Canada's Foreign Relations Woes - Dinner Table Digest № 61
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Some of the stories below may already be common knowledge, but they are important to Canadians of all stripes, and for varying reasons.
The current diplomatic spat with India over the assassination of a Canadian citizen by the Indian state on Canadian soil goes far beyond the appalling breach of national sovereignty, striking at the heart of the question, “What does it mean to be India in the 21st Century” where the answer of the ruling BJP Party is an unflinching “Hindu!”
The second crisis concerns the unfortunate standing ovation received by a former Ukrainian Waffen-SS member in Canada’s House of Commons, in the presence of Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy. Not only is this an utter embarrassment for the Ukrainian leadership, it provides easy propaganda fodder for the Russian cause. But, as these things tend to be, the real story about Ukrainian participation in the Wehrmacht is very, very complicated.
Sections: India Behind Surrey B.C. Gurdwara Slaying / Is it India or Bharat? / The SS Officer in the Gallery / Ignorance about Ukraine in WWII
Trudeau says intelligence shows India was behind slaying of Sikh leader in Surrey, B.C. - The Globe and Mail
*I use a lot of Wikipedia links throughout this next bit. As always, Wikipedia is a starting point for further research, and should not be taken to be 100% truthful or accurate, especially when it comes to politically turbulent material like the Khalistani Independence Movement. It should be noted that former CBC reporter, Terry Milewski should not, in my estimation, anyway, be treated as a credible source.*
As the Hindu Nationalist fight against other religions heats up in India, blood regularly spilled in the homeland has come to roost once again in Canada, where many Sikh immigrants live. Before highlighting this situation, however, some background is in order:
While the fight for Khalistani Independence (an independent Sikh homeland in the historical Punjab territory that spans Pakistan and India) has always been a politically fraught issue, it has often resulted in needless deaths, on both sides. Canada’s worst terrorist attack was the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight en-route from Toronto to London, perpetrated by supporters of Khalistani independence who lived in Canada. That bombing was itself a response to Operation Blue Star, a 1984 Indian military operation ordered by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to remove militant leader and Khalistani bannerman Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale from the sacred Harmandir Sahab complex, known to westerners as The Golden Temple of Armritsar, the holiest of Sikh holy sites. Bhindranwale was killed in the operation, becoming a sort of martyr for the Khalistani cause.
Bhindranwale is important in this situation since many folks thought that Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the Surrey, B.C. man that Canadian intelligence indicates was killed by the Indian government, both looked and acted like Bhindranwale. As Hindu Nationalists agitate for an entirely Hindu state named Bharat (see my next link), they are fully aware that their advances pose threats to other Indian religious minority groups, Sikhs included. The Sikh community, both in India and abroad, is well-known for banding together to stand up to the Indian state. They most recently protested Narenda Modi’s government after he attempted to introduce comprehensive agricultural reforms that would negatively affect Sikh farmers, known to provide much of the country’s fresh food.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar, gunned down in front of his gurdwara in Surrey, B.C. this past June, then, posed a threat to the on-going Hindu Nationalist project. Khalistani activists, to my understanding anyway, rarely agitate for an entirely separate sovereign state, but instead desire greater independence and autonomy from Delhi over local decision making, particularly as it relates to religious needs. Despite this being the case, Hindu Nationalists - led by the current government in Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party - have considered Khalistani activists to be enemies of the state, folks who have nothing else in mind but the destruction of the Hindu state of India.
So when the Globe and Mail splashes the above headline about a possible hit squad sponsored by the state of India sent to Canada to eliminate Hardeep Singh Nijjar, I pay attention:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the House of Commons Monday that Canadian national-security authorities have what they consider credible intelligence that India was behind the mid-June fatal shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Sikh leader in British Columbia designated a terrorist by New Delhi and part of a separatist movement seeking an autonomous state for adherents of Sikhism.
Mr. Trudeau said he informed opposition leaders before telling Canadians that India was responsible for this assassination but he did not provide further detail, which he raised personally “in no uncertain terms” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 summit in New Delhi last week.
“Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” he said.
“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.”
Will India Change its Name to Bharat? - The Economist
Next, a look at why the Narendra Modi-led Indian government is looking to change the name of the country from ‘India’ to ‘Bharat.’
While the name Bharat is unfamiliar to most westerners, it is often a preferred way of referring to the country inside India.
The constitution begins with the phrase “India, that is Bharat”. The national anthem uses the name too. The word’s etymological roots are in Sanskrit, an ancient language from which most modern Indian tongues have emerged. Consequently, the country is referred to as Bharat in most local vernaculars.
Of course, just because the name ‘Bharat’ is commonly used within India doesn’t mean that it is the only reason that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party wants to make the change.
Like many of Modi’s cultural changes, the change in name has its roots in Hindu Nationalism.
For many BJP supporters, the term connotes a halcyon Hindu era. Scholars believe it was first used more than 2,000 years ago in reference to a tribe called Bharata that populated northern India. It features prominently in Hindu mythology: Bharata is said to be a king who conquered the subcontinent and established an eponymous empire.
According to ancient Hindu texts, this king was the progenitor of the Pandava and Kaurava clans, who became central characters in the epic “Mahabharata.” Thus, renaming the country from India - which Hindu Nationalists consider to be a colonially-imposed name - to Bharat would indelibly and inextricably link the country to Hinduism. According to an Al Jazeera report, name changes which are occurring throughout the country are an attempt to erase Mughul and Muslim contributions to the history of India.
The BJP has already renamed cities and places that were linked to the Mughal and colonial periods. Last year, for instance, the Mughal Garden at the presidential palace in New Delhi was renamed Amrit Udyan.
Critics said the new names are an attempt to erase the Mughals, who were Muslims and ruled the subcontinent for almost 300 years, from Indian history.
Narendra Modi’s BJP government is currently engaged in a long term battle, being fought on multiple fronts, to re-fashion India from a multi-religious but secular state to a religiously and culturally Hindu nation. Whether it is sending a hit squad from Delhi to Vancouver to take out a Sikh supporter of an independent Khalistan, or literally changing the name of the country to better reflect Hindu dogma, much of this war is happening outside of India’s borders.
About the SS Officer in the Gallery - Justin Ling
There are two pieces of essential reading when it comes to the Waffen-SS veteran that was appallingly given a standing ovation in Parliament this week, mud in the face of the visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, overshadowing a burgeoning foreign relations 'situation' with India. The first - and much shorter piece - is this thoughtful write-up by Justin Ling, which gives a Coles Notes context for how ethnic Ukrainians ended up serving in the Nazi Wehrmacht.
In this melee, there has been virtually no coverage of the actual history. We have not, like our friends in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, bothered to actually confront our past and our citizens’ role in it.
Instead, we threw Hunka back to Ukraine and insisted he is their problem.
Hunka isn’t the only one. Dozens of veterans of the Ukrainian 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the Galicia Division, came to North America after the war. As did soldiers from the 15th and 19th Waffen Grenadier Divisions, the Latvian Legion. As did others from Estonia, Lithuania, and elsewhere. Back then, we considered their actions and, ultimately, welcomed them here. And then we tried to forget about it.
While there are occasions where crying “Nazi!” should be the beginning and ending of the conversation, this isn’t one of them.
So, rather than just weaponizing history, let’s try to unravel the past from the present.
The second - a comprehensive read - is Anne Applebaum's book "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956," which outlines the experience of Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and Germans at the close of WWII, caught as they were between the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union under Stalin or of the Third Reich under Hitler.
As Justin Ling notes, if ever there is a time to put aside the Politics-by-Tweet, this is it. Unfortunately there are too many Tankies and Russian Stooges that are ready to jump on this unfortunate mishap - because that's what it is - and shout "See?!? Nazis in Ukraine!" at the top of their lungs, creating good press for Russia at a time when they need it the least.
Illia Ponomarenko on Ignorance about Ukraine in WWII
Journalist Illia Ponomarenko, formerly of the Kyiv Independent, comments om the Nazi in the House of Commons fiasco:
It's unbelievable how dumb and reality-defying propaganda can be. It's based on and spread via incredible ignorance, lack of understanding of basic facts of general knowledge from the secondary school curriculum, and incredibly shameless display of the Dunning-Krueger effect.
Now, the latest thing in Russian propaganda on Ukraine is this incredibly stupid "GOTCHA!" Ukraine "has a colorful Nazi history" because a 98-year-old Waffen-SS veteran, an ethnic Ukrainian who has lived in the West for the last 75 years, was mistakenly given an ovation in the Canadian parliament.
It's now being presented as if during WWII and up to this time, Ukraine has been stuffed full of no one but sworn Nazis and most various Nazi collaborators, while ethnic Russians have always been the only ones to fight and defeat Nazism.
So this somehow gives Putin the right to declare today's Ukraine "a Nazi state" and pursue the country's annihilation via the most brutal war of conquest since the very WWII.
I love this torrent of imbecilic WWII takes from geniuses who seriously believe that citizenship defines a human being's DNA, which, therefore, can be somehow targeted via ethnicity-centered biological weapons. What these beautiful minds who wouldn't find Ukraine on a map comfortably forget about is the estimated 400,000 ethnic Russians who served with Nazi Germany's various military formations between 1941 and 1945.
Ever heard of General Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army (ROA) corps (120,000-130,000 troops), part of the Wehrmacht in 1942-44?
Or the 29th Waffen-SS Division "RONA" ("The Kaminski brigade" responsible even the senior SS command)?
Or the Russland Division (8,000-10,000 troops)?
Or of some 80,000 Russian Cossacks who served Adolf Hitler, including as part of the 15th SS Cossack Corps and the 1st 55 Cossack Cavalry Division?
Or maybe, since we're talking about Waffen-SS, we should also be talking about, I don't know, the Viking Division formed of SS volunteers from north European countries -- Norway, Denmark, Belgium, The Netherlands?
Or the 13th SS-Division Handschar of Bosnian Muslims? Or the 33rd SS Division Charlemagne of some 7,000 French collaborationists?
Or a number of American Volksdeutsche that once crossed the ocean to fight for the Fuhrer in Europe?
Do those figures say those nations also deserve to be enslaved and bombed into the stone age in 2023 from the point of view of some perverted high moral ground?
No?
What those acid tongue Kremlin bootlickers on Twitter are not talking about is over 6 million Ukrainians that fought Nazi Germany as part of the Red Army.
Also, 2.5 million Ukrainians who were decorated for valor in combat. And some 250,000 ethnic Ukrainians who fought as part of Allied militaries in Europe and beyond. Also, let's also talk about up to 10 million Ukrainians, civilians and combatants, who were killed in WWII, with over 700 Ukrainian cities and 28,000 villages destroyed in hostilities.
That's not very helpful to the imbecilic all-Ukrainians-were-all-Nazis narrative, is it?
And it's not a fucking rocket science.
It's the purposeful ignorance spread by apologists of Russia's obsession with territorial grabs and its chauvinistic sense of impunity "because Nazis from 80 years ago."
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