Forty-one years too late: Canada has told only half the truth on Kanishka

It took Canada — the self-anointed guardian of democracy, liberalism and human rights — a staggering 41 years to officially admit what should have happened almost instantly: that the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985 was an act of Khalistani terrorism. For four decades, Ottawa spoke in euphemisms. It spoke of tragedy, of investigation, of remembrance. But throughout, it consciously avoided the K-word, and whenever it spoke, it never uttered it alongside the T-word (terrorism).

Only now has the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) finally acknowledged the obvious. On the 41st anniversary of the Kanishka bombing, CSIS stated unequivocally: “On June 23, 1985, a bomb planted by Canada-based Khalistani extremists destroyed the aircraft, killing everyone on board. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Canada’s history and a defining moment for our national security community.”

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One cannot help but ask: what took 41 years? The bombing of Air India Flight 182 was not merely another terrorist attack. Until 9/11, it stood among the deadliest acts of aviation terrorism in history. Three hundred and twenty-nine innocent people were murdered, including 268 Canadian citizens, most of them of Indian origin. Yet, the massacre never occupied the place in Canada’s — or the West’s — consciousness that tragedies of similar magnitude ordinarily command. It remained, in many ways, somebody else’s tragedy, not Canada’s.

Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s statement deserves acknowledgment. He observed that “the legacy of Air India Flight 182 demands remembrance, but also vigilance”, adding that “Canada’s government is confronting and condemning violent extremism in all its forms, with new legislation to defend the safety and security of Canadians, strengthen our national security institutions, and disrupt terrorist financing and support networks.”

Those are welcome words. But words uttered now cannot erase 41 years of political denial. More so because Canada’s latest admission tells only half the story. The other half is infinitely more uncomfortable. It is the story of how Khalistani extremism flourished on Canadian soil while successive governments looked away, deliberately and dangerously. It is the story of political patronage masquerading as multicultural tolerance. It is the story of democratic rhetoric becoming a convenient shield for extremist networks operating against another democracy.

Merely acknowledging that Khalistani terrorists committed the Kanishka bombing is the easy part. Explaining why they were allowed to organise, fundraise, radicalise and threaten with such remarkable impunity inside Canada is considerably harder. That is the question Ottawa still refuses to answer.

For decades, Ottawa insisted upon separating extremism from its political ecosystem even while the ecosystem continued to nourish it. That contradiction became glaring under Justin Trudeau’s government. Only 18 months before Canada’s present admission, Ottawa observed a moment of silence marking the first anniversary of Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s killing. The subsequent diplomatic confrontation with India centred on allegations regarding Nijjar’s death. Such was Ottawa’s complicity that it officially projected Nijjar as a plumber, deliberately brushing under the carpet his Khalistani links.

Justin Trudeau, however, did not create this problem. He merely inherited it from Canada’s political culture and also his family heritage. The government of his father, Pierre Trudeau, repeatedly dismissed India’s concerns regarding Khalistani activities in Canada during the early 1980s.

Former Canadian High Commissioner Bill Warden later admitted that those concerns were not without merit. In his memoir Diplomat, Dissident, Spook, Warden recalled how, two months before her assassination, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent a letter to her Canadian counterpart, John Turner, accusing “in explicit terms” that Sikh outfits in Canada were financing violence against India while receiving “multiculturalism” funds from that government. “Indirectly, Canadian taxpayers were paying to kill Indians” — a damning charge cited by Canadian journalist and author Terry Milewski in his 2021 book, Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project.

Delhi repeatedly protested. Warden recalled how he was summoned during his tenure in the 1980s to the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi “to receive strong protests on some eighteen occasions”.

But Ottawa continued to look the other way, even when Talwinder Singh Parmar openly warned in 1982 that “Indian planes will fall from the sky.” Three years later, they did. Incidentally, Delhi had sought Parmar’s extradition in 1982, but Ottawa refused to entertain the request on the ludicrous ground that the extradition protocols between Commonwealth countries would not apply because India recognised Her Majesty only as Head of the Commonwealth, and not as Head of State.

Warden was quite categorical in saying that the Kanishka tragedy was “fully preventable”. His verdict remains damning: “Warnings of potential disaster had been delivered in spades. The failure of the Canadian authorities to act was, consequently, one of the root causes.”

Even after 329 people perished, Canada’s response remained astonishingly indifferent. Victims’ families repeatedly wondered whether official urgency would have been different had the aircraft been an Air Canada flight carrying predominantly white passengers. Terry Milewski captured that painful reality with stark bluntness: “The investigation took twenty years. Except for the victims’ families, it seemed that nobody was interested in the Air India bombing.”

Today, Canada deserves credit for finally acknowledging the role of Khalistani terrorists in the 1985 bombing. But honesty delayed is not honesty completed. CSIS has acknowledged who planted the bomb. Canada must now acknowledge why those who preached, organised and financed violent extremism found such fertile ground within its own borders for so many years. Until Ottawa confronts this reality honestly, its latest declaration remains an incomplete confession.

The Kanishka bombing was not merely Canada’s greatest intelligence failure. It was also one of the democratic West’s greatest moral failures, when it confused, often deliberately, tolerance with indulgence, civil liberty with political cowardice, and multiculturalism with wilful blindness.

Forty-one years later, Canada has finally told half the truth. The other half still waits for the courage to be spoken.

(The writer is the author of ‘Bharat Rising: Dharma, Democracy, Diplomacy’ and ‘Eminent Distorians: Twists and Truths in Bharat’s History’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)