Opinion: India relations are complicated; but remembering the dead is not
As we approach the 40th anniversary of Canada's worst mass-casualty event — an act of domestic terrorism — families of the victims must contend not only with their loss but also the pain of abandonment by this country. As illustrated by the Angus Reid Institute two years ago, nine out of 10 Canadians know little or nothing of the bombing of Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985, that killed all 329 people aboard, including 280 Canadians.
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This action was conceived and executed from within our borders by individuals bent on maintaining a cycle of revenge. As has been covered for decades by Postmedia's Kim Bolan and Terry Glavin, and CBC's Terry Milewski, it began with extremists in India waging war on innocents. This seemed reason enough for Canadian disinterest to set in; in the eyes of authorities, those who died when Flight 182 exploded off the coast of Ireland were not our own.
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Writing for the Ottawa Citizen in 2023, Shachi Kurl describes this event as 'a near blank page: a calamity that has morphed from open wound to an unhealed scar, and risks fading from our collective memories entirely.' Inconceivably, that blank page is increasingly filled not by the truth, but by what can only be charitably described as fantasy.
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Some members of Canada's Indian community — those who wish to carve out a theocratic homeland, Khalistan, from India — continue to perpetuate a baseless argument that the Indian government was responsible for the bombing. That theory was given consideration and duly dismissed, during the meticulous public inquiry led by retired Supreme Court Justice John Major.
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Major was clear in his conclusions, among them that the bombing could have been prevented. The Government of India had fulsomely shared its intelligence; it warned Canada to be wary of bombs in luggage and even identified the doomed flight. But Canadian officials of the day dismissed India's warnings, instead chalking it up to India wanting free security for its planes.
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There was an unmistakable whiff of condescension in those Canadian attitudes, an unwillingness to see India as a partner in global relations. That attitude seems only to have deepened; many contemporary Canadian politicians prefer to support Canadians who continue to agitate for Khalistan in defiance of the wishes of Indians living in India.
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Yet, when U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his views that Canada should become the 51st American state, Canadians made their feelings quite clear. We are a sovereign nation, our borders are inviolate and our affairs are not to be interfered with by outsiders.
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