India Celebrates Defeat of Far-Left Leader Jagmeet Singh in Canadian Election
by John Hayward
Indian media could scarcely conceal its glee Tuesday at the defeat of Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh seen in India as sympathetic to the Khalistani separatist movement.
Singh lost his own seat in Parliament in Monday’s election, and the NDP might be finished as a national party.
Rarely does an Indian media outlet refer to Singh without identifying him as “pro-Khalistan.” The Khalistani movement desires an independent state for the Sikh minority in the Indian state of Punjab. The movement became militant, and occasionally violent, in the 1980s.
India long ago banned the Khalistan movement and has classified a number of affiliated groups as terrorist organizations. Many Sikhs have migrated to Canada, however, and they brought the Khalistani ideology with them. A good deal of the diplomatic tension between India and Canada comes from India accusing the Canadian government of indulging Sikh separatists.
Those tensions erupted into a major diplomatic conflict in June 2023, when leading Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered by masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple in Vancouver.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of masterminding the assassination but did not produce evidence to back up the charge.
Jagmeet Singh joined Trudeau in making those accusations and he pushed for Canada to expel more Indian diplomats as the row escalated. He also called for Canada to ban Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist organization that has counted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a member.
Singh lost the election for his seat in British Columbia on Monday night and resigned as NDP leader on Tuesday morning. NDP has slipped to seven seats in Parliament as of Tuesday morning’s vote counts, putting it well below the 12-seat threshold needed for official party status in Canada.