Front Burner - Anti-Canada rhetoric ramps up in India

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says there are credible allegations linking India to the murder of a Canadian Sikh leader. CBC’s South Asia correspondent Salimah Shivji answers: how has Canada’s accusation played in the India media? What does the coverage tell us about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s politics? What could it mean for India’s Sikh community?

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, I'm Damon Fairless, and for the next few months, I'm going to be taking a turn in front of the mic, filling in for Jamie Poisson. I'm a writer and a journalist, and for the next few months, I'm going to be taking a turn in front of the mic, filling in for Jamie Poisson. I'm a writer and a journalist, and for the past few years, I've been producing long-form podcast series for CBC Podcasts. Most of the time, I'm behind the scenes working on stories that can take a year or even more to make,

all of which I love. But I also love keeping up with what's happening in the world, talking with interesting folks who are in the middle of a developing story. And there are a lot of developing stories these days, to say the least. So I'm really looking forward to helping the rest of the FrontBurner team bring you the best of those stories. It's going to be fun. Now, here's the show. It's been two weeks since Justin Trudeau made a bombshell accusation in Parliament, alleging that there's credible intelligence linking agents of the Indian government with the murder of B.C. Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nidger.

Take a look at the news stories about that here, in Canada. And it's mostly headlines about the diplomatic row between the two countries. That, or new details about Nidger's murder. Now take a look at the same story in India, and it's playing out differently. I think it's a bit dangerous to suggest that India was involved without a share of evidence. That's my point. I said that it was a hypothesis. And ladies and gentlemen, he's facing a huge backlash from the press back home.

Approval ratings have plunged. Opinion poll numbers are a hard reality check. And Justin Trudeau is appeasing the terrorist groups by backing Khalid Saadi terrorists openly and trying to take on India. Clearly the Canadian Prime Minister is out of his depths. What can be more provocative than accusing the government of a murder on foreign soil? It seems that the Canadian leader needs a lesson in international relations. Today on FrontBurner, the CBC South Asia correspondent Salima Shivji is here,

and she's going to be talking about how the growing diplomatic tensions are playing out in Indian politics across the media landscape there and the impact all this is having on India's Sikh population. Hey, Salima. Hi. Thanks for coming on. My pleasure. Okay, so if I turn on the TV in India or flip through the major newspapers, the news sites,

what would I see about the allegations that India could be linked to the killing of a Canadian citizen? Well, the allegations are getting a lot of play here from the entire media landscape, really much very united and parroting the Indian government stance, really dismissing Canada's allegations. And it really has been like that from the beginning. There's a lot of repetition in terms of the response across nearly all media outlets. And the main headline repeated over and over is that Canada is sort of acting like a rogue state. There's no sense of diplomacy, the media is saying, in terms of how Canada came up with these allegations and how they presented them publicly. The sense that Canada is a safe haven

for, quote, dreaded gangsters, that they're not doing anything to police the separatist Khalistani movement has come up a lot here. The movement, of course, is banned here in India. I saw one paper referring to gangland Canada, and that gangster idea has come up a lot. And there's a lot of, a lot of this too is like focused specifically on Trudeau too, right? That's right. The, you know, the attacks on Justin Trudeau are really quite violent. There's, you know, have been headlines where they talk about Kenatistan, you know, play on the word Khalistan, of course. But another television segment that I saw spoke of Trudeau in particular, really leaning into that gangster theme,

calling him a guardian of gangsters. They talked about his cozy ties with what they called radicals, basically dismissing this as a ploy from Trudeau for political gain. And that view is pretty consistent, I would say, across most Indian media outlets, those attacks on the Canadian prime minister. They've been harsh, they've been really personal and quite outlandish in some instances from what should be reputable sources. There was one in particular, kind of on the other extreme of gangsterism is, we were calling him like, what was it, a milk drinking baby or something like that? Yeah, this came from a former Indian ambassador who actually claimed that Trudeau, when he was in Delhi for the, as we've reported, very tense G20 meeting in early September, that Trudeau had a stash of cocaine on his plane.

And that's why this former diplomat said that the delegation was delayed flying back to Canada. So that ambassador, his name is Deepak Bora, he really laid into Trudeau. And as you said, he called him a childish, milk-drinking baby. He said, what does he know of international relations? This is from a former ambassador on television with no pushback. And what's interesting is those kind of baseless and strange cocaine claims that

came out of nowhere were picked up by many other media outlets. So that really gives you a sense of how this is playing out. Yeah. And to be clear, those allegations that there was coke on the airplane are totally baseless. There was mechanical issues that they were trying to solve. The media landscape in India is fairly different than it is here in Canada and the States even. Can you give me a sense of, in general, what the media landscape is like there? Yeah, and I think a lot of people who aren't familiar with the Indian television media landscape won't really understand where the coverage of this issue is coming from. You know, here it's really quite normal to see media kind of be very boisterous, very loud. Often I would say it's headache inducing, the coverage here. It's really debate heavy with panelists yelling over each other.

And how the former prime minister on the tableau that was paraded in Canada. He's facing ridicule. He thinks he can take on India and get away with it. I think he's bitten off more than he can chew this time, RPC. Let him not be patronizing and say,

look, India's case is different. We will reign in hatred and terror. I'm sorry. He's not doing absolutely anything in that department at all. There is absolutely no fear or hesitation to show bias, a pro-India, pro-government bias, really echoing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's political views. And we've seen that in the media coverage over this issue, over the allegations revealed publicly by Canada.

And I would say in this case, even more than some other issues, it was very much taken as a full frontal attack, like I said, on Indian pride and roundly rejected in the media. And yet also there's a sense in some quarters and in some media coverage that if Indian agents had something to do with the killing of Sikh activist, Hardeep Signature on Canadian soil, that it would be warranted, you know, to stop someone the Indian government sees fully as a terrorist. And so it sounds like the government and the media angle on this story are kind of in lockstep from what you're saying. Now, in their initial response, the Indian government, and I guess it was picked up by the Indian media too, was calling Canada's allegations

absurd, politically motivated. Where's it gone since then? What have they been saying since? Yeah, I would say those are the main words that we heard over and over again. You know, this is absurd. This is politically motivated. The reaction from the government has really been angry. I would say it's been defiant and unyielding. You know, we saw a lot of different actions. India suspended visa services for Canadian citizens. I tell my children we go to Bali and we're going to go on vacation this year. I knew it's going to bite me. I just didn't know that it's going to bite me this soon. India's Modi and Canada's Trudeau have left us all distraught.

We are the ones who are going to suffer and not the diplomats. There was, you know, a sense, according to the ministry, that it just wasn't safe to process them because the Indian government was claiming there was anti-India activity. Now, that was a really fierce attack, and it really shows how India has long seen Canada as soft and, like, way too laid back in dealing with Calistani activists in the Sikh diaspora, which is, to be clear, a small segment of the community. Yeah, and I think one of the things that stood out to me was that one of the spokespeople for the external affairs minister called Canada a safe haven, as you mentioned,

but something like seven times in a 45-minute speech. If there is any country, if you're talking about reputational issues and reputational damage, if there's one, any country that needs to look at this, I think it is Canada and its growing reputation as a place, as a safe haven for terrorists, for extremists and for organized crime. And I think that's a country that needs to worry about its international reputation. Yeah, it was a consistent, you know, it was like a broken record, right? He just kept saying Canada is a safe haven, Canada is sheltering, you know, what India sees as terrorists. And that is, you know, it shows just how furious India really is about this. Interestingly, I would say that first week was really, you know, the attacks were really angry from India and really direct. were really angry from India and really direct. Recently, you know, we did see India's external affairs minister, Subramaniam Jaishankar, speak about it. He was a little calmer. He was in the United States when he was asked about it. One, we told the Canadians that this is not the government

of India's policy. Two, we told the Canadians saying that, look, if you have something specific, if you have something relevant, you know, let us know. We are open to looking at it. But still, you know, very quick to say this is absolutely not a thing. It's not India's policy. So the anger over this issue really isn't going to go away on the Indian side. Well, one of the things I found really interesting, too, is that this anger wasn't just coming from Modi's governing party, the BJP. It's also stuff we're hearing from the Indian Congress Party too, which is the official opposition there too. I found that kind of surprising.

What's your take on it? Yeah, it's really actually interesting to see the political alignment, not just from the main opposition party, from the Congress Party, but across all political spectrums. And it's so rare in this country. India is extremely divided politically. There's a lot of venom among the parties. There is rarely agreement. But like you said, in this case, there is. The opposition is defending the government. The Congress Party says, you know, India's fight against terrorism needs to be uncompromising. So why are we seeing this?

It's kind of a no-brainer for politicians politicians here, really to line up against Canada using the country as a bit of a punching bag on this issue. First off, the politicians are talking to a domestic audience, right? And it's a domestic audience who's really full of pride over India's recent accomplishments. So the politicians, they're really focusing on that domestic audience that bristles at any outside criticism of India. But in terms of the Congress party in particular, it's also important to remember that what you hear from them on this issue is because of history. You know, the Congress Party was in power in the 1980s when the Indian government initiated a crackdown on a Sikh separatist insurgency, right, calling for an independent Sikh state, Khalistan. It was at the height of the movement's popularity

in Punjab, and the government at the time was the Congress Party. They ordered soldiers to storm the Holy Golden Temple in Amritsar. There was a lot of violence. Thousands of people died in anti-Sikh riots following that incident. So the view of the Khalistan movement today across India's political spectrum, not just within the Congress party, but really across the spectrum, is consistent. They don't like it. It's a threat, according to them, even if public support for the idea of a separate Sikh homeland is quite low.

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NDTV was one of the last independent television news outlets. And I did speak with the former leading anchor of the network, Ravish Kumar. He basically quit in protest when this was happening. He told me he's lost all hope that Adani buying his station was the final assault on critical thought in India's journalism scene. He called it an onslaught. And in his view, the media in India is finished, Kumar says. It's at a dead end. On air, all you hear is support for the prime minister's politics. And this is what, you know, a lot of experts are saying. And this is what a lot of experts are saying. Kumar corporate ownership of so much of the media landscape as really infiltrating

and inserting corporate agendas into what's being heard and seen on the screens. And a lot of people are sounding the alarm. They think that this will just get a little bit worse as, you know, there's general elections next year as well, that the media is no longer independent. There are very few independent voices here in the landscape. And so what happens to the journalists who are critical of the Modi government? What's the impact on them in particular? Well, they don't get play or really much freedom these days. It is really a tough battle for many who are critical of the government.

Some reporters have been jailed and charged under anti-terror laws. Whenever they're granted bail, new cases are filed to keep them in custody. Most recently, Irfan Miraj, who's worked with multiple international outlets, jailed for alleged links to terror funding. And when you look at, you know, press freedom indexes, those are released every year by the group Reporters Without Borders. This past year, India slipped to 161st place out of 180 countries for press freedom. That's, you know, not really a great standing for, you know, what India likes to tout themselves as the world's

largest democracy. So it's not great for some domestic media voices, but it's also not so great for foreign media outlets either. You know, the BBC was a target earlier this year. As you know, they aired a documentary critical of India's prime minister and his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots when he was chief minister of that state. And so the public broadcaster of Britain had tax authorities descend on their offices here in India and seize documents. So that's sort of a tactic that we've been seeing used here. Foreign NGOs have been a target as well as have human rights groups and, of course, minorities. We've been talking about traditional media, but one of the things that I found really, really interesting looking into this was a report in the Washington Post where they're

talking about this huge online network that the BJP Modi's party uses to advance its political aims and often to mobilize its supporters at a grassroots level. And so a lot of that's about spreading inflammatory disinformation over WhatsApp, which has something like 500 million users in India. Can you tell me more about how social media is being used to promote the government's agenda or to crack down dissidents? WhatsApp, like you mentioned, is huge in India and it is notorious for disinformation because, of course, it's encrypted. You can't really target what's being spread and how people are sharing that information, the disinformation and the misinformation. You know, they are slightly different, you know, through family networks.

And yeah, Modi's party, the BJP, has really fine tuned this as a strategy and it's spread out across the country. They do have a lot of grassroots groups that really know how to use social media to pick up slight things and start to inflame divides. Social media is very much the BJP's preferred method to do this. And also the Prime Minister Modi's preferred medium to speak to the people, you know, speak directly to Indians through social media. He wants to avoid the media filter. You know, Modi is of course a prime minister who doesn't hold news conferences. He doesn't even entertain questions from the press. So he uses social media to announce his policies, to speak directly to Indians. He doesn't really like to get into the fray. He doesn't like to get down and dirty.

He really prefers for others to come out with harsh words while he speaks to the Indian people directly about all the policies that he wants to highlight that he's implementing. The Modi government's been in power for almost a decade. And from the start, it's been criticized for promoting a Hindu nationalist agenda that's fueled a lot of violence and discrimination against India's religious minorities. And I think it's worth pointing out that non-Hindu religious groups make up about 20% of the country's population. Sikhs who are at the center of this diplomatic row make up under 2%. So what does all this meant for Sikhs in India? Yeah, like you said, it is a small portion of the population, less than 2% only. But in Punjab, where the Sikh

population is the majority, that's the only state where they're the majority, I was actually just there. And there are quite a lot of concerns on the ground there about everything around this issue, about the increased tension between Canada and India. Most everybody I spoke with, they were anxious, uneasy. Certainly everyone was staying on top of the headlines. Like really, they knew all of the details about this, including all of the sort of conspiracy theories around everything. And several people I spoke with were also not so pleased with Canada's allegations and the fact that Trudeau stepped up in the House of Commons and came out with these allegations. I spoke with one man, Harveer Singh. He was visiting the Golden Temple when I spoke with him. Of course, the holiest site in the Sikh religion, but also the site of violence in the 1980s, like I mentioned, a painful part of history for so many Sikhs.

And Singh told me that he found this whole thing completely disheartening. And his intense worry is that because of the spat and the spotlight on the issue of Khalistan brought up, he said, by the diaspora, now he thinks all Sikhs will be branded terrorists. We just want to spread peace and harmony among each and everyone. But picking this particular agenda of Khalistan and all the separation from India and all that, it's just disheartening because of these things. Some people who don't have any kind of knowledge, they just start hating us. They just portray a picture of Sikhs, then all the Sikhs are Khalistanis. So there is really that worry that Khalistan will be used as a political tool, you know, as a boogeyman by the ruling party in India as well

to whip up votes from the Hindu majority and that the Sikh minority in India is just going to be caught in the middle. You know, use as puppets, he says. Like in Canada, Trudeau is getting a lot of hate and then he just want to gain some popularity and some sympathy from the Sikh community. And do you get a sense of resentment towards the Sikh diaspora from Sikhs within India? Well, you know, I would say there is some displeasure, absolutely, some discontent.

You know, like I said, Harveer Singh, when he dismissed the idea of Khalistan to me, and he really dismissed it outright, he told me that those who talk about it in the diaspora are misguided. They just repeat the word over and over, he says. If there's a well-learned Sikh, he has some different aspects, some different views. But if you just guys ask anyone, like if you guys ask 10 people, nine of them would not know any kind of thing about Khalistan. But they just said that we want Khalistan, we want Khalistan, but they do not know actual meaning of it. I did speak with others too. You know, I spoke with Ramanpreet Kaur. She is, she was just in

a little village outside of Amritsar, a village where she grew up and still lives. She's 31, trained as a lawyer, and she was kind of exasperated when she talked to me. You can't get Khalistan by raising flags, by cursing each other, Hindus and Sikhs. We are living peacefully here. Why are you demanding Khalistan? Please come here and ask the genuine questions to our government. Ask for justice peacefully, because we have a right to protest, peaceful protest. And she thinks that those in the diaspora should actually go to Punjab and see the reality on the ground. We are not terrorists. We are Indians. We are not separatists. We are not demanding

Khalistan. For a few peoples, all the six, we are a lot under the demand of Khalistan. There are supporters of Khalistan, and you spoke with some of them. What was their sense of all this? How were they feeling about their safety? How were they feeling about the tensions that are going on between Canada and India? You know, a lot of the people I spoke with said they do not support Khalistan, but there is still some support in Punjab. I spoke with a longtime activist of the pro-independence group, Dal Khalsa.

He's been, you know, fighting for an independent Sikh homeland for many, many years, for several decades. And Kanwar Pal Singh told me that people in Punjab don't actually like speaking out about Khalistan or expressing support because they're worried about the consequences. They're worried that Indian authorities are listening or taking notes. But, you know, even some who told me that they think it was good that Trudeau spoke out about these allegations that India could have been behind the killing of Niger. You know, I spoke with one man, Amanpal Singh. He answered

me point blank on the issue of Palestine and he dismissed it. And he said support was low, you know, that people in Punjab want to live in peace. And there was a sense of people repeating that, you know, we're in peace right now. We're good. We don't want this to get into, you know, even more tension, especially several people told me with elections in the air. A lot of people were saying that the issues that matter to them the most are the ones present in day-to-day life. You know, what people need to earn a living, you know, that they're more concerned with jobs, with high unemployment in the state. There's also a bad addiction issue in Punjab, hitting many young people with hard drugs, crossing the border with Pakistan. That was a sense I was getting from a lot of people. They're sort of anxious about where this is going. Many of them said there are a lot of really other big

social issues in the area that they want addressed by the central Indian government. As soon as Trudeau made his allegations in the New Jersey killing, the political and media rhetoric in India escalated right away. Like you said, where do you see it going from here? Well, you know, it's hard to know exactly where it'll go. It has died down a little bit. And the people that I spoke with on the ground are all sort of hesitant too. They don't really know where this is going to go. There is anxiety that they will be affected, but a lot of people do think this will die down in a few months because that attention is moving towards, like I said, domestic politics. There are still some feisty headlines, but it's more of a rehashing of older

themes in the media these last few days. Still, there is a sense on the ground in Punjab when you talk to people there, there's a sense of a lack of control that they're being used in a political game and they don't really have a sense of where this will go. They're hoping it'll end sometime soon. Many people still see Canada, you know, as a friend, as an ally of India's. But the elections in India are more than six months away. It's soon, but it's not right around the corner. So the issue of Khalistan, a lot of people are expecting that to be out there, be used by the ruling party, you know, as a little bit of a tool to whip up some support and some division as we head into those elections. Selima, thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate it. It was my pleasure.

That's it for today. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.