to highlight our concerns,” he stated.
Trudeau was responding to considerations amongst Canada’s important Sikh diaspora that the Indian authorities was cracking down on farmers protesting a brand new agricultural coverage. His feedback have been met with a pointy response from India, the place the federal government summoned the Canadian ambassador over the problem.
This diplomatic spat made headlines, and was only one instance of how the results of home politics and insurance policies in India are spurring frustrations, concern and what one knowledgeable referred to as “mounting tensions” amongst members of the diaspora communities in Canada.
And within the days since Trudeau rose within the House of Commons saying Canadian authorities are investigating “potential links” between brokers of the Indian authorities and the homicide of Canadian Sikh chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar, there was renewed deal with the challenges of negotiating an evolving relationship with India.
In explicit, how ought to Canada navigate ties with an aspiring world superpower within the years for the reason that Indian farmers’ motion galvanized the diaspora?
‘Mounting tensions’ inside Indian diaspora
In 2020 and 2021, Indian farmers, largely led by Sikh farmers from the northern state of Punjab, camped exterior of New Delhi for over a 12 months. They have been demanding the repeal of a collection of legal guidelines they stated gave larger management to massive firms over farming.
Meanwhile, hundreds of individuals took half in solidarity marches in Canadian cities.
Major cities like Toronto and Vancouver noticed members of the Sikh diaspora main protests, with an indefinite sit-in exterior the Indian excessive fee. Canadian politicians from Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to then-Conservative chief Erin O’Toole expressed solidarity with protesters.
“I think diaspora communities have always cared about politics at home,” stated Sanjay Ruparelia, Jarislowsky Democracy Chair at Toronto Metropolitan University.
The Indian diaspora in Canada has been divided, between those that are ardent supporters of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and people who oppose him.
“Many would describe him (Modi) as a polarizing figure,” Ruparelia stated. “Those who support him support him avidly. They champion him and think of him as the greatest leader post-independence India has had. Those who oppose him oppose both his government, his actions, but also the ideology of the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).”
Those divisions in India, significantly alongside non secular strains, have made their manner into the diaspora.
“Members of the Sikh community say that the divisive politics is what they have been confronted with, that they are trying to resist, and that is feeding into the conflict. And I think that’s the worrying thing as we see there’s mounting tensions within the Indian diaspora,” Ruparelia stated.
Prominent political voices in India have additionally criticized Trudeau for what they name “vote-bank politics” and have accused Canada of not taking considerations round “Khalistani extremists” working on Canadian soil severely.
On Wednesday, the Indian authorities issued an advisory for Indian nationals in Canada in view of “growing anti-India activities and politically-condoned hate crimes and criminal violence in Canada” and Indian media studies have stated “anti-India slogans” and slogans towards Modi have been written on the partitions of some Hindu temples in Canada.
Just days earlier than Nijjar’s homicide, a Sikh parade in Brampton, Ont., displayed a flotilla on the assassination of former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi, India’s first and solely feminine prime minister, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 after she ordered an assault on the Golden Temple. She had stated that Sikh militants have been camped out within the Golden Temple, which is one in every of Sikhism’s most revered websites.
The Indian authorities reacted sharply, saying this was not good for the connection between the nations.
Canada’s ambassador in India, Cameron MacKay, was fast to sentence the parade.
“There is no place in Canada for hate or for the glorification of violence. I categorically condemn these activities.”
But many diaspora teams say the rising tensions mirror larger worries about affect in Canadian society and politics.
What is Hindu nationalism?
In explicit, some teams have pointed to Hindu nationalism, which promotes the concept India is actually a nation of and for Hindus. Groups and people related to the ideology have been implicated in violence towards minorities. Experts consider there was an increase in such violence, significantly aimed toward Muslims, since Modi took workplace in 2014.
Human Rights Watch, in its 2023 World Report, stated about India, “The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government continued its systematic discrimination and stigmatization of religious and other minorities, particularly Muslims. BJP supporters increasingly committed violent attacks against targeted groups.”
In one such instance final month, a railway police officer in India shot useless three Muslim passengers and his superior officer. He proclaimed that solely those that supported Modi had a proper to remain in India.
“Over the past year, diasporic South Asian and other civil society organizations have been sounding alarm bells and calling on the Trudeau government and the opposition to pay heed to the dangerous build-up of support for the Hindu ethnonationalism of the current government of India on Canadian soil. But these alerts have gone unheeded,” an announcement ready by the South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (SADAC), and signed by a number of different organizations, stated.
SADAC pointed to a number of incidents they are saying point out a rising Hindu nationalist sentiment in Canada, together with allegations of demise threats towards a Toronto filmmaker.
In November final 12 months, a Liberal MP additionally confronted questions and considerations from some activists for attending an occasion elevating a flag related to the far-right group Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
The group is intently related to Modi and his get together and has been criticized for its views on minorities, significantly Muslims, in India.
A member of the group assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, and the BBC final 12 months described the group as ” the ideological fountainhead of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).”
In March, the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and the World Sikh Organization (WSO) issued a joint report that stated the RSS was actively working on Canadian soil, in addition to within the U.S. and Europe.
That report, which harassed that the RSS’s ideologies “in no way represents the diversity of the hundreds of millions of Hindus who have no interest in adopting the Hindutva ideology,” urged policymakers to concentrate.
“The presence of this supremacist ideology in Canada is deeply concerning,” the report stated.
“It is thus time for Canadians to carefully study and track the growth of a movement that disseminates hate here in Canada.”
