Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to have fallen on the wrong side of the Hindu God Shani. Bungling up for a second time in India, then failing to take off from the country, and being shredded globally while stuck in those circumstances, Trudeau’s India curse is the beginning of the end of his political career.
It is proving hard for the Canadian PM to shake off this curse. His politics is being held hostage by Khalistanis in his government. India has continued the tradition of snubbing him. As India grows more and more relevant in global affairs, Canada is slipping into the shadows of insignificance. Trudeau has thrown in the foreign policy towel. The Canadian media and his opponents are having a field day tearing into him. It’s 2018 all over again. And this time, it is more serious.
In February 2018, Trudeau set out on an eight-day visit to India expecting a splash of grandeur. Instead, he made a complete mockery of himself when in a cursed “Bollywood” trip to India, he was snubbed by his counterpart after news of a convicted Khalistani terrorist Jaspal Atwal being invited to official events came out. That turned into a global spectacle, an unforgotten cringe-fest that makes both Canadians and Indians squirm in agony.
Five years later, a 51-year-old Trudeau arrived at the heart of India, still none the wiser. After being snubbed by most leaders throughout the G20 summit, failing to secure a bilateral meeting with India and skipping the G20 dinner hosted by PM Modi as if to sulk about it all, Trudeau was obliterated by the Indian prime minister the next day.
As is usually the case with pull-aside encounters, the two leaders got straight to the point as PM Modi raised the threat of Khalistani terror emanating from Canada and its involvement in organised crime, drug syndicates and human trafficking. India drew its red lines, but Trudeau came out unhinged, and chose to defend the Khalistanis under the cover of “free speech”. He also had the gall to talk about “foreign interference” accusing India of meddling in Canada’s affairs, when it is indeed Canada that is fomenting a significant terror threat to India.
What the Canadian people should realise is that Trudeau’s defence of Khalistanis is not about free speech. Open calls for the assassination of Indian diplomats are not free speech. Attacking Indian diplomatic missions is not free speech. Parading a tableau carrying a violent depiction in celebration of the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is not free speech. Vandalising Hindu temples and perpetrating hate against other Indian communities is also not free speech.
All of these events have taken place overtly in Canada just in the last few months. But Trudeau has refused to condemn and crack down upon such violent elements even if it skewers Canada’s relations with India for a long time to come. Compare this with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who said, “Let me just say unequivocally that no form of extremism or violence like that is acceptable in the UK.” He added that his government is working with the Indian government to tackle Khalistani extremism.
Justin Trudeau is no free-speech absolutist. In February 2022, he rained down hard upon the Freedom Convoy of Truckers who had been protesting peacefully. He condemned them, sent the riot police after them and froze their bank accounts. That was not a good time for free speech in Canada.
Another point for Canadians to understand is that if there were to be an independent Khalistani nation, it would potentially be established within Canadian borders, not in India. There are 20 million Sikhs in India compared with less than 800,000 in Canada, not all of whom support the idea of Khalistan. The Indian state of Punjab, home to 32 million people, is distinct from cases like China-occupied Tibet, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. The majority of Sikhs in India do not advocate for a referendum to break away from the country. A specific faction of Sikh groups, which has found fertile political support in Canada and has formed alliances with Pakistan, has formulated this aspiration.
It is awfully clear that Justin Trudeau has driven Canada’s ties with India to the gutters simply for the sake of his twisted domestic politics. The woke progressivism— going full whack over climate change and gender ideology— is not enough for Trudeau to form a government in Canada. He needs the support of the New Democratic Party, backed by certified Khalistani extremists, without which his government would fall apart. With 156 seats in the House of Commons, Trudeau’s Liberal Party relies on pro-Khalistan kingmaker Jagmeet Singh’s party which has another 25 seats, to run a minority government in the country.
Moreover, pandering to Khalistanis is an old sickness of the Trudeau dynasty. Justin Trudeau is walking in the footsteps of his father, Pierre Trudeau, who had been Canada’s prime minister twice, between 1968 and 1979 and then from 1980 to 1984. Like his son, Pierre Trudeau was similarly dismissive about India’s concerns about Khalistani terrorism and went out of his way to defend the head of a terrorist group. Talwinder Parmar, head of Khalistani terror organisation Babbar Khalsa, was saved by the then Canadian prime minister who refused to extradite the terrorist to India, a fellow commonwealth nation. The excuse was that India did not pay fealty to the Queen as its head of state and therefore extradition protocols did not apply. Three years later, Parmar would go on to place a bomb onboard the ‘Kanishka’ Air India flight killing all 329 people on the plane off the coast of Ireland.
Back in the ‘80s, India’s sensibilities may have been insignificant to Canada’s scheme of things, but today, transgressing India’s red lines is no less than shooting oneself in the foot. Today, however, consumed by arrogance, puerility and woke politics, Trudeau has read the tea leaves all wrong and is cutting the Canadian people off from an emerging great power, only to advance his petty political interests.
This is a lesson for the Western electorate that tends to be enticed by woke buzzwords above all else. It is not just about time that Canadians see through Trudeau, a woke, juvenile dynast’s tomfoolery, but it is also time that people in the Western bloc reflect on their political choices. Just as Justin Trudeau is flaming out, Finland’s Sanna Marin has flamed out and New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern who admitted to having ‘no more left in the tank’ is extinguished— but not before gravely damaging the reputation and stature of their countries.
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