Thursday 12th December 2024,
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The Karma of Canadian Secessionism

The Karma of Canadian Secessionism

Canada is famous for maple syrup, that sticky sweet substance that is hard to clean off. Just like the political situation that the country now finds itself in.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” of the Indian state’s involvement in the murder of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. In June 2023, this chief of Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), was gunned down on the grounds of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple. 

Yet Canada has become a hotbed for extremists that hate India and hate Hindus. The demand for Khalistan remains stronger in Canada than in India. Yet it would be a mistake to blame even the majority of Sikhs for this. Just as it would be a mistake to ignore that Trudeau would hardly be so passive if the problem was in his own backyard.

Quebec Sovereignty

Just as not all Sikhs support Khalistan not all French-Canadians and even Quebecois support Quebec’s secession. This was seen in the past by the clash between the two great heavyweights of Canadian politics: Rene Levesque and Justin’s own father Pierre. Both were from Quebec and spoke French. Yet their politics pitted them on opposite sides.

In 1967 French President Charles De Gaulle had his visit to Canada cut short when he effectively endorsed an independent Quebec.
The Francophone majority in this province had long been marginalized by the Anglophone elite and majority within Canada.

The 1960s saw the Quiet Revolution in which staunchly Catholic and French-speaking Quebec became convulsed by social changes which led to both greater secularisation and demands for greater use of the French language which had been openly discriminated against.

Ever since Britain won what was then New France in its war with France in 1760, the Francophones had always been uncomfortable in the setup which eventually led to the creation of Canada in 1867.
These became more pronounced during the 1960s which led to a violent secessionist movement causing the October Crisis of 1970 when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act for the first time in Canadian history during peacetime. The FLQ had previously confuted bombings but this time they went further and murdered Laporte, although Cross was released.

When Trudeau was asked by CBC reporter Tim Ralfe how far he was willing to go to stop the FLQ, he replied: “Just watch me”. In October 2020, 50 years following the October Crisis, Yves-François Blanchet, the party and parliamentary leader of the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois, introduced a motion in the House of Commons demanding an official apology from the federal government, now led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for invoking the War Measures Act.

represented the movement for attaining Quebec sovereignty via democratic methods in his Parti Quebecois. While he failed in this he did gain important recognition for the French language, making it official in Quebec and Canada officially a bilingual country.

However, the issue has never completely vanished and reanimates regularly as Quebecois feel threatened by the boa constrictor of majoritarian English speakers in North America.

Last of the Mohawks

When Quebec demanded independence, the indigenous First Nations such as Cree and Mohawks demanded their sovereignty be respected in wanting to stay with Canada. In the summer of 1990, long-simmering tensions among the First Nations of Canada reached a flash point around the Kanesatake Mohawk reservation 30 miles west of Montreal.

The reservation was surrounded by the town of Oka, which was preparing to build a members-only golf course and luxury condo development on a pine grove and cemetery where many Mohawk families’ ancestors were buried.

The Mohawk had been contesting the Canadian claim to these sacred lands for centuries, but the courts rejected their attempts. Nearly a month into the standoff, the Quebec premier called in the army with more than 4,000 soldiers, and over 1,000 vehicles were deployed in the largest internal military operation in Canadian history. Trudeau forgets this when he backs the Khalistan movement.

Indeed the treatment of Canada’s natives is one of shameful persecution. Dispossessed of their lands by white settlers, the First Nations were forced into assimilation by the residential school system run by churches and the state until the 1970s. Children were forcibly removed from their parents.

Students in the residential school system were faced with a multitude of abuses by teachers and administrators, including sexual and physical assault. They suffered from malnourishment and harsh discipline that would not have been tolerated in any other Canadian school system. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate heating, and a lack of medical care led to high rates of influenza and tuberculosis.

The impact of the disconnect from their families was furthered by students being discouraged or prohibited from speaking Indigenous languages, even among themselves and outside the classroom, so that English or French would be learned and their own languages forgotten. In some schools, they were subject to physical violence for speaking their own languages or for practicing non-Christian faiths. Pagans were not part of this modern Canada and would be extinguished. Hence the present animus towards India itself.

Carving Up Canada

It was the extermination of Native Americans in USA and Canada which inspired the Nazi idea of lebensraum or living space, which meant killing space. From the late nineteenth century immigrants from India, mostly Sikhs, made their way to Canada, where Chinese and Japanese had also settled on the Pacific coast.

These Asiatic newcomers soon realized that Canada was a land of freedom and opportunity for whites only. Mob violence by whites was frequent.

Immigration restrictions and legal disabilities caused a halt in numbers and even a reversal. These would remain in place until 1947. Ethnic-based quotas were scrapped in 1967 and Canada played host to Asians expelled from Uganda. Canadians of South Asian descent grew in this period.

However, with this came less desirable elements. Pierre Trudeau refused the extradition request of Khalistani terrorist Talwinder Singh Parmar in 1982, on the quaint grounds that India was insufficiently deferential to the Queen.

In 1985 an Air India jet exploded mid-air due to bomb placed on it by Khalistan extremists. Parmar was the head of the Khalistani terrorist organization Babbar Khalsa. Later, in 1985, the organization that the plane called Kanishka in mid-air off the coast of Ireland.

While the secession movement has died in India it has been kept alive and put on steroids in the vast expanses of Canada by marketing its warped idea as a utopia.

This has become more pronounced in recent years with Trudeau’s shaky government dependent on the support of the left-wing New Democratic Party led by Jagmeet Singh Dhaliwal.

Not only does he support Quebec’s right of self-determination, but he backs the idea of Khalistan created from India. In 2013 was denied a visa to India allegedly over anti-India activities and links with extremists. In June 2015 he spoke on a stage at a rally in San Francisco with a large poster of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

Singh also accused India of committing ‘genocide’ against Sikhs. So while Trudeau wants to stop the secession of Quebec, he relies on support from a known extremist who wants the secession of Punjab in India and has even expressed support if Quebec does want independence.

In this rather dire situation more sticky than the maple syrup produced from the sugar shacks of Quebec, Trudeau could end up losing parts of his own country while trying to carve up India with the support of Jagmeet Singh. Justin Trudeau has also defended letting ISIS fighters back into Canada, arguing that some returnees could turn into “powerful” voices against violent radicalization within Canada.

What has been ignored in all this is the deep-rooted racism and hatred of pagan peoples which lies at the heart of Canadian culture. While the nation prides itself on being progressive on race and gender issues the reality is that the old hatreds have morphed. With a complete lack of evidence, India has been accused of murdering Nijjer.

In reality, the Khalistan movement is wracked by drug wars and other vices that are typical of gangland violence. But it is much easier to blame some nefarious external force than something nearer to home. Just as with blaming the pagan beliefs of the First Nations which Canada tried to eradicate, it is easy to scapegoat Hindu majority India; the last surviving mass body of pagans today.

India Reciprocates

Canada has yet to realize that this is a new India, a resurgent Hindu majority nation. The days of the white master talking down to the dark-skinned heathen natives are as much in the past as the physically and sexually abusive residential school system to which the First Nations Canadians were subject.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Baijayant Jay Panda made a comment on social media platform X, suggesting that India should assist in a referendum on Quebec’s independence. Panda said: “In the spirit of friendship with Canada, we in India must consider facilitating an online referendum on the Quebec independence issue (in gratitude for their allowing Khalistani separatists to try the same on Canadian soil).”

How would Canada react to that? Even the USSR tried to disassociate itself from the FLQ violence in 1970, even painting it as a CIA false flag. But why should India not host Quebec separatists? Or even recognize the independence of Quebec should the referendum lead to this? It is a habit among Western nations to give life to anti-Hindu forces under the name of ‘self-determination’.

In Britain, advocates of jihad in Kashmir and the extermination of Hindus are feted by politicians even as they attack the India High Commission and launch street violence against Hindus in Leicester. In return should India back Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish secessionism? In the information war, both Press TV from Iran and especially Moscow’s RT gave oxygen to fringe elements. The latter was especially denounced as Russian interference. But then what is the difference between backing Pakistan-based terrorists or even what Trudeau is doing now?

These actions are signs of the old colonialism, a time when the British and other empires forced their will at gunpoint and the extermination of indigenous people of Canada inspired the myth of an Aryan invasion of India. They are based on false ideas and are outdated. Canada ignores this at its peril.

Video : Canadian Hindus Face Increase Of Hinduphobic Hate And Violent Threats

Use of the term ‘Hinduphobia’ – 1866-1997

Video : ‘Hindustan Murdabad’ Graffiti On The Walls As Another Hindu Temple Attacked In Canada

Video : Khalistani Ultra Right Wing Attack Hindu Temple In Canada

Canada: Priests, devotees scared as temples vandalised, burgled in Toronto area

Canada: Hindus Protest Against Hinduphobic Fascist Conference

 

About The Author

Ranbir Singh : Writer and lecturer, HHR chairman : BA (Honours) History, MA History from School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London : , Have lectured previously at De Montfort University, London School of Economics, Contributor to various political and human rights discussion outfits.

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