Let India not lose sight of Canada’s exploits

The just concluded Canadian polls results show that the Indian diaspora as a whole is increasingly gaining global recognition for its talents and capabilities. The induction of four Indo-Canadians in the Cabinet is a historic moment for Canada’s 1.2-million Indian community. No two people or nations are the same.

And yet what should interest the readers is that Canada is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and diverse society like ours. It is a strong economic powerhouse capable of rendering help to India and other developing countries. Unlike India, it has fairly cordial relations with its larger neighbour, the United States. Even without the Indian connection to the new Canadian government, the strong traits of the nation should be of obvious interest to India

A new government has taken office in Canada. The choice of this subject about a far-off land for readers in Hyderabad and other cities may seem surprising. It is more so, since the victory of Justin Trudeau and his party was recorded in this space earlier.

It is hoped that what follows would justify the choice, substantially, if not wholly. For, the Canadian polls results show that the Indian diaspora as a whole is increasingly gaining global recognition for its talents and capabilities.

It is true that Canada is on the other side of the hemisphere. It has smaller population compared to India, spread over a large landmass much of which is snowbound for a part of the year. It is richer and developed compared to India.

No two people or nations are the same. And yet we make comparisons, especially with neighbours, China and Pakistan, and more especially, if it seems favourable to us. A newspaper headline last week screamed: “India is less corrupt than China.” We conveniently forget that China is ahead of India in most other things.

Or, take the current controversy over whether India is ‘tolerant’ or not. Any suggestion that India is throwing away the advantage of being a pluralist democracy, becoming a mirror image of Gen. Zia’s Pakistan makes our blood boil.

What should interest the readers is that Canada is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and diverse society like ours. It is a strong economic powerhouse capable of rendering help to India and other developing countries. Unlike India, it has fairly cordial relations with its larger neighbour, the United States, considered the most powerful nation on the globe, without being overwhelmed.

It would be interesting to note that any differences between people of the British and French origin have been well-settled. More interesting, perhaps, would be the new team that will govern Canada. A lot has already been written about Trudeau and his India links. But he has surprised everyone by including four ministers of Indian origin.

That he has assigned national defence portfolio to an ethnic Indian is most significant. In doing that, he has gone by the professional record of Harjit Singh Sajjan. A decorated veteran of three Canadian military missions in Afghanistan and one in Bosnia, Sajjan was the first Sikh to command a Canadian Army regiment. Before he spent 23 years with the Army, he was in the police force of Vancouver.

His appointment as head of the British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own) was even more symbolic because it was the same unit that was connected to the Kamagata Maru, the Indian missions against the British in 1914.

Trudeau preferred Sajjan to another Liberal MP, retired lieutenant-general Andrew Leslie. At age 45, Sajjan takes on one of the toughest jobs of the new administration. He will be responsible for winding down Canada's combat mission against the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria, withdrawing from the United States-led F-35 fighter jet programme and quashing sexual misconduct in the military. He will also sit on the new government's most powerful cabinet committees, including public safety and espionage. This makes his appointment politically significant. The other ethnic Indians, all Sikhs and second generation migrants, are Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains and Small Business and Tourism Minister Bardish Chagger.

Sohi was jailed in Bihar in the mid-1980s on suspicion of being a Maoist. Released, and sponsored by his brother, he moved to Canada, unable to speak English as a teenager. From city bus conductor, he became a city councillor in Edmonton.

Navdeep Bains is a professor. Chagger, the rookie MP is the daughter of Indian immigrants who settled in the Waterloo region in the 1970s. As the story goes, a precocious 13-year-old Ms Chagger was helping her father put up election signs – and ever since the political bug has stuck.

With Punjabis sitting on the treasury benches and in the opposition, is it any surprise that Punjabi will now be the third-most spoken language (after English and French) in the Canadian Parliament? The induction of four Indo-Canadians in the Cabinet is a historic moment for Canada’s 1.2 million Indian community, particularly Punjabis, which returned a record 19 Members of Parliament in the recently held elections resulting in the victory for the Liberals. Indo-Canadians are less than four percent of the Canadian population but have a disproportionately larger profile and social status thanks to their better education and economic affluence.

Their political rise is not instant. Herb Dhaliwal was the first Sikh to become a full cabinet minister in Canada in 1997, followed by Ujjal Dosanjh in 2004. Dhaliwal held the revenue portfolio while Dosanjh held the very important portfolio of health. Deepak Obhral, the longest-serving South Asian MP who won for the seventh term from Calgary Forest Lawn as a Conservative Party candidate, believes that no government in Canada — Conservative or Liberal — can ignore the Indian community any more. Even without the Indian angle that should be of obvious interest to us, Trudeau’s team is as diverse as no other can conceivably be. For one, nearly a half of its members are women, something no country has had at any time.

The ministers include a millionaire businessman (we can boast of quite a few), a geoscientist (in India, no way. He/she would have to retire at 60 and sit at home). There is a Paralympian (look at the niggardly treatment Indian paralympians get compared to cricket and games played by the able-bodied, even if they do well).

Three ministers are born outside Canada – two Indians and one Afghan. One is a former astronaut. At least two ministers are self-proclaimed atheists. One is in wheelchair, one is blind and one is openly gay. Ms Maryam Monsef arrived in Canada as a child refugee and was raised by a widow who fled the Taliban. She is the first Afghan-Canadian elected to Parliament. As a community organizer, she co-founded the Red Pashmina Campaign, which raised more than $1,50,000 for the education of women and girls in Afghanistan. So, there is something to give back to the place she was born.

This is pluralism and inclusiveness that a nation can be proud of. Its tremendous diversity shows how professionals take to public life, without making it their profession right from the start.