Air India memorial / Image- RCMP

Imagine driving through downtown Vancouver on your way to work and passing by cutouts of men in orange jumpsuits, nooses around their necks, strung up on the crossbeams of a mock gallows. Or strolling around Brampton with your children in tow only to come across cutouts of little girls rigged in suicide vests; then the cutout of a man with a target on his forehead; and then that of an elderly woman being shot dead. 

You notice the large yellow flags all around bearing the word “Khalistan”, and perhaps you even catch a passing reference to India. You are annoyed or maybe even livid that what seems like yet another foreign conflict has been transposed onto your tranquil shores.

But it is not that Canada’s tranquillity has only now been newly disturbed. No, it was quite literally blown to smithereens four decades ago when Air India Flight 182 was bombed. And because this country never fully reckoned with what that attack revealed—about a violent, extremist ideology that has been nurtured and nourished here—its consequences continue to be seen in grotesque displays on Canadian streets today.  

Also Read: Legacy of Air India Flight 182 demands remembrance, also vigilance: Canadian PM

Canada marks that anniversary every June 23, as the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism. Flight 182 had left Montreal the night before; it was brought down over the Irish coast by Canada-based extremists of the Babbar Khalsa, seeking to carve out a Sikh state in India.

All 329 souls on board, including 268 Canadians, perished. It remains the deadliest terror attack in Canadian history. It was also, as former Ontario premier Bob Rae wrote in his landmark 2005 report, “the result of a conspiracy conceived, planned, and executed in Canada.” 

Yet a 2025 Angus Reid Institute survey found that only one-in-five was able to identify the Air India bombing as the deadliest terror attack Canada has endured; while one-third had never heard of it. 

The usual argument for this ignorance is that because most of the victims were of Indian origin, they were never quite seen as Canadian. Indeed that impulse ran to the very top. Then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney famously phoned his counterpart in New Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi, to condole the deaths of the victims, who were overwhelmingly Canadian citizens. 

But that’s not all. Canada has also failed to see Babbar Khalsa’s bomb for what it was: the signature atrocity of Khalistani extremism on Canadian soil.

What 9/11 was to Al Qaeda, and the Munich massacre to Black September, the bombing of Air India 182 should have been to Babbar Khalsa — that singular catastrophe searing the violent edge of Khalistani extremism into Canada’s civic memory. Instead, it remained a tragedy mourned largely by Indo-Canadian families rather than a warning to the country at large.

This failure becomes clearer when held against another Canadian tragedy from the same era and the same city. The anti-feminist massacre at École Polytechnique, in Montreal, on December 6, 1989, was rightly absorbed into Canada’s national consciousness.

Not only did Parliament pass landmark gun control legislation in its aftermath, children continue to learn about it in many schools across the country; on every anniversary, there are moment-of-silence assemblies and classroom discussions; Engineering faculties read aloud the victims’ names; while the White Ribbon Campaign, born in Toronto after the massacre, remains a global movement against gender-based violence. No such reckoning followed Air India—at least not in its immediate aftermath. 

Two official reports eventually tried to correct this. Rae’s 2005 account declared plainly that Air India was a “Canadian catastrophe”. A subsequent public inquiry led by retired Justice John Major produced a comprehensive indictment of the “cascading series of errors” by the federal government, the RCMP, and CSIS that allowed the attack to occur. Still, while both reports reshaped official understanding of the bombing, they failed to imprint on the country’s civic consciousness. 

Consequently, many Canadians still view Khalistani extremism as a foreign conflict rather than recognizing it as a homegrown problem. Yet, in India today, the movement is practically dead. It is only in the diaspora that the pipe dream of Khalistan endures.

It is here, in Canada, that Khalistani activists are bullying moderate Sikhs who do not toe their line, radicalizing the younger generations, battling for control of gurdwaras, and vandalizing Hindu temples—the same as every other radical fringe that eventually turns on the community it claims to represent. Babbar Khalsa’s bomb should have taught Canadians about the Khalistani movement’s capacity for intimidation, radicalization, and violence. Four decades later, that lesson remains unlearned. 

Prime Minister Mark Carney recently asked newcomers to Canada to leave behind their animosities in the old country and uphold this country’s civic compact. This is a fair ask but a civic compact is only as strong as the society underwriting it. It is also a two-way bargain. Newcomers mustn’t import old hatreds; the rest of us must recognize the ones that were conceived, planned, and executed here.

The writer is a Montreal-based political analyst and contributing editor at the Coalition of Hindus of North America. 

 

 

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of New India Abroad.)

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