BY SARAH BERMAN | THE GUARDIAN
Justin Trudeau may have shocked the world this week when he linked “agents of India” to the murder of a Canadian citizen in British Columbia, but colleagues who worked alongside Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar before he was shot dead this summer said the link was already clear.
“We’re not surprised,” said Gurkeerat Singh, a volunteer at the Surrey temple that Nijjar led from 2019 until his death on 18 June. “The whole community knew who was behind it. We knew that Hardeep Singh Nijjar could be targeted by the Indian state for his role as a community leader advocating for human rights and for a separate Sikh state.”
Surrey, British Columbia is a sprawling suburb outside Vancouver, hemmed in by highways to the east and west, the Fraser River to the north, and the United States border to the south. Since the 1980s the area has become a landing pad for many diasporic communities.
Named after the religion’s founder, the temple sits on a deep lot behind blue and white pointed arches, with a silver dome and flagpoles rising above the front gates.
Worshippers at the gurdwara on Tuesday expressed overlapping relief, anger, hope and fear in reaction to Trudeau’s comments: relief that India’s alleged foreign interference was publicly named; anger that more wasn’t done to protect Nijjar; hope that Canada would take further action to hold perpetrators to account; and fear for personal safety as global tensions rise.
Sarah Berman, journalist 