By George Abraham, CBC News |
Much of the mainstream media is simply out of its depth when it comes to how to cover “ethnic” leaders, often ignoring or being too timid to address the ways their backgrounds inform and influence their political positions. It’s an obvious blind spot.
By George Abraham, CBC News |
Much of the mainstream media is simply out of its depth when it comes to how to cover “ethnic” leaders, often ignoring or being too timid to address the ways their backgrounds inform and influence their political positions. It’s an obvious blind spot.
An exception was the face-off between new NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and senior correspondent Terry Milewski on Power and Politics earlier this month, when Milewski asked Singh about his views on Canada’s worst aviation-related terror attack: the downing of an Air India flight 182, in 1985.
Critics decried Milewski’s line of questioning as unfair — even racist — asking if non-Punjabi leaders would’ve been subjected to the same treatment. But the questions were absolutely necessary — an attempt to bridge the gap between ethnic and mainstream media — and a way to bring an issue of great importance in the Sikh community to the attention of a wider audience.
Grappling with Punjabi politics
This is the first time in our history that a person of colour is on the shortlist to become Canada’s prime minister. Unusually for a federal leader this past half-century, Singh also carries the weight of his immigrant heritage, more specifically his parents’ roots in Punjab – the state in north India from where the bulk of our sub-continental immigrants hail.
The turbaned Sikh joins the ranks of other Punjabis in Canada who have been phenomenally successful in politics at all levels of government, including Herb Dhaliwal, Ujjal Dosanjh and Ruby Dhalla, and more recently, Harjit Sajjan, Navdeep Bains and Amarjeet Sohi.
None of them has had to grapple with Punjabi politics the way the new NDP leader has had to, although Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was labelled a “Khalistani sympathizer” on a recent visit to this Indian state. (In the run-up to Sajjan’s visit, the Punjab chief minister characterized five members of the Trudeau cabinet as “Khalistan sympathizers.”) This Khalistan movement, a bloody insurrection in Punjab that dates back to the 1970s, was responsible for the 1985 Air India bombing.
This tragedy in the skies mid-way between the two nations linked Canada and India like never before, perhaps forever. It is unique in Canadian history because it brings together international terrorism (in both countries), global diaspora politics and bilateral relations between a G7 nation and an emerging superpower that is India.
Jagmeet Singh’s views on issues relating to his heritage and the Air India bombing perhaps would not have been relevant if he had stayed clear of Punjabi and Indian politics. But he has taken positions – positions that he will have to defend in the public square.
For example, when he was a member of the Ontario legislature, he sponsored a motion to “formally recognize the November 1984 state organized violence perpetrated against Sikhs throughout India as genocide.” Indian newspapers have drawn a straight line between the NDP leader’s support for self-determination in Catalonia and Quebec and the quest for a separate Sikh homeland in India.
Rallying cry for Canadian Sikhs
While the separatist movement may be all but forgotten in the land of its birth, it remains a rallying cry for sections of the Punjabi Sikh community in Canada. Just as there are Canadians who demand a separate Sikh homeland carved out of India, there are others who have either abandoned the cause or just don’t care either way. Where exactly Singh fits within this spectrum is an unknown, and it is because of this ambiguity that further questions are warranted.