Punjabi voters demand candidates take a stand on Indian farmers’ movement

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Vinny Manes is a man on a mission. The founder of the Ottawa Punjabi Association has been driving around the city’s Nepean riding, erecting signs against the local Liberal candidate Chandra Arya.

“Nepean deserves better. Not Arya,” the sign reads.

For a group of voters in this Ottawa riding, the biggest issue is a movement taking place more than 11,000 kilometres away in a foreign country. Mr. Manes said Mr. Arya, first elected as an MP in 2015, has ignored hundreds of e-mails asking him to support the farmers’ movement in India.

In October last year, farmers in India began a movement resisting new laws by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These laws will open the doors of giant corporations to farming. A large number of protesting farmers come from the northern Indian state of Punjab and many Punjabi Canadians have family members protesting outside India’s capital.

When reports of police brutality against Indian farmers came out, the Punjabi community in Canada held solidarity demonstrations. Punjabi Canadians in Ottawa joined the diaspora in cities such as Brampton, Ont., and Surrey, B.C., in organizing protests.

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The protests by India’s farmer unions have become a major voting issue in several ridings across Canada. The fault lines within the Indian diaspora have also strained relations between India and Canada. Canadian politicians, cutting across party lines, have called out India’s use of force against peaceful protesters. Meanwhile, Indian politicians have often accused Sikh-Canadian politicians, including many in the Trudeau cabinet, of sympathizing with the “Khalistan” movement, which calls for a Sikh homeland to be carved out of Indian territory.

An Ottawa sit-in was set up outside the Indian high commission in January. Mr. Arya has not weighed in on the protests. On April 15, Mr. Arya thanked the Indian government for sending 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada. Mr. Manes said he found it odd that the MP did not take a stand on the farmers’ protest but found it fit to praise the Indian regime.

Mr. Manes said, “You don’t need your member of Parliament every day. But when you do and they don’t show up, you notice that absence.”

Mr. Arya did not respond to requests for an interview.

Mandip Kharod, a community activist based in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, has been visiting the site of an indefinite protest on Scott Road in Surrey every day since December. She said she and others like her have exchanged several angry e-mails with elected representatives who have not taken a stand on the issue.

“When candidates haven’t reacted to this issue, we have remembered that. I have already voted in early voting, and I can tell you I took this into account. The farmers’ movement was a decisive issue in how I voted this year. It’s going to be decisive for others, too,” she said.

In the riding of Surrey-Newton, where more than 60 per cent of voters are South Asian, Liberal candidate Sukh Dhaliwal, a two-time MP, is defending his turf against four other South Asian candidates. Ms. Kharod said a candidate’s identity is not enough to gain favour with South Asian voters.

“Some candidates will shake a few hands and pose for a few photographs and think that’s enough. That may have worked for the babas and bibis [elders], but not for those of us who were raised differently. We don’t want to shake your hand. It’s not enough that you look like us. We want you to show up and talk about the issues that matter to us,” said Ms. Kharod, who was raised in Surrey.

Mr. Manes said while he will be encouraging people to vote against the Liberal candidate in Nepean, he has no beef with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. “I actually want to thank Justin Trudeau. He came out right strongly at the beginning, in November last year.”

While NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was the first among the major party leaders to support the farmers’ movement, Mr. Trudeau and Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole also called for the issue to be resolved peacefully.

While the issue has been simmering for the past nine months, it is the subject of renewed interest as state elections in Punjab are scheduled for February. According to Brampton-based political strategist Jaskaran Sandhu, the opposition against individual candidates in Canada will not translate to wider anger against the Liberal Party.

“Are people going to be factoring this into their larger decision-making? I think so. And probably more than anyone else, it bodes well for the Liberals. Justin Trudeau publicly denouncing India and saying the right to peaceful protest must be protected was a big moment for the movement,” he said.

Sanjay Ruparelia, associate professor at the department of politics and public administration at Ryerson University in Toronto, said that while the Indian farmers issue may swing the result in a few ridings, foreign policy issues won’t be decisive.

“South Asian communities and other racialized communities in Canada have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic in terms of hospitalizations, mortality and impact on work. So many essential workers are from our communities. My sense is that those issues are likely to be at the forefront,” Prof. Ruparelia said.

Mr. Sandhu added that for many voters, this election is about the future of the relationship between Canada and the Indian government. “A layperson who doesn’t know the Indian community much might assume that all Indians support better relations with the Indian government. The biggest bloc [of Indo-Canadians] is Sikhs, many of whom fled persecution. There is a significant Indian Muslim community, which has been facing persecution under the current Modi regime. There’s a large Tamil community that doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the BJP [India’s ruling party],” he said.

Ms. Kharod said the election is her chance to support the movement in Punjab. “The candidates and parties need to remember that there is a whole generation of us who have grown up here with a very clear understanding of what democracy here means. And we will leverage not only our power, but our privilege.”

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