Murders of Sikhs spotlight sect's long history in Canada

Murders of Sikhs: A high-profile murder trial over the 2022 shooting death of Vancouver-based Ripudaman Singh Malik, which coincides with other crimes that Canadian law enforcement officials have linked to the government of Indian President Narendra Modi, has renewed interest in the largest Sikh diaspora outside of India.

Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez — both of British Columbia and in their mid-20s with lengthy criminal histories — recently confessed to the contract killing of Malik but remained silent over who hired them to do it, according to a statement released by British Columbia's Supreme Court on Monday.

Malik, a prime suspect in the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight from Montreal to Mumbai, had since been acquitted of the terror charges and remained a vocal advocate for an independent Khalistan, a proposed separatist sovereign enclave for Sikh followers in the Indian state of Punjab.

The trial over Malik's killing is unfolding alongside another trial over the June 2023 murder in suburban Vancouver of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who'd been organizing a local referendum to generate support for Khalistan's secession.

India strongly denies the accusations and last week each country expelled six of the other's diplomats, including India's ambassador in Ottawa.

The animosity between India and local supporters of Khalistan can be traced back to the bombing of two Air India aircraft in 1985. Organized in the Vancouver area, the bombings involved two Air India 747s — one exploding in flight off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 on board, the other fatally wounding two baggage handlers at Narita International Airport near Tokyo.

Those bombings — the deadliest acts of aviation terrorism prior to September 11, 2001 — are widely believed to have been carried out by Canadian-based Sikhs in retaliation for India's deadly 1984 storming of the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine in the Sikh religion.

Canada is home to the world's largest diaspora of Sikh faithful outside of India. An estimated 300,000 reside in the province of Ontario, with nearly as many in British Columbia and just over 100,000 in neighboring Alberta.

Satwinder Bains, director of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley in suburban Vancouver, said that, historically, immigrants from Punjab first traveled through Canada in 1897, when both were closely linked with Britain.

There was an early surge of immigration starting in 1903 and then a much larger wave in the 1970s.

Bains said these migrants, unlike many other immigrant groups, often came with money and their families still owned land back in India. Many of these newcomers continued the family tradition of farming and being agriculturalists by buying land in Canada.

They kept in touch with relatives back home and wanted to have a say in the politics of not only their new homeland, but also India.

"So, I would say it's very unique," Bains, who is of the Sikh faith, told VOA. "Some immigrants, like refugees that come from Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia ... [aren't] involved in the politics of that country in the same way. And also, there's a bit of, you know, old aggression in us, from being invaded in the North-West Frontier Province of India."

Bains also points to high levels of political engagement in the diaspora, which lost the right to vote in Canada from 1907 to 1947 along with other minority groups of the time.

She said Sikh immigrants in Canada have been very successful in not only agriculture, but also in finance, and politics.

"Business has been the strongest," she said. "We're very savvy financially — very savvy, economically — very smart.

"The other area of industry is politics. We are very politically active, engaged."

Beyond his onetime vocal advocacy for an independent Khalistan, Malik was a prominent businessman, serving as president of the Surrey-based Khalsa Credit Union and chairman of the private Khalsa School, supervising its campuses in Surrey and Vancouver. In more recent years, he had seemed to make amends with the government of India.

Anne Murphy is a professor and chair of Punjabi Language, Literature and Sikh studies at the University of British Columbia. She said the campaign for an independent Khalistan can be traced back to the partition of India in 1947 and decolonization.

Feeling persecuted, Sikh followers in Canada and around the world started to seek a safe place to call home.

She said it is vital to note that although many of Canada's Sikh faithful are critical of India, not all support the idea of a secessionist Khalistan.

"So, I would say that the Sikh community, like many other very, very dynamic and vibrant communities, has many different positions in it," she told VOA.

Still, the diplomatic rift between Canada and India appears to be far from over.

The trial of Nijjar's four accused killers has yet to take place and U.S. prosecutors have charged Vikash Yadav, an ex-intelligence official for the Indian government, with trying to assassinate a proponent of Khalistan in New York.

Authorities in Canada and the United States have publicly stated they are working together on both investigations.VOA/SP