Opinion | Canada going the Pakistan way: Deal with it the way India has dealt with a terror state

Canada, under Justin Trudeau, is fast and dangerously sliding towards becoming a Pakistan. It has been sheltering anti-India Khalistan elements since the 1980s, if not before. But now, there is not even an attempt to keep this dirty nexus under cover. If Pakistan patronises Islamist terrorists by calling them “freedom fighters”, Trudeau’s Canada shelters Khalistani terrorists as “Sikh activists” — a sordid attempt to give the entire community, known for its patriotism, sacrifice, and love for India, a bad name.

The recent Khalistani attack on minority Hindus in a temple in Canada exposes the Canadian narrative on several fronts: One, there is nothing civil about these so-called “Sikh activists” in Canada. They are terrorists, criminals, and extortionists.

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Two, the Canadian support for these goons is not confined to just giving them freedom to “express” themselves. As the videos widely circulated on social media show, the Canadian police not just provided active support in unleashing mayhem on the streets but also provided them protection by crushing any semblance of opposition coming from the other side.

So, in Trudeau’s Canada, the Khalistanis are allowed to desecrate, tear apart, or even burn the Indian tricolour; they are even allowed to stage the mock killing of Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi. But when Hindu protesters try doing the same with Khalistani flags, the police suddenly become agitated and aggressive.

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Three, Trudeau, who came to power by selling lofty libertarian dreams, has kind of built an ‘Animal Farm’-like state where, to use George Orwell’s words, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. In the process, he has allowed Khalistani terrorists to become a law unto themselves as they intimidate and harass Hindus settled and working in Canada.

Trudeau seems to be replicating Pakistan’s jihadi model to bleed India. As things stand today, the Pakistan-based terrorists now kill more of their people than they kill outsiders! Trudeau’s Canada seems to have taken the same treacherous path. This dangerous prospect may still be some decades away, but if not arrested on time, it will come with violence and vengeance in Canada.

Here, one needs to realise that Khalistan is a Pakistani creation with American complicity. No wonder the founder of the Khalistan ‘movement’, Jagjit Singh Chauhan, was in Pakistan soon before setting up this terror outfit. During his stay there, he was hosted by none other than Gen Yahya Khan, the country’s military dictator. Soon after, he went to New York, and on October 12, 1971, an advertisement was published in The New York Times announcing the birth of Khalistan. “We are going to wait no more,” the advertisement said. “Today we are launching the final crusade… We are a nation in our own right.” The Pakistan Embassy was believed to have sponsored that advertisement on American soil!

After the humiliation in the 1971 war, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who took over from Gen Yahya Khan, adopted the sinister Khalistan project with an added rage for revenge. As a young journalist in 1973, Tarek Fatah, the late Pakistan-born Canadian journalist, heard Bhutto pledge at an off-the-record briefing to carve out a piece from India—Khalistan—to avenge 1971. “Pakistan will also have a Bangladesh, carved out of India,” Fatah quoted Bhutto as saying, “except it will be on Pakistan’s border.” It also made geostrategic sense: For once Khalistan was accomplished, then Kashmir, geographically cut off from the rest of India, would be there for the taking!

It is this Pakistani connection that explains why the official map of Khalistan, published by Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), led by the US-based Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, incorporates not just the Indian state of Punjab but also the whole of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and the National Capital Territory of Delhi; Khalistanis also claim a large part of Rajasthan. Except Punjab, all other Indian states claimed by Khalistanis have a minuscule Sikh presence. Haryana has 87 per cent Hindus; Delhi has 81 per cent Hindus; Himachal Pradesh has 95 per cent Hindus, while in Rajasthan there are 88 per cent Hindus.

This Khalistani hunger for land is confined to India alone. For, the official map seeks not an inch of land from the Pakistani side — it doesn’t even claim Lahore, which was the erstwhile capital of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Even the holy Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, is voluntarily excluded from the Khalistan map. The very fact that the Khalistanis want Delhi and not Lahore exposes the real, pernicious agenda of the so-called movement for the nation of Sikhs.

Canada cannot succeed where Pakistan failed — in bleeding India into disintegration. The foremost reason is the geographical disadvantage that Ottawa faces. Pakistan had the advantage of being India’s immediate neighbour. Justin Trudeau seems to be goaded by the American Deep State to poke at rising India. There also seems to be a Chinese angle. For the Trudeaus, father and son, have always had close connections with the Chinese.

Such was Pierre Trudeau’s fascination for China that Jeremy Kinsman, former Canadian ambassador to Russia and the EU, in one of his articles in 2016, praised Trudeau Sr for his efforts in building diplomatic relations between China and the West at the height of the Cold War. Praising how Pierre Trudeau has “broken the ice in Beijing” as early as in 1949, Kinsman went to the extent of saying that US President Richard Nixon followed “a trail blazed by a Canadian Prime Minister”.

Justin seems to be following his father’s path, blindly and adoringly. Justin Trudeau’s Khalistan policy may have many fathers, but only one loser: Canada. This will become obvious when these Khalistani thugs stop getting any traction. They will then do what most terrorist outfits had done in the past: Bleed the hands that had fed them in the past!

Once their India dream sours, a section of them would start believing, sooner than later, in creating a Khalistan in Canada. And with generous Indian payback — one former intelligence officer told this author how many of these Khalistani thugs are more than willing to do India’s betting for a few more dollars — this could be a real, much painful Canadian ulcer.

As for now, India must deal with Canada the way it has been dealing with a terror state called Pakistan. The Indian leadership must make it clear to Ottawa, and its ‘Fives Eyes’ friends, that there cannot be a normal relationship with a terror-sponsoring nation. Canada, under Trudeau, has formally joined Pakistan on this dubious list.

The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.