Indian media could scarcely conceal its glee Tuesday at the defeat of Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh seen in India as sympathetic to the Khalistani separatist movement.
Singh lost his own seat in Parliament in Monday’s election, and the NDP might be finished as a national party.
Rarely does an Indian media outlet refer to Singh without identifying him as “pro-Khalistan.” The Khalistani movement desires an independent state for the Sikh minority in the Indian state of Punjab. The movement became militant, and occasionally violent, in the 1980s.
India long ago banned the Khalistan movement and has classified a number of affiliated groups as terrorist organizations. Many Sikhs have migrated to Canada, however, and they brought the Khalistani ideology with them. A good deal of the diplomatic tension between India and Canada comes from India accusing the Canadian government of indulging Sikh separatists.
Those tensions erupted into a major diplomatic conflict in June 2023, when leading Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered by masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple in Vancouver.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of masterminding the assassination but did not produce evidence to back up the charge.
Jagmeet Singh joined Trudeau in making those accusations and he pushed for Canada to expel more Indian diplomats as the row escalated. He also called for Canada to ban Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist organization that has counted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a member.
Singh lost the election for his seat in British Columbia on Monday night and resigned as NDP leader on Tuesday morning. NDP has slipped to seven seats in Parliament as of Tuesday morning’s vote counts, putting it well below the 12-seat threshold needed for official party status in Canada.
India’s NDTV predicted Jagmeet Singh’s “removal from the scene” would “give Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, [a chance] to work together to restore India-Canada ties.”
NDTV posted the video of Singh’s concession speech, noting that he “choked back tears numerous times.”
The typically pro-Modi WION News on Tuesday said “cheers” resounded through Indian social media over the “drubbing” of Singh.
Indian social media users proclaimed Singh’s defeat was a “massive victory for India” and a “big blow to Pakistan,” India’s neighbor and rival. India’s relations with Pakistan are extremely tense following a bloody terrorist attack in the contested territory of Kashmir last week.
Like NDTV, WION offered Prime Minister Mark Carney a clean slate now that Trudeau and Singh are gone, applauding his strong statement on the Kashmir terrorist attack and predicting an “uptick” in relations now that “Khalistani influence in Ottawa” has been diminished.
“Khalistani Jagmeet Singh defeated, takes down his party with him. NDP loses national status. He’s blamed for fueling terrorism in Punjab and Haryana via proxies,” said a trenchant social media post quoted by the Times of India (TOI).
Singh’s critics in India and elsewhere took some pleasure in needling him for his refusal to back the Conservative Party of Canada’s call for a no-confidence vote during the last months of Trudeau’s administration. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who also went on to lose his seat in Monday’s election, blasted Singh as a “clown” for riding to Trudeau’s rescue.
Political junkies can only wonder at the outcome in an alternate timeline where the NDP backed the Conservatives last year and triggered a snap election at the height of Trudeau’s unpopularity, before he was able to resign, and before U.S. President Donald Trump antagonized Canadian voters by imposing tariffs and talking about annexing Canada.
A common criticism at the time was that Singh backed down from the no-confidence vote because he did not want to risk dissolving the Trudeau government before his pension was secure. This criticism made a comeback during Tuesday’s online grave-dancing over the defeat of Singh and the NDP.
