Becoming Canadian Doesn’t Mean Being Forced to Forget History

Coming to Canada means forgetting old grievances — it's a sensible-sounding claim that rolls off the tongue simply. It neatly packs away untidy issues.

And on radio talk shows and discussions, it's a claim heard once again about Indo-Canadians, and Sikhs in particular, in the aftermath of Justin Trudeau's disastrous India trip and in reaction to the election of federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, the first person of South Asian ancestry to lead a Canadian political party.

But it's a claim that never has been true. It never will be true. It never can be true. And never should be true.

Many of Canada's earliest settlers could never forget their experiences of religious intolerance, poverty, famine and class inequality. Indigenous people can never forget the injustice of colonialism. British loyalists did not forget the American revolution. Freed slaves from the U.S. could not forget their past. Canadians from Ukraine can never be asked to forget Communist Russia's domination. Jews can never be asked to give up their grievance with Nazi Germany. Canadians who came from Chile, Honduras, Sri Lanka, China, Afghanistan and so many other unfortunate histories can't forget — and shouldn't be told to.

For each history, Canada gave freedom and democracy — and in return was given loyalty and patriotism. Canada gave them what their old country couldn't.

Those strands have created Canada's core values. It's not remembering why our ancestors came here that should worry us — it's forgetting.

On Oct. 31, 1984, India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards. In retaliation, organized and armed mobs descended on Sikh neighbourhoods, particularly in Delhi, killing at least 3,000 Indian Sikhs over the next three days. For Sikhs everywhere, the violence was a deeply traumatic event.

"In 1984, Sikh Canadians were getting images of family members and friends [in India] who'd been tortured… it was a cry for help," says Amneet Singh Bali, a human rights advocate and masters in law student who has worked on a reconciliation plan to help Canadian Sikhs express their feelings about the violence. "We wanted to take that anger, which could be misplaced, and turn it into something positive."

The story of 1984 is grim. Immediately after the Indian prime minister's assassination, some members of her political party "mobilized their supporters to commit violence against Sikhs on a mass scale," says Kamal Arora, a Vancouver-based anthropologist who has researched the 1984 violence and its aftermath.

Arora's research — echoing reports by Indian government agencies and human rights groups — points to "politicians, including MPs and local political functionaries, members of the municipal corporation even the metropolitan council and local leaders" who instigated violence by "addressing and leading mobs and leading some direct violent acts themselves."

For three days after the assassination there was arson, looting and killing. "Houses belonging to Sikhs were marked. Mobs were provided with electoral lists and ration shop records so they could identify Sikh names," Arora says,

Arora says at the time of the violence about 1,000 people were arrested. Based on her research, since 1984, "Approximately six Delhi police officers and 442 perpetrators have been convicted for participating in the violence." Arora says hundreds have been jailed, with 49 sentenced to life terms. Some of those convicted were local political representatives. The court case against Sajjan Kumar, an MP from Gandhi's party at the time, continues to wend its way through Indian courts for his alleged role in inciting mobs and committing acts of violence.

Over 30 years later, there's common recognition of the nature of the violence. In 1995, the Delhi state legislature adopted a resolution that "strongly condemns the Sikh genocide." In 2013, Rajnath Singh, then president of the now-ruling BJP party and now India's home minister, and Susma Swaraj, now India's external affairs minister, helped unveil the November 1984 Sikh Genocide Memorial in Delhi. In 2014, Rajnath Singh said the "several persons" responsible in the genocide remained to be punished, lamenting, "Until these persons are punished, victims will not get relief."

In Canada, though, relief may have looked different.

"My generation became witness to the pain and horrors our parents experienced," Amneet Singh Bali says. "Once many of our parents came here they were just so thankful to be here and be in a safe place. They became very patriotic Canadians," Singh says.

But the painful events of 1984 weren't always talked about in Canadian Sikh homes, says Singh — a challenge he and now NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, his friend since his teen years, believed was unhealthy. "There was this silence and the pain and trauma wasn't being dealt with. So in the last decade or so, young Sikhs like Jagmeet and I began engaging in reconciliatory work," says Singh, who went on to become communications director for his friend's winning leadership bid.

Their work included intergenerational discussion groups and workshops about the 1984 violence. Singh says strong feelings of "rage and anger" came out in the process.

"For a very long time, the narrative was that the state had nothing to do with this, that it was communities fighting each other," Singh says. "We didn't want Hindus pointing at Sikhs or Sikhs pointing at Hindus. We didn't want that and it wasn't true — both were victims."

That shift in understanding old violence is common, says Rima Berns-McGown, a former University of Toronto lecturer whose research included extensive interviews with Canadians who immigrated from conflicts. (She is also an NDP candidate in the upcoming Ontario provincial election.)

"We know from Holocaust survivors and their kids that people don't forget," says Berns-McGown, whose research included over 200 individuals who experienced violence in eight conflict areas, including the 1984 attacks on Sikhs in India. "Of course it is hurtful and harmful. It diminished people's ability to live fully and joyfully," she says. But their experience — and she hesitates to say it — has an upside. Canadians who come from this suffering, she says, "Tend to be very sensitive to other people, not from their conflict, who have experienced things similar."

Berns-McGown says her research shows people change their interpretation of violence over time — or maybe after time in Canada. "Instead of saying, 'All group X wanted to eliminate my group,' they recognize that it wasn't all of group X, it was a particular ideological perspective or interest group. They start to separate group X from that particular perspective. They come to say that they can get along with members of group X in Canada."

Similarly, Berns-McGown says, religious interpretation undergoes a shift. The religious ideas of people from conflict areas, "Weren't the same as their grandparents' expression of their faith. It becomes very, very imbued with what they viewed as Canadian values… this sense of living well together."

Canadians are long past believing our country's story is just an asterisk on the British and French imperial story, as powerful as those strands are. Nor do we anymore believe many of those who emigrated from those countries were animated by the imperial spirit. Mostly, social history tells us, they searched for freedom and opportunity for themselves, not empire. Moreover, once here, they chaffed at the Family Compact and Chateau Clique who tried to re-establish the old country elitism.

The unravelling of the colonial conception of Canada has revealed a truer history of Canadians, with strands running deeper into the past and tracking all across the globe. In that view, Canadians are united in their desire to build a place of peace, justice, prosperity and democracy.

But when the views of history's strands are obscured, groups of Canadians get left out — not just from the story, but also from contributing to the country's values. Unity is replaced with in-groups and out-groups; those who historically matter, those who don't. It's what has happed to Sikh Canadian history in recent months. Driven by whatever motive, a renewed and singular focus on the 1985 Air India bombing by some media voices has had the effect of reducing Sikh Canadian history to a single terrible act, obscuring the far bigger history, united with all the other Canadian strands.

Some countries have great historic myths that unite them. For Canadians, our truest history is our best.