Debate, without Demonising
October 19, 2024
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(The article was originally published in Indian Express on October 19, 2024 as a part of Dr Madhav’s column titled ‘Ram Rajya’. Views expressed are personal.)
Last September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made sensational allegations that his government had obtained “credible information” about the involvement of Indian agencies in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian radical. Nijjar was one of the Indian Khalistani activists who had fled the country in the wake of the government’s crackdown on extremism in Punjab in the 1980s. He illegally entered Canada in 1987 and secured citizenship. From the Canadian safe haven, Nijjar continued his anti-India activities through an outfit called Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), which was subsequently banned by the Indian government along with several other such terror groups operating out of countries like the US, UK and Canada.
Nijjar was murdered in the premises of a Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested four Sikh youths immediately on charges of involvement in the crime. There appears to be not much progress in the case in the last one year, with RCMP failing to present any evidence before the courts. However, the RCMP officials, and Trudeau himself, started once again making sensational claims about the involvement of India, this time pointing fingers at senior officials in India. A detailed report in The Washington Post last week named a senior minister in the Modi government of direct involvement in the incident.
It is clear that the Trudeau government chose to tread an undiplomatic, if not undignified, path by dragging big names in the Indian government into this murky controversy. Many infer that it is being done with an eye on his party’s electoral prospects. The Trudeau government has been in power for the last nine years and is very unpopular today. The Canadian economy is passing through one of its worst phases of unemployment, inflation and corruption. Canadian media is reporting that Trudeau’s party is lagging behind the Conservatives in opinion polls by more than 10 per cent votes.
By choosing to be reckless in accusing India of putting the “lives of Canadians” at risk, Trudeau has crossed the diplomatic redline. Now that the daggers are drawn, India should come forward to take the bull by its horns. When it comes to countries in the neighbourhood like Pakistan, we have been vocal on all forums, bilateral as well as multilateral, in exposing their dubious role in sponsoring, sheltering and exporting Islamic terror. But, somehow, we hesitate to say similar things when it comes to Western powers because we are in awe of the camouflage of their misplaced idealist rhetoric such as freedom of speech and human rights.
While the world watched silently, Canada turned into a safe haven for terrorism in the last few decades. Pakistan is accused of harbouring Islamic terrorists, whereas Canada, over decades, has been harbouring not just the Islamists, but many others. Almost all the major terror outfits in the world have had operatives freely functioning out of Canadian cities for decades. Armenian terrorists reportedly came in the 1980s and made Canada their offshore base. Khalistanis entered the country and indulged in heinous crimes such as blowing up Air India flight 182 mid-air in 1985. Tamil Tigers arrived in the late 1980s. Next came the Middle East terror groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and other Palestinian outfits. Finally, even al Qaeda operatives are said to have found Canada to be a safe conduit for their anti-American operations.
Ward Elcock, former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service(CSIS), had testified in 1998 that “there are more international terrorist groups active here than any other country in the world”. The CSIS released its annual report in 2006, in which it admitted that “a relatively large number of terrorist groups are known to be operating in Canada, engaged in fundraising, procuring materials, spreading propaganda, recruiting followers and conducting other activities”.
Not just India, many other countries have also been the victims of the Canadian government’s lackadaisical attitude towards terrorist activities on its soil. Even Canada’s closest partner, the US, couldn’t escape the menace emanating from its neighbourhood. The FBI became so concerned and issued a classified bulletin warning: “We believe al Qaeda continues to have a terrorist infrastructure in Canada, one with documented links to the US”. Stephen Harper, the Conservative Prime Minister, who came to power in 2006, tried to control this menace during his tenure of a decade. But things returned to the ugly past once Trudeau returned to power in 2015.
Writing in Canada’s leading daily The Globe and Mail in September 2023, columnist Andrew Coyne had accused Canadian politicians, “especially the Liberals”, of their eagerness to “court the Sikh separatist vote” by participating in rallies “where terrorists were glorified and terrorist attacks praised”.
India has complained enough about Canada’s non-serious approach to counter-terrorism for the last four decades. What it got in return was “ulta chor kotwal ko dante” — or a “pot calling the kettle black” — response. It is time India upped the ante and exposed the ugly terror underbelly of the Canadian government under Trudeau. In his testimony, Elcock had warned that “I will be as blunt as I can be, we cannot become, through inaction or otherwise, what might be called an unofficial state sponsor of terrorism.”
Maybe, it is time they are called one.
