POLITCS-CANADA: Indian Government Involved in Sikh Intrigue?

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Nov 30 1998 (IPS) - The Indian government has been accused of fomenting turmoil within Canada’s Sikh communitythe largest outside Indiawhich culminated in the murder this month of an outspoken newspaper editor in British Columbia.

Police in the province have described the killing on Nov 19 of Tara Singh Hayer, editor of the Punjabi language Indo-Canadian Times, as having “all the earmarks of an assassination.”

Hayer was an outspoken critic of Sikh militants who have been raising funds in Canada for anti-government activity in India and the manner in which they handled the finances of temples under their control. Previously Hayer had been the target of an unknown gunman in an incident which left him in a wheelchair, paralysed from the waist down. Also 12 years ago, police defused a bomb outside Hayer’s printing plant in the town of Surrey, near Vancouver.

Now T. Sher Singh, a lawyer of Sikh origin who writes a column in the Toronto Star, has accused Indian government agents of infiltrating the Sikhs with the object of dividing the community over the question of a Sikh homeland.

Singh has linked the death of Hayer to the 1985 explosion on an Air India flight while it was over the Atlantic after taking off from Canada. Three hundred and twenty-nine passengers, many of them Canadians of Indian origin, were killed.

Authorities hinted Sikh terrorists were to blame but no arrests were ever made , despite a lengthy investigation into the indicent.

“The (federal) government won’t do an inquiry on it; yet there is growing concern that Indian personnel may have had something to do with it,” says Singh. “There is a lot of evidence that the plane was meant to blow up on the tarmac [before the departure from Canada] when nobody was on it.”

Singh says that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) knows the identity of 12 to 20 Indian agents who have infiltrated the 150,000 Sikh community in the Vancouver area (there is another 150,000 in the rest of Canada) and inflamed differences among them on religious questions and on whether Sikhs in India should separate and have their own independent state.

“The (Canadian Sikh) community knows them; the RCMP knows them; but they will not do anything,” he says.

Ottawa under the current and previous federal government has turned a blind eye to such tampering in the Sikh community in order not to jeopardize Canadian trade links with India, he declares.

“Canadian foreign policy was formulated during the Nehru years when we were on very good terms with India and India showed so much promise. In the last 20 years, things have really soured between Canada and India….but we have not revised our foreign policy,” Singh says.

A spokesman at the Indian High Commission in Ottawa curtly dismissed Singh’s allegations as “vile” while the office of the Canadian Solicitor General, currently undergoing a change of ministers, had no immediate comment on the charges.

“We believe Hayer should have been offered police protection based on repeated threats to this life,” states Wayne Sharpe, executive director of the Canadian Committee to Protect Journalists in a letter to the Canadian Justice Minister, Anne McLellan. The Committee normally campaigns on behalf of reporters facing persecution overseas.

York University professor of Indian politics A. Mukerjee-Reed, meanwhile questions why India would create turmoil in the wealthy 100-year-old Sikh community in Canada, which sends considerable funds back to India in the form of investment.

Ottawa journalist and author of “Official Secrets: The Story Behind the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)”, Richard Cleroux also is skeptical of Sher Singh’s charges since any effort to discredit Canada’s Sikhs, “can rebound” on all Indians in this country, regardless of their religious affiliation. “My view is that India wants as little division as possible (in Indian communities outside Canada).”

Cleroux also notes that allegations have been made previously about India’s intelligence operations within the Sikh community in Canada, where there is strong support for a Sikh homeland. Additionally, Indian agents have worked with Canadian police in the monitoring of activities of its former citizens; and three Indian diplomats were in 1987 quietly asked to leave by the Canadian government for what might have been spying.

On the other hand, T Sher Singh’s prominence in Canada warrants further investigation of his charges, adds Cleroux. “T. Sher Singh may have information that I don’t have.”

Singh is sticking to his guns over the whole question.

“I seem to be one of the very few people who is outspoken because I am in a unique position,” Singh says. “I do not have relatives in India and do not have the need to go back, which means acquiring a visa from the Indian government. It is a big club that they hold over Indians, and are able to wield it quite effectively.

“If you become a critic of the Indian government, you cannot go back. There are thousands of cases of people who cannot go back, no matter how urgent it is because they have in some manner displeased Indian officials here.”