India-Canada killing row: Punjab’s Sikhs fear backlash from diplomatic spat, but see Trudeau as ‘very brave’

Sikhs make up just 2 per cent of India’s 1.4 billion people but they are a majority in Punjab, a state of 30 million where their religion was born 500 years ago. Outside of Punjab, the greatest number of Sikhs live in Canada, the site of many protests that have irked India.

An insurgency seeking a Sikh homeland of Khalistan, which killed tens of thousands in the 1980s and 90s, was crushed by India, but embers from the flame of the independence drive still glow.

US ‘won’t get too involved’ in India-Canada spat over Sikh leader’s murder

“For the sake of one ordinary person, he did not need to take such a huge risk on his government,” the uncle said, sitting on a wooden bench by a tractor in his farmhouse, surrounded by lush paddy fields and banana trees.

Still, the elder Nijjar said he is worried about deteriorating diplomatic relations with Canada and declining economic prospects in Punjab.

The once-prosperous breadbasket of India, Punjab has been overtaken by states that focused on manufacturing, services and technology in the last two decades.

“Now every family wants to send its sons and daughters to Canada as farming here is not lucrative,” said the elder Nijjar.

India is the largest source for international students in Canada, their numbers jumping 47 per cent last year to 320,000.

“We now fear whether Canada will give student visas or if the Indian government will create some hurdles,” said undergraduate Gursimran Singh, 19, who wants to study in Canada.

He was speaking at the holiest of Sikh shrines, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, where many students go to pray for, or give thanks for, for student visas.

The temple became a flashpoint for Hindu-Sikh tension when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi allowed it to be stormed in 1984 to flush out Sikh separatists, angering Sikhs around the world. Her Sikh bodyguards assassinated her soon afterwards.

Modi’s government has created “an atmosphere of fear”, especially for young people, said Sandeep Singh, 31, from Nijjar’s village.

“If we are doing a protest, parents wouldn’t like their child to participate because they are afraid their children can meet the same fate” as Nijjar in Canada, he said.

Who was the Sikh activist whose killing has divided Canada and India?

“Whosoever fights for Khalistan fights for right to self-determination, rights for plebiscite in Punjab,” said Kanwar Pal, political-affairs secretary for the radical separatist Dal Khalsa group. “India perceived those Sikhs as their enemies and they target them.”

A BJP spokesman declined to comment on the accusations.

Senior BJP leaders have said there was no wave of support in Punjab for independence and that any such demands were a threat to India. At the same time, the party says no one has done as much for the Sikhs as Modi.