Sometime during the evening of 18 June 2023, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a 45-year-old plumber, was sitting in his truck in a car park behind the Guru Nanak Gurdwara, a Sikh temple in the south-eastern Vancouver suburb of Surrey, when he was shot dead by two masked gunmen. Nijjar was born in the Jalandhar District of Punjab state in India and emigrated to Canada in 1997, where he settled down and became a naturalised citizen. He had been serving as president of the Guru Nanak Gurdwara since 2019 and was apparently well regarded in his community for his charitable work. He also happened to be an active campaigner for Khalistan (Land of the Khalsa, or Land of the Pure), an autonomous Sikh homeland in the Punjab region.
Nijjar had no criminal record in Canada, although he came on the radar of the Indian authorities for his political activities. He was designated a “terrorist” in 2020 under India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967, most recently amended in 2013, accused of being part of the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF). Then, in July 2022, India’s counter-terrorism agency, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), linked him to the attempted murder of a Hindu priest, Kamaldeep Sharma, in Jalandhar (Punjab) on 31 January that year, offering a cash bounty for any information leading to his arrest.
Nijjar’s death led to anti-Indian protests across Canada, at times countered by pro-Indian Hindu demonstrators sympathetic to India’s ruling BJP, which quickly spread to other areas of Sikh settlement around the world. Following on, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau informed the Canada’s House of Commons on 18 September 2023 that he had raised concerns over Nijjar’s killing with his Indian counterpart at the recent G20 summit in New Delhi, and that Canada was investigating “credible allegations” of Indian government agent involvement in the murder. Canada soon expelled an Indian diplomat, Pavan Kumar Rai, stated to be the head of India’s external intelligence agency-the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)- at the Indian High Commission in Ottawa, prompting the retaliatory expulsion of Olivier Sylvestre, station chief of Canada’s intelligence agency, from its New Delhi High Commission. The Indian foreign ministry went further and suspended all categories of visas for Canadian citizens.
The monotheistic Sikh religion was founded around 1500 in the northern Indian region of Punjab by Guru Nanak, who was followed by a succession of nine gurus who reinforced and supplemented his teachings. Sikhism is now the world’s fifth-largest religion, judging by the number of adherents. There are currently 25 million Sikhs worldwide, with about 80 per cent of them based in India, mostly in the state of Punjab. Sikhs make up around 2 per cent of India’s population of 1.4 billion. Canada has the largest Sikh population outside India. In the 2021 census, 770,000 Canadian residents, or 2.1 per cent of Canada’s population, claimed Sikhism as their religion. Most Canadian Sikhs are to be found in Ontario and British Columbia, with particularly high concentrations in suburban Toronto and Vancouver. Canada has been home to Sikhs for well over a century. The first Sikhs travelled to Canada in 1897 with army regiments, as part of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Early Sikh settlers gravitated to the Western province of British Columbia, where the first gurdwara was established in Vancouver in 1908. Many Canadian Sikhs participated in the Indian freedom struggle and some were deported, or even denied entry, by Canada at a time when the west coast of North American was a hub for Indian nationalist activity. In more recent times, they have integrated well in Canadian society and gained considerable political success, frequently serving as members of federal parliament and provincial legislatures and holding ministerial positions at both national and provincial level.
The Sikh homeland of Punjab was a relatively prosperous state within independent India to begin with, despite the ravages of Partition, but from the 1970s onwards growing discontent among Punjabi Sikhs- for social, economic, and cultural reasons-fuelled separatist sentiments and consequent demands for an independent Sikh state, inspired by the glories of the short-lived Sikh Empire of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Lion of Punjab, who ruled from 1799 until his death in 1839.
There appears to be much support among Canadian Sikhs for the secessionist and militant Khalistan movement, which gained international attention through an advertisement placed in The New York Times on 13 October 1971 by Dr Jagjit Singh Chohan, an exiled politician from Punjab, although demands for a separate Sikh state predate this event by several decades. Pro-Khalistan extremists formed the Dal Khalsa party in Punjab in June 1978 but failed to make a dent on the ruling Akali Dal party in the April 1979 elections. An eleven-member Council of Khalistan, now based in Washington DC, was established in 12 April 1980 at Anandpur Sahib in Punjab. Dr Chohan then declared himself President of Khalistan on 16 June 1980. The World Sikh Organisation was founded in New York City on 28 July 1984 to provide a global voice for the Sikh diaspora.
The Khalistan armed insurgency, under the charismatic leadership of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, destabilised the state of Punjab during the late 1980s.The storming of Sikhism’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, by the Indian Army during Operation Blue Star in October 1984 was meant to flush out armed pro-Bhindranwale separatists who had taken refuge in the temple complex. This action had dire consequences. India’s Prime Minister Indra Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards on 31 October 1984. The ensuing rioting and communal violence in Delhi, over four days in November 1984, led to the deaths of at least three thousand Sikhs. Then, on 23 June 1985, a bomb on Air India flight 182 from Montreal to London exploded off the Irish coast, killing all 329 people, 307 passengers and 22 crew, on board. Inderjit Singh Reyat, a dual British-Canadian national, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003 and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while two other Canadian Sikhs were acquitted of complicity in the crime. It took Operations Black Thunder I and II, in April 1986 and May 1988, respectively to finally overcome the pro-Khalistan militants in Punjab.
Meanwhile, the Khalistan secessionist movement gained a following among Sikh diasporic communities in Australia, Canada, the US, the UK, and other overseas nations, while being banned in India, although self-styled preacher Amritpal Singh has recently revived domestic pro-Khalistan sentiments. Many who subscribe to such separatist views are citizens or permanent residents of their adoptive host countries, making it next to impossible for the Indian government to suppress or even challenge their activities in any meaningful way.
It remains to be definitively proven whether Nijjar was the victim of extrajudicial killing by Indian agents or not. But there can be no doubt that his death has brought to the fore longstanding tensions between Canada and India concerning the toleration of pro-Khalistan activity among Canadian Sikhs. Justin Trudeau’s government relies on Sikh support and his criticism of India’s potential involvement in Nijjar’s death has garnered widespread support among Sikhs in Canada. There seems no easy solution in sight as both the Canadian and Indian governments, and the pro-Khalistan Canadian Sikhs, seem likely to dig their heels in and stick to their respective and apparently non-negotiable positions over the months, and years, to come.
Ashis Banerjee