In-Vogue Trudeau's Visit to India

Whispers of Khalistan?

Trudeau’s visit to India can reopen old wounds

by Aalap Trivedi

Air India 182 took off from Montreal to go to Bombay via London and Delhi. Just off the coast of Ireland, a bomb on board exploded and killed 329 people. The main suspects for the bombing were Sikh separatists “Babbar Khalsa”. The date was 23 June 1985. More than three decades later, this incident still haunts people from both nations. They have started to talk about it again(in whispers) as the charismatic, young Canadian PM, Trudeau visited India.

Not a lot can go wrong for you if you're Canada. It is one of the few countries in the world which is universally liked. On closer inspection though, it is clear that it has had some trouble with its largest Indian diaspora i.e. the Sikhs. As with the people, the roots of the problem lay in India.

“Operation Blue Star” was something I’d heard a lot of, growing up as a 90s kid. It was something unprecedented in India’s history and gave rise to similarly unimaginable events in the nations timeline. The operation may have lasted about a week, but the ripple effect was felt for decades and on a global scale, not least causing the darkest era in Indian politics and assassination of the incumbent PM. When the Indian army stormed the “Harmandir Sahib”(golden temple) complex of Amritsar, the events for the Air India bombing were put into motion.

Canada, with a large number of Sikhs, faced the worst brunt of the operation internationally. Threats to kill Hindus by the thousands became commonplace. The extremists grew and so did their reach. Many Canadian-Sikh politicians later spoke about the threats they received if they condemned the acts of violence by the Sikh extremists. Many journalists who were covering the Air India flight bombing too received death threats, with journalist Tara Singh Hayer gunned down for being critical of the airplane bombing. Recently, reports of there being resurgence in Sikh terrorism have come to light in Canada, which may be worrying for both nations.

When Justin Trudeau visited the “Harmandir Sahib” with his family and his Canadian-Sikh Defence minister, old wounds in the form of the Khalistan movement and Sikh terrorism came open. Historically, India and Canada have been close and with Trudeau it is continuing in the same vein. Both nations emerged stronger from the incident, which cost more than 280 Canadian lives. India and Canada now engage in many security talks and their armed forces undergo joint training programmes to become close allies. 

It is a testament to this closeness of relations between the two that such an incident could be left behind and the talk of Khalistan remained in whispers and grew to nothing more than that.