Canada and India — a researcher’s perspective
World media and experts of geopolitics are surprised and even aghast at what India has actioned with Canada. I personally attribute it to being ignorant and mostly arrogant about ignoring the signs.
I don’t know much about Canada, whether thats a good or bad thing is not the commentary of my article. I am writing this based on media outrage over India reducing its relations with Canada since being accused in Canadian parliament.
“How can India do this?”
“Canada is such a nice country, how dare you Indians?”
“Trudeau has not done anything wrong, something must be wrong with Indians… ohh yeah, human rights”
Well, all I can say is there is so much not known by an average American (yeah, whole of America) beyond IT prowess and now scientific one with Chandrayan.
This write up is not to prove anything but to give you a glimpse about Indian society. If you ever interact with an Indian or plan to visit India for work or tourism, this might come in handy. I am a researcher who has done consumer research in villages, towns and cities of India for corporate and public sector clients (even HongKong and New Zealand tourism for their campaigns in India). This has given me a detailed insight into the Indian society and humans behind different languages and cultures, what binds them together, their red lines.
Context first…
Terrorism in India is an immigration scam of Canada
India has had violent sessionist movement since its freedom from the British Raj. This includes Punjab and Kashmiri sepratist movements aided by different countries. Don’t take my word for it, just hear out voices for human rights violations in India by some countries, ‘civil society’ & media in Americas and Europe.
Secessionist movement in India is an immigration scam run by corrupt lobbies for billions of dollars. Yes, there are lots of other issues but I am talking in context of our topic, Canada. Thousands of sikhs are seeking asylum in Canada (along with other countries) claiming persecution at the hands of Indian authorities. There is latent corruption which will soon come to light by aware Canadians who just learnt a lot of things about this issue and will question their government. Outside world knows about Refugee-Politician-Khalistani nexus, Canadians will get aware in years to come, especially when it starts to hurt their personal finances via bad economic choices by their politicians.
Canadian goverment is a loser of this episode as Indians will not back away.
In the days of social media, can things remain hidden for long?
Why do the same media houses repeat the same lines, month on month, year on year… same Washington posts, New York Times who have been India baters for ages are still questioning India, trying to drown out criticism for Canadian socialist PM?
Not my problem, let Indian government handle it.
So whats my problem?
With only growing country in global economic gloom, Indians will be a target in future in different ways. My problem is perception people will carry about a normal Indian.
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What is incomprehensible to most people, it seems, is pushback by Indian government to Canadian accusations and can India sustain this revolt.
Answer is an emphatic Yes! With full public, opposition and media support, just look at flabbergasted western commentators on X who have no clue why so many people are reacting on their timeline (not even 0.5% of Indians are on X/ twitter).
Indian public having suffered a millenium under occupation is finally feeling free in last 70 years. Being free also means creating our own nuclear weapons, fighting wars with neighbors and winning all but one of them. But biggest of all were constant bomb blasts prior to 2014 after which the nationalist government took over. Every month prior to 2014, there used to be some news of a terrorist activity across India, people were constantly reminded by government over media to be cautious, there was constant fear of something is going to happen taking away lives. This has stopped!
This government did couple of things apart from throttling any bomb blasts:
- Economic growth: Indian industry received the right government which does not mix socialist policies with growth. Socialist policies gets them votes, growth ensures improvement in life, infrastructure investment ensured that money reaches the right places (this time without corruption at government level).
- Retaliation: government took the fight to enemy territory, attacked camps in other countries which were launch pads.
- Diplomacy: current government is one which has demonstrated its diplomatic heft by stopping the Russia Ukraine war for some hours honored by both parties to exfiltrate its citizens from war zones (not one but many).
- Covid response: Indian public stood by the leadership while there were thousands of people dying in pandemic. While global media pounced on pyres of last rights of Hindus, the same media hid their own government follies (including avoiding talking about China for whatever reasons).
Right or wrong, the people of India have been watching all this silently, even re-electing the same government again. Same people who are educated, some are capable of understanding the geo-political nuances.
Reaction by Indian government and People
All the above adds to the reaction from Indian public on social media in favour of their government. In fact, there was a silent cheer among people that finally the some government has taken a stand.
Why would Indians celebrate a death, especially its not in Indian culture to do that, and is looked down upon.
a. Arrogance of the secessionists and their sympathysers in India: the khalistani sessionists have moved to countries like Canada and done well with hard work sometimes and other means like being drug running gangs. Overall, loaded with money their next generation born in foreign land has received western education and are celebrated by their cousins in India. The influence that this has brought leads to craving by Indian kids to go abroad and settle for better life. The secessionists have bought large tracts of agricultural land in the name of their local Indian relatives and also invested vast amounts in real estate over the last few decades. This leads to close relationships which are interdependent, profit sharing and also, bump up in social status by being associated with a relative abroad
b. No actions or meek responses in past: Governments have looked the other way as the foreign investments and remittances have sustained massive fuel import bills. With overall growth and downturn in China, this situation has changed as India is the future investment and manufacturing destination with strategic geography.
c. End of Khalistan is in sight: With attention on Khalistani issue, all the stakeholders have put their eggs in Canadian lap. Canadians who are known to be friendly and dependent state of USA in rest of the world is now seen as terrorist and nazi supporting country. However the canadian government tries to ban the bloggers etc, throttle their own media, cat is out of the bag.
Indians literally have to do nothing, as Canadians get aware of their local drug and gang issues, car thefts and other crimes have one particular community as culprits. A government loses when people start to question in a democracy, trucker protests had already made people cringe at the government decisions, this will get escalated further.
Now even Indians know that Trudeau senior had saved some khalistanis from being extradited to India, Trudeau junior is just following his fathers footsteps.
Indians are creative in their criticism, often pretty good at laughing at ourselves. Now that Trudeau has offered himself as a clown, we will have a silent laugh.
