Sikh leader critical of federal terror report says his Sikh Liberation Front — and its AK-47 logo — don’t promote violence
Not everyone in the Sikh community sees the SLF and its branding as innocuous
Moninder Singh has been outspoken in his criticism of a controversial recent federal terrorism report: despite its reference to alleged Sikh extremism, he says he’s aware of no one in Canada who espouses using violence to win Punjab’s independence from India.
And that, he argues, includes people associated with a provocatively named group he helped found two years ago — the Sikh Liberation Front.
The organization’s logo features three images of AK-47 assault rifles, and Singh’s SLF-linked Instagram account includes a number of tributes to and quotes from militants who fought the Indian government in the 1980s and 1990s. Those include one of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassins and a suicide bomber who killed a notorious chief minister of Punjab state, as well as 17 people around him.
“To those who scream ‘peace … peace,’ I want to ask, where and how will this peace come? Khalsa jee, peace will come from the bullet leaving the barrel of the gun,” reads a quote from 1980s militant Jugraj Singh Toofan that Singh posted last year.
Singh has been at the forefront of opposition to the Public Safety Canada terrorism report, which for the first time last December suggested “Sikh (Khalistani) extremism” was a threat. He and other Sikh leaders say there’s no evidence of extremist activity, and that the document unfairly smeared the whole community. As president of a gurdwara — a Sikh temple — in Surrey, B.C., Singh had vowed to bar Liberal politicians from speaking at the city’s Khalsa Day parade Saturday, touted as the largest outside India. The government eventually agreed to remove the report’s references to Sikhs and Khalistanis — those advocating for a Sikh homeland in Punjab state.
The Sikh Liberation Front logo.
In an interview with the National Post, Singh said the SLF’s use of Kalashnikov imagery was not meant as a call to arms, merely as an emblem of resistance. Some national flags, including Mozambique’s, include firearms, he said.
“It’s always been seen as a symbol of rebellion,” he said.
“Anything I’ve ever done in this country, anywhere in the world has always been pushing the idea of diplomacy, resolution,” said Signh. “But at the same time, we see the right of our people to defend themselves when needed in Punjab. It has nothing to do with Canada.”
Not everyone in the Sikh community, though, sees the SLF and its branding as innocuous.
“AK-47s aren’t symbols of peace, they’re devastating weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists,” said Ujjal Dosanjh, a former federal cabinet minister and steadfast opponent of the Khalistani movement. “If … you’re a Khalistani and you want to dismember India, AK-47s aren’t symbols of peace.”
Dosanjh said he’s seen rap videos posted by Sikh Canadians in B.C. “waving around AK-47s” and vowing to bring about a Khalistani homeland. Meanwhile, he found that on a recent visit to Punjab itself most Sikh Indians he met thought the movement was a “joke.”
The High Commission of India in Ottawa did not respond to a request for comment on the SLF. Asked about the group, Public Safety Canada said it does not comment on “specific threats or security operational matters.”
On Instagram, Singh says the SLF was set up in 2017 with activists from the U.S. and U.K. as a group that “overtly supports the establishment of Khalistan by any means necessary within the spectrum of Gur-sidhant (the Guru’s teaching).”
Moninder Singh, a member of the B.C. Sikh Gurdwara Council, is pictured outside of the temple in Surrey, British Columbia on April 8, 2015.
Its logo includes words from Sikh scripture that mean “brave is the one who fights for the faith, willing to be cut to pieces but never abandoning the arena.”
Singh said neither he nor the SLF support the use of force to promote the establishment of Khalistan.
But the situation in the region was different in the 1980s and 1990s, as the independence movement was met with brutal tactics by security forces, including extra-judicial killings and “disappearances,” he said.
After Sikh bodyguards killed Gandhi in 1984, Hindu rioters encouraged by officials of the ruling Congress party went on a rampage, murdering over 8,000 Sikhs. A year later, Canadian Sikh terrorists bombed Air India flight 182 — Canada’s deadliest terror attack.
Those Punjab-based militants who fought back against repression then — even when committing what many Indians viewed as acts of terrorism — reacted in a “completely valid” way, said Singh.
“The last resort, the picking up of arms, is what we’re mandated to do within the Khalsa, once you’ve gone through the process of trying everything you can,” he said. “We’re not talking about doing any of those things in the present day. But we’re still being maligned as … extremists for that.”
Singh’s Instagram account includes a tribute to Satwant Singh, one of Gandhi’s two assassins in 1984, quoting from an interview he did with his father beforehand. Asked what he would do if his gun jammed, the post says, the bodyguard responded “my arms are very long, I will strangle her to death if I must.”
Moninder Singh said condemnation of that “one single, targeted assassination” ignored what came before it. Gandhi’s killers were in part motivated by the Indian army storming the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar that year. The controversial attack on the Sikhs’ holiest site was designed to flush out militants who had taken refuge there with a considerable arsenal.
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