Painting displayed in Brampton parade
A painting depicting the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appeared at a display in Brampton, Canada, during Nagar Kirtan – an annual Sikh religious procession.
The city of Brampton, Ontario, is home to a large Sikh community estimated at approximately 25%.On 31 October 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for Operation Blue Star, which she had ordered in June of that year.The Indian Army conducted Operation Blue Star between 1 and 10 June 1984, at the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar – one of the holiest sites in Sikhism – to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other pro-Khalistan extremists from the building.Read also | Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale: Saint or terrorist?During the early 1980s, Bhindranwale led a violent separatist movement calling for the creation of a sovereign Sikh state in Khalistan in Punjab, the only Sikh-majority state in India.He was killed during the operation on June 6, 1984.In recent years, paintings depicting or glorifying the assassination of Indira Gandhi have repeatedly appeared in Brampton and other Canadian cities.Responding to a similar offer in 2023, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said: “I think there’s a bigger issue. Frankly, we’re at a loss to understand why anyone would do that, other than the requirements of vote bank politics. I think there’s a larger underlying issue around the space given to separatists and extremists and people who advocate violence. I think it’s not good for relations, and it’s not good for Canada.”Canada is home to a large Sikh population – approximately 2.1% as of 2021 – many of whom are of Indian origin.
