A Diasporic Quest for Power: Jagmeet Singh, Hybrid Whiteness, and Genocide

Introduction

Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal’s 2019 memoir, Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected, details a “life-changing” “Jagmeet and Greet” event on September 6, 2017, in Brampton, Canada, when Jennifer Bush, a supporter of the Rise Canada group, confronted Singh with a barrage of Islamophobic accusations. ^[1] [2] Bush angrily asked Singh when his “sharia was going to end,” accused him of being “in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood,” and called him anti-woman and pro-terrorist. In his memoir, Singh laments that this Islamophobic occurrence is not the first time he has been branded a terrorist or a sympathizer of terrorism. He notes the racial optics of the situation: “Great, I thought, YouTube’s about to blow up with an angry white woman shouting down a turbaned, bearded politician and threatening to call the police.” Singh was right; the clip did go viral on YouTube, reaching hundreds of thousands of people. While he agonized that the incident would make him “look like the Other” and “like there’s something wrong” with him, it instead produced widespread praise. ^[3] [4] 

In the video, Singh commendably ignores Bush’s Islamophobic comments. Instead, he takes the opportunity to activate a bicultural structure of sentiment by asking the crowd, “We believe in love and courage, right? Love and courage!” Playing to two audiences, one multicultural and the other actively seeking to overthrow Islamophobia, his response deftly maneuvers his bicultural and binational identity. He explains that he chooses to disarm prejudice with love due to his dedication to the Canadian value of inclusion. When professing his own experiences with racial prejudice, Singh performs vulnerability when extending this “inclusion” to those in Canada who feel they don’t belong. ^[5] As my analysis reveals, the anecdote is emblematic of how Singh leverages his bicultural identity to reify the Canadian nation-state; all this to accelerate his unique claim to state power.

 

The Case Study: Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal 

A highly visible Canadian lawyer and politician, Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal was elected leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 2017, becoming the first person of a visible minority group—a Canadian euphemism for a nonwhite minority—to do so. Singh has also served as a member of Parliament (MP) for the riding of Burnaby South since 2019. He is widely considered a fierce contender in Canadian politics, with news articles framing him as “Justin Trudeau’s Worst Nightmare.” ^[6] Although Singh lost the race for prime minister in October 2019, he retains his position as the leader of the NDP party.

In mainstream popular culture, Singh is known for his aesthetics and his fashion-forward self-presentation. The World Sikh Organization of Canada included him in its 2012 list of honorees as the first turbaned Sikh MPP in Ontario. In 2012, the Toronto Star honored Singh as one of Toronto’s top twelve personalities to watch and a trailblazer in Ontario politics. In 2013, Toronto Life recognized him as one of the top 25 most stylish personalities in Toronto. GQ commented that “Jagmeet Singh looks the way you hope a progressive politician would.”

In a GQ feature, Singh explains that his sharply tailored suits, colorful turbans, and Instagram friendly style evolved due to stares, “If people are going to stare at me, I might as well give them something to look at.” ^[7] Daniel Block writes that, “Dressing up is an anti-discrimination tactic that dates back to Canada’s first Sikhs, many of who donned three-piece suits at the instruction of Vancouver’s Khalsa Diwan Society.” ^[8] [9]

Singh’s relationship with the Indian nation-state is rocky at best. In December 2013, he became the first Western legislator to be refused a visa to India by the Indian government. Singh was awarded “Sikh of the Year” by the Social Educational Welfare Association (SEWA), based in Punjab, India, and applied for a visa to collect the award in person. He was bestowed the title for his human rights advocacy surrounding the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide. The Indian state defended its visa denial decision, stating that those “who seek to undermine” Indian territorial sovereignty “and foment contempt to the country” are not welcome. Because of Singh’s vocal disavowal of the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide and perceived support of the Sikh separatist movement of Khalistan, the Indian government denied his visa application. ^[10]

To make my argument, I employ a mixture of media sources, including newspaper articles, YouTube videos, and Singh’s memoir and speeches to contend that Jagmeet Singh is part of an Indo-Canadian diaspora which packages, performs, and situates their bicultural and binational identities in alliance with whiteness. This article is a part of a larger project evaluating how Indian diasporic subjects have entered into and claim political power in white settler states. As a case study, I seek to understand Singh’s political rise, relationship with, and performance of his identity as a Punjabi-Sikh man. Doing so is one avenue by which to dissect the historical and contemporary forces that propel the formulation of Punjabi-Sikh identity in Canada as exceptional.

I analyze how he benefits from the homogenization of South Asian diasporic histories in Canada. As I show, Singh is a beneficiary of national histories that claim certain racialized pasts even when these do not map onto one another. Moreover, to accumulate political capital he projects himself through narratives of Punjabi-Sikh success in Canada, thereby building upon and simultaneously obscuring this community’s historical claims to whiteness. To build political capital, Singh adeptly manipulates multiculturalist logics by performing his ethno-religious identity. He collapses space and place between Canada and Punjab and temporalities between Indigenous peoples and Punjabis. I further analyze Singh’s political deployment of affect through his performance of vulnerability, gender, and love. These affective maneuvers function to strengthen the borders of the Canadian nation-state as well as its futurity as a settler nation. Key to Singh’s mobilization of political capital is his “decaste-ing” of self, which erases the complicities of caste amongst an upper-caste Indian diaspora. This decaste-ing is a new form of caste which functions to capture state power.

On the global stage, Singh mobilizes his binational identity to the benefit of the Punjabi-Sikh community. He enacts transnational solidarities between Punjab and Indigenous peoples to build his political capital as a progressive politician. I demonstrate how, in Singh’s deployment, transnational solidarities function as “assumptive solidarities” to legitimize the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide through a comparison to the genocide of Indigenous peoples by the Canadian nation-state. Singh’s assumptive solidarity temporally relegates the genocide of Indigenous peoples to the past and does not confront the idea that the settler futurity of the Canadian nation-state is predicated on the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples. He himself is invested in the continuance of this genocide, as a transformation of its conditions would initiate the end of the white settler state and his state power capture. This discussion also elucidates how decolonization in this context means a dismantling of neoliberal structures which continue to oppress and marginalize Indigenous people, compounding the impacts of settler colonialism. Overall, an interrogation of Jagmeet Singh as a case study leads me to argue that Indians within the “model” diaspora ascertain state power due to their ongoing complicities in oppressive racial ideologies, the caste system, and settler colonialism.

 

Diasporic Formations: Privilege and Power 

Singh’s ascension within the Canadian political arena is lauded as a sign of multicultural progress. In an August 2019 New York Times article, “Finding Lessons on Multiculturalism in the Experiences of Sikh Canadians,” Singh’s image is the visual representation of Canadian multiculturalism as the cover photo. ^[11] The article notes that “Sikhs are visibly embodying the Canadian Dream.” This embodiment of the Canadian Dream is deemed extraordinary considering the “initial chilly reception Sikh immigrants” received during their early migration to the country.

The article offers a lens through which to understand how the Punjabi-Sikh community is structurally complicit in Canadian nation-building. First, the article’s labeling of Canada’s state sanctioned racism as simply “chilly” undermines the violent ideologies and material acts enacted by the state toward racialized migrants. Canada’s nation building via state-sanctioned violence is not to be temporally relegated to the past; the country’s exclusionary roots continue to construct racial hierarchies which result in inequitable power differentials that benefit whiteness. Second, the Times article conflates the successes of the “model” diaspora with earlier waves of migrants, such as those working-class passengers on the Komagata Maru. The history of the contemporary, white-collar Indian diaspora is told through the stories of working-class people. In actuality, these two groups would have different, even oppositional, relations to capital, mobility, and caste. There is a homogenization of the diversity of the Punjabi-Sikh community, and by extension, the Indian diaspora. As multiculturalism’s cover boy, Singh reaps the benefits of this conflation as racial histories he is not a part of are mapped onto him.

Racial exclusion was central to the development of a white Canada, and it was predicated upon construing Asian migrants, including those of Chinese and Japanese origin, as threats to white settler stability. In 1914, the SS Komagata Maru incident directly challenged Canadian racial exclusion and sentiment, even while demonstrating South Asians’ historical aspiration to whiteness. The border incident centered around the Japanese steamship SS Komagata Maru, which chartered its course from British Hong Kong to Vancouver, Canada, and carried 324 passengers, all of whom were of Punjabi origin and of Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu faith. ^[12]

Gurdit Singh organized the journey to demand the end of British domination in India and as a calculated challenge to the prohibitory legal measures of the Continuous Journey requirement. The passengers sought to test Canadian immigration standards by demanding to live as full citizens in a British country. They argued that South Asians were “imperial citizens” who were owed the “same rights as their counterparts within the British empire.” ^[13] Gurdit Singh’s “radically anti-colonial” effort was based on the logic that South Asians and white Canadian settlers were entitled to the same rights and privileges as British imperial subjects to colonize Indigenous lands. ^[14] Therefore, the Komagata Maru incident is helpful in understanding that South Asians arriving in Canada have historically used claims to Indigeneity to justify their entitlement to the benefits of whiteness.

Despite these incidents of racial exclusion, Sikh numbers in Canada quickly increased as the Canadian government’s capitalist interests forced a liberalization of immigration regulations. In 1962, Canadian citizens and permanent residents were allowed to sponsor close relatives and nonadult children for immigration. Soon thereafter, the government sought highly skilled labor to fortify its economy. To attract such productive immigrants, they constructed a points-based system in 1967 to evaluate economic migrants. Points are allocated based on “educational attainment, occupation skills, employment prospects, and age.” Those who attained fifty points out of 100 were welcomed to enter the country, regardless of race or nationality. After the passage of the point system, the Sikh population rose, by a 650 percent increase over arrivals a decade prior, with thousands of highly educated and skilled Sikhs immigrating across the country. ^[15] This “model” diasporic wave of migrants came armed with highly sought-after skills and educational privilege to enter and succeed in Canada. The “model” diaspora is at odds with earlier waves of working-class migrants, such as those aboard the Komagata Maru. The continuance of the Canadian nation-state necessitates an influx of highly skilled labor to avoid the demographic aging crisis faced by countries such as Japan and Germany. Moreover, the labor of racialized peoples in Canada, from tar sand workers to the elite educated professional, is relied upon to complete its colonial-capitalist quest on Indigenous lands. In this way, Canada’s progressive branding of its “open borders” as an immigrant utopia hides its capitalist manipulation and exploitation of racialized peoples. ^[16]

Singh’s own family is not a product of the historical exclusion of the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries. Rather, they are a part of the “model” diasporic wave of migrants in the 1960s and 1970s, immigrating to Canada from Punjab, India, in the 1970s as economic migrants in search of greater wealth and mobility. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that although Punjabi diasporic histories in Canada inform Canadian formations of race and contemporary public perception of Sikhs, Singh’s own migratory journey is not a product of these histories. Instead, Singh’s family migrated with degrees in higher education and the beneficiaries of global capitalist norms benefiting highly skilled migrants.

As we see from Singh’s own success, the contemporary Canadian Punjabi-Sikh diaspora are no longer targets of explicit legal racial exclusion but instead formulate their identity within state-sanctified multicultural logic. Singh himself benefits from multicultural discourse and uses its narratives of racial inclusion to his advantage by publicly centering his Punjabi-Sikh identity to gain political capital. He invests himself in the continuation of multiculturalism and its racial emphasis to amass political capital and capture state power.

 

The -ISMs, Whiteness, and the Quest for Power 

Canada differs from other multicultural nations such as the U.S. and England in its official state adoption of the policy of multiculturalism, a key propaganda tool contributing to the country’s national identity. ^[17] Multiculturalism creates an “imagined community of diverse peoples.” ^[18] This “diversity” places emphasis on the visible aspects of identity, culture, language, heritage, and food, all the while obscuring critiques of race, past and contemporary racial discrimination, and hierarchy. ^[19] [20] Moreover, under multiculturalism, there is an erasure of difference within larger South Asian culture, leading to conflations between Sikhism, Hinduism, and other South Asian religions as “Indian.” ^[21] Quietly sanctioning and condoning white supremacy by rendering existing racial differences as static, multiculturalism seeks to “suppress ‘difference’ and otherness when it is too politically disruptive.” ^[22] On one hand, visible minorities in Canada are seemingly appreciated and accepted for their “difference.” On the other, these minorities become targets of violence when that same difference disrupts political and racial structures that function to maintain power differentials between themselves and the white settler majority. In this way, visible minorities are recruited to maintain power differences between themselves and the white majority. Branding Canada as a post-racial utopia is not innocuous, instead, it functions as a state instrument to “attract immigrants for labour for the growing Canadian economy” to benefit Canada’s “racial, colonial, and capitalist interests.” ^[23]

To take advantage of Canada’s multicultural logic, Singh adeptly packages his identity as legible to the white gaze by connecting his Punjabi-Sikh identity to “Canadian values.” In his memoir, Singh first identifies his racial difference by positioning his identity as one innately intertwined with Punjab as well as with Canada. In doing so, he primes his audience to collapse the two spaces with each other in relation to Singh. Within the first twenty pages, Singh outlines Punjab’s own history as “the frontier land through which ancient travelers typically made their way into the South Asian subcontinent” and positively paints the Sikh Kingdoms as based on the “Sikh principles of equality and pluralism.” ^[24] Principles of equality and pluralism are familiar to many in the West and are often interpreted as the building blocks of liberal democracies such as Canada. Therefore, introducing Sikhism this way to his presumably majority Canadian audience enables Singh to subtly link Sikh governance based on religious values with parallel Canadian political values.

In an effort to mobilize political capital, Singh also repeatedly performs his “authentic difference” for the white multicultural gaze. ^[25] One noteworthy example is Singh’s performance of Bhangra at the 2018 Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner. Singh performed Bhangra in a “celebratory” fashion, weaponizing the dance form against his political rival Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s own performance of Bhangra during a recent state visit to India. On the surface, Singh’s performance serves to bridge the divide between his Punjabi identity and the Canadian populace. However, performing for the white multicultural gaze, Singh uses Bhangra to demonstrate his cultural “authenticity” and ethnic “difference.” His performance directs value toward Singh, creating political capital for him as a visible minority under multiculturalism. The underlying argument Singh makes is that it is due to his (performed) authentic difference that he should be gifted state power.

Not only does Canada instrumentalize multiculturalism to attract migrants such as Singh to further its neoliberal interests, the government also employs it as a “settler move to innocence” to legitimate the continuance of white settler colonialism. Canada is materially built upon white settler colonialism and stolen land which necessitates historical and contemporary violence to continue its existence. In their article “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang argue that white settler colonialism “is different from other forms of colonialism in that settlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain.” ^[26] Nishant Upadhyay notes that “the white settler state is produced and maintained through past and ongoing processes of colonialism and exclusion of racial others in the state.” However, equating the ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples to the violence faced by racialized populations is itself a “settler move to innocence.” ^[27] “Settler moves to innocence” serve to “problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity” to actively enable the forgetting and suppression of action toward the decolonization of Indigenous land. ^[28] 

The settler futurity of Canada relies on multicultural logic for its longevity. Multicultural logic pushes settlers to claim equality and aspire to whiteness under the gaze of the Canadian government. One does not need to be racially white to be a settler. “White” is not used to simply describe the phenotype of settler colonizers, but instead is used to symbolize “whiteness” as a category of power. This category of power includes assumed rights to invulnerability and legal supremacy. ^[29] Tuck and Wang further argue that immigration is a “colonial pathway” and that the “refugee/immigrant/migrant is invited to be a settler in some scenarios, given the appropriate investments in whiteness.” Multicultural nations are not immigrant nations, they are white settler nations. ^[30] In their reluctance to acknowledge their complicity in white settler colonialism and their investments in whiteness, “immigrants” invested in claiming equality under multiculturalism are also complicit in white settler colonialism.

It is further crucial to note that multiculturalism exists within a neoliberal capitalist framework characterized by attacks against workers, deregulation, budget austerity, liberalization of foreign trade, and cutthroat individualism that signifies freedom. ^[31] Neoliberal hyper-individualism combines with multiculturalism to create individual experiences of racism disconnected from larger racial hierarchies and systems. Within this system, individuals are encouraged to create better and more productive versions of themselves through self-discipline and regulation.

While Gayatri Spivak’s theory of strategic essentialism posits that minority groups essentialize their identity in the interest of creating a shared political and social unity to gain recognition or rights from a larger group, I contend that an essentialization or “branding” of identity is more accurately understood in conjunction with neoliberal capitalist ideologies rather than as a critical response to the white gaze. I argue that Spivak’s assertion erases that it is not only racial minorities, but all groups, who essentialize identity to gain mobility, power, and political structures. However, as I demonstrate in this article, Indians essentialize their bicultural and binational identities in relation to whiteness in ways other groups cannot.

Important to my argument is the understanding that neoliberalism aims to decrease state intervention in the lives of individuals while encouraging individuals to become “entrepreneurs of themselves.” Individuals become projects to improve; they become brands. Dan Irving aptly describes how individuals become “CEOs of ‘Me, Inc.,’” and bear responsibility for developing their own capital through “education, self-branding, and promotion.” ^[32] Through the branding of self and personhood, individuals accumulate social, political, and economic capital. Jagmeet Singh is a prime example of an individual who possesses a visible “difference” to the white majority and constructs a brand based upon that difference to amass political capital. His brand manifests in “Jagmeet and Greet” campaign events and in the prominent centering of his Punjabi-Sikh identity. Neoliberal hyper-individualism also leads Singh to disconnect from the struggles of other oppressed communities, namely Indigenous communities, leading him to focus on the plight of the Punjabi-Sikh community. I argue that further important to this formulation of “Jagmeet Singh, Inc.” is Singh’s position as a “de-casted” Indian, his manipulation of affect to accrue power, and his status as a settler colonial on Indigenous lands.

 

“Decaste-ing” of Identity

Integral to Singh’s mobilization of political capital is his concerted effort to “decaste” his identity. Singh’s legal name of “Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal” enables him choice in branding his political persona. In his memoir, he relates facing xenophobic episodes and physical taunting during his childhood due to his outward appearance, namely his turban. Due to these traumatic bouts with racism, Singh went by Jimmy to fit in with his peers until he “embraced who he [I] was and went by Jagmeet Dhaliwal.” He chooses to use “Dhaliwal” and not “Singh” because,

in South Asian traditions, your last name represents your clan, and your clan name represents your status in society. That traditional system of hierarchy was rejected by Sikh philosophy, which teaches that every human being is equal. In its place, the name ‘Singh’ was used as a title of royalty given to uplift all people, regardless of their birth. It symbolizes the idea that all human beings, no matter who they are or where they’re from, are equally noble. If I wanted to fight for all people, I couldn’t be Jagmeet Dhaliwal anymore. ^[33] 

He argues that his choice to brand himself with “Singh” and not with his formerly used “Dhaliwal” fights for equality by disrupting traditional South Asian hierarchies. “Singh” lends him the credibility to “fight for all people” in a way “Dhaliwal” does not. With this assertion, Singh transfers progressive Sikh ideals onto his Canadian political persona. Through his name, he mobilizes political capital by collapsing the space between his Sikh heritage and Canadian political ideals. Doing so politicizes his heritage as progressive, while simultaneously erasing the role caste plays in the formulation of his identity. Singh’s “decaste-ed” identity at once conveys his dedication to legislating an equitable society and his belief that caste plays no role in the formulation and mobility of Indian diasporic subjects.

However, Singh’s contention that clan and caste play no role in Sikhism, or in his daily life, is far from true. As noted by Singh, clan conveys caste: a social category of power and violence. “Dhaliwal” signifies Singh’s clan position as a Jat Sikh. Jats are an upper-caste Sikh community and the predominant landholding community in the state of Punjab. ^[34] Since colonial times, caste has been employed as a mechanism to capture state power. Singh’s “decaste-ing” of his identity is part of a new caste formation in the “model” diaspora marked by the intentional obscuration of caste and a simultaneous claiming of Brahmanical culture. His “decaste-ed” identity fulfills caste’s ultimate purpose: the capture of state power.

Caste is a highly contested formulation, with scholars continuing to spill much ink trying to pin down the internal features of caste practices. ^[35] Nishant Upadhyay writes, “[L]ike race, caste is not an identity or an essence, but rather is inherently a political subjectivity.” ^[36] Shaista Patel adds, “Indian caste systems involve the divisions of peoples into social groups,” with those within the caste system poised to capture more state power than those falling outside its boundaries—which continue to be policed through heterosexual endogamous marriage practices and structural discriminations. In two ways, through taxation and the manufacture of knowledge, caste has functioned as a way to derive value from the state as organizing itself around the political.

Colonialism sharpened the history by which the politics of caste translated into the capture of political power. As Jeffrey Witsoe shows, colonial governance strategies helped to reshape caste identities. Caste became increasingly essential to colonial “governmentality,” ^[37] helping the colonial government to “survey, manage, and regulate the ‘population’ under its control.” ^[38] Power was structured through symbolic representation, and the colonial governmentality “authorized community as the natural oriental form.” Discourses of rights and equality were combined to collectives, making it essential that people organize along lines of religion and caste for access to resources held by the state. Within this system it was the upper castes who magnified power as the British introduced systems of land tenure to support colonial rule and facilitate governance through a class of rural elites and bureaucracy. These zamindars (landlords) were almost entirely upper caste and held complete political control of the villages where they collected revenue. ^[39]

In addition to transforming the politics of caste into a politics of power, the legacy of colonialism reconstructed Indian pasts, cultures, and traditions as Brahmin pasts, cultures, and traditions. While caste existed prior to the colonial moment, it was through and during the colonial encounter that elite Brahmins, the priestly group which holds the top spot within the caste system, manipulated Hindu culture as synonymous with Brahmin culture. In her essay “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?” Uma Chakravarti writes that British perceptions of Indian histories profoundly shaped, and continue to influence, the reconstruction of Indian histories and cultures. ^[40] To reconstruct Indian pasts, the British relied upon, and were greatly aided, by the “conservative indigenous literati” also known as the Brahmin Pandits. ^[41] Part and parcel of this reconstruction was a “glorious Hindu past” characterized by Sanskrit and a Hindu religion based upon the religious texts of the Vedas and Upanishads. ^[42] It is the newly formulated golden age of Hinduism that has become so influential in Indian thought as well as in the global imagining of Indian cultures and traditions. Brahminism became synonymous with Hinduism, erasing the syncretism and influence of other religions, especially Islam, on Hinduism. Chakravarti’s work demonstrates how Brahmins are responsible for the “invention” of contemporary Indian culture and tradition, which are both informed not by larger Indian histories but by Brahmin motivations and interests. ^[43]

Singh’s contention that his adoption of the name “Singh” erases caste is false. While it is true that Sikhism was founded on principles rooted in anti-casteism, Sikhs too have become complicit in casteism through their colonial role in land tenure systems and multicultural celebration of Brahmanical culture as Indian culture. The caste system does not exist only within Hinduism, but is also practiced in other South Asian religions, including Sikhism. Singh’s erasure of caste through decaste-ing is emblematic of diasporic complicity in the caste system. Many within the “model” diaspora believe their communities to be more “progressive” than the communities they left behind on the subcontinent. However, an analysis of Singh’s decaste-ing of self exemplifies how caste continues to influence the lives of many, both on the subcontinent and in the diaspora. Caste power is about capturing state power.

Singh’s calculated decision to choose “Singh” over “Dhaliwal,” along with his explanation for doing so, erases the historical privileges that Singh’s family accumulated on the Indian subcontinent due to his upper-caste status. Yet Singh’s family continues to benefit from the hierarchy of caste. His choice, therefore, to self-brand using the name Singh and not Dhaliwal intentionally hides his ongoing complicities in the caste system as an upper-caste subject. His decaste-ing of self enables the mobilization of political capital, which is then invested in the capture of state power as the South Asian leader of the Canadian NDP. Indians who are part of the “model” diaspora in Canada project a new form of caste by way of their “decaste-ed” identities to capture state power under the white multicultural gaze.

 

Mobilizing Affect: Vulnerability and Love

Singh’s mastery in deploying affect to control racial narratives is evident in his responses to egregious displays of racism. Affect drives humans toward “movement, thought, and extension.” ^[44] In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed theorizes that love is a “sticky emotion.” ^[45] It creates movement toward other objects, building an inherently affective bond. In this way, the affect of love maps values, ideals, or visions onto bodies. It seeks to replicate likeness of self while inherently expecting a return of love which accumulates value in the subject. Value accumulates toward the subject who is professing and spreading love. When interrogating the relationship between love, hate groups, and nationalism, Ahmed argues that love reproduces the “collective as ideal through producing a particular kind of subject whose allegiance to the ideal makes [the nation-state] an ideal in the first place.” ^[46] In his allegiance to multiculturalism and the settler futurity of the Canadian nation-state, Singh functions as this “particular kind of subject.” The title of Singh’s memoir, Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected, proves the centrality of “love” to his brand. His responses to racist acts by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Jennifer Bush (the RISE Canada heckler from the opening anecdote) further reveal Singh’s manipulation of the affect of love.

Following the circulation of photos of Trudeau’s brownface, Global News released a video titled “Jagmeet Singh delivers emotional reaction to Trudeau brownface photo.” In the video, Singh begins to cry and speaks to those who have suffered racial pain. He performs his own racial pain before going on to address those who “think about all the times in their life they were made fun of” because of who they are:

And I want to talk to those people right now…I want you to know that you might feel like giving up on Canada. You might feel like giving up on yourselves. I want you to know that you have value, you have worth and you are loved. And I don’t want you to give up on Canada and please don’t give up on yourselves…. I’m speaking to them and I want them to know that you are valued, you are loved, you have worth and please don’t let this make you give up on yourself or give up on Canada. We live in a beautiful place. ^[47]

Singh mobilizes affect to perform vulnerability and make his masculinity as well as his identity palatable for his audiences. In this video, Singh’s long beard, turban, kirpan, and body build aesthetically present him as hyper-masculine. However, gender is a social construct. Judith Butler contends that identities are constructed by repeated and reiterated performance rather than a static essence. In this way, gender identity is marked by imitation and “sustained through social performance.” ^[48] In her essay “Becoming Men in the Global Village: Young Sikhs Reenacting Bhangra Masculinities,” Anjali Gera Roy notes how Jat Sikh masculinity emphasizes characteristics of “violence, aggression, courage, emotional restraint, toughness, and risk-taking.” ^[49] As masculinity is a social construct created through performance, Roy’s analysis of Jat Sikh masculinity contextualizes Singh’s gender presentation.

The affect of crying softens Singh’s masculine appearance and narrative, thereby humanizing him. While Singh acknowledges his use of violence to combat racism, he reverses the emotional restraint typically prescribed to Jat Sikhs through his tears. Singh’s tears perform vulnerability, extending a line of connection to those who face racism due to white supremacy. To those who have caused or have not experienced racial pain, Singh’s performance demonstrates a willingness to forgive their actions and relieves them of their past guilt. His video response advances an idea of a “beautiful” Canada where all are “loved” and “valued.” Doing so simultaneously calls attention to present racism and imagines a future space where all are accepted.

Singh’s subjectivity as a racialized Other facing discrimination is rendered powerful through his mobilization of the affect of love. Singh’s message to racial Others to not “let this make you give up on yourself or give up on Canada” sanctions settler futurity. In spite of his racial pain, Singh continues to pledge allegiance to the nation-state. He deploys affect to reify multiculturalism as a configuration of the ideal of settler futurity without confronting the structural roots of inequities. To an Othered audience, Singh acts as a model for the collective to love and believe in Canadian multiculturalism and the nation-state. To a white audience, this directive functions to validate Canadian race relations and uphold white supremacy. Ultimately, the message conceals how multiculturalism ensures the settler’s desire for innocence. Singh smartly seeks to gain from the affect of love to weaponize the racism he continues to be subjected to for his own political advantage. In this way, he accumulates value in the eyes of the Canadian public.

In response to his encounter with Bush, Singh proclaims that he interprets his life as a “journey in a country where people who are as different from each other as me and Jennifer can both find our place.” ^[50] Singh’s assertion that he and Bush can equally find their place in Canadian society “makes likeness” between himself, Bush, and his audience to increase his own value. By extending love to his audience and mapping love onto Canada, Singh hopes that love is circulated back to himself to create an affective bond between himself and others. Love is a demand for reciprocity. ^[51] This affective bond enables him to gain political capital, resulting in an aggregation of state power. Therefore, it is clear that the affect of love is a sticky emotion that substantiates the Canadian multicultural regime to serve Singh’s aspirations to whiteness and state power.

Ahmed also argues that within multiculturalism, there is a failure on the part of the nation to “give back” the subject’s love, and this failure serves to increase the subject’s investment in the nation. The narrative of affective love postpones the ideal and sustains the fantasy of acceptance, whether we name that “acceptance” as integration or assimilation into Canada’s racial framework. ^[52] Such a postponement of the ideal guarantees settler futurity as forthcoming generations await the spoils of multiculturalism instead of recognizing its ongoing fallacies.

Therefore, the affect of love creates a type of hybrid whiteness in which visible minorities keep their “difference” in multicultural society while gaining access to the power of whiteness. This access is predicated upon complicity in the racial hierarchy and silencing of calls to action to dismantle its human power relations. Indeed, Singh is working within a system defined by settler colonialism and stolen land. I argue that the Canadian nation will never be able to fulfill his request for love until it dismantles the settler colonial and neoliberal structures that produce human power relations. As a representative politician, Singh himself is embroiled in upholding the Canadian nation-state to continue aggregating state power. Therein lies the contradictory obstacle to the “love” Singh so tries to cultivate within his brand and political discourse.

As part of the Punjabi-Sikh and Indo-Canadian communities, Singh is offered the opportunity to garner “love” in a way that other communities in Canada are not afforded. Not all populations are included within the reach of multicultural “diversity.” While Singh’s communities are included in diversity schemes given their investment in whiteness, populations including undocumented immigrants and Muslims often exist outside its bounds. ^[53] Islamophobia, xenophobia, neoliberalism, and settler colonialism demarcate and exclude certain racial Others while accepting a “productive” and “highly skilled” few. The Punjabi-Sikh community is lauded as a model community for conforming to the capitalist work ethic, performing their racial difference, and ignoring bodies not included in the multicultural gaze. ^[54] They become a regulating community and a tool of multiculturalism in their utility in upholding the settler futurity of the Canadian nation-state. In this way, the Punjabi-Sikh community defends Canada’s borders as a community invested in the continuance of multiculturalism.

 

Enacting Transnational Solidarities in the White Settler State 

Singh enacts transnational solidarity on behalf of the Punjabi-Sikh community by comparing the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide to the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples by the white settler state. This comparison is predicated on the collapse of temporal and spatial frames. As a concept, transnationality can be employed as both a descriptor and an analytic. In her book Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, Aihwa Ong explains that trans “denotes both moving through space or across lines, as well as changing the nature of something.” Transnationality refers to the “mobility across space and condition of cultural interconnectedness,” which has been a phenomenon enhanced by late capitalism. ^[55]

On the surface, connecting the two genocides seems laudatory, perhaps even progressive. However, the achievement of Singh’s political goals requires his investment in supporting and maintaining the white settler state that has decimated Indigenous ecologies, cultures, and lives. As I demonstrate in this section, the equivalence cited by Singh functions as an “assumptive solidarity.” ^[56] In the words of Palestinian-American scholar Dana Olwan, such solidarities assume that struggles of different groups can be equated to one another, and therefore they detract attention away from structural violence. ^[57] Olwan further argues that

This form of solidarity is comfortable; it is felt affectively but never experienced materially, situationally, or historically. While enticing, this form of solidarity does not move us closer to those whom we wish to be in alliance with, nor does it directly confront or transform the conditions under which we come to encounter one another. Assumptive solidarities violently uplift one community at the expense of another. 

I assert that Singh’s connection of the two genocides relegates the ongoing genocide against Indigenous peoples in Canada to the past and ignores calls for the decolonization of the Canadian nation-state, instead primarily functioning to increase Singh’s own political capital and elevate the causes of the Punjabi-Sikh community. Understanding Singh’s activist relationship to Khalistan, Canada, and India through the lens of transnationality and assumptive solidarities allows a discussion of how Singh is able to collapse place and space to create an Indian empire.

In the early 1980s, Khalistan began as an insurgency movement seeking self-determination for a new separate country carved from the Indian state of Punjab for Sikhs. ^[58] In 1984, two events resulted in a decade of bloodshed which has marked the region, its people, and its diasporas since: Operation Blue Star and the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide and pogroms. In June 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi strategically orchestrated an attack against the Golden Temple and 25 other succeeding gurudwaras. The stated reason for the attack on Sikh holy sites was to flush out Sikh separatist militants. ^[59] The move polarized India along religious and ideological lines. After the attack, there were mutinies by Sikh military troops and a surge in support for Khalistan. In the following months, Operation Woodrose terrorized the population, resulting in enforced disappearances, fake encounters, and extreme violence. ^[60] These attacks initiated a decade of bloodshed and cyclical violence primarily between Indian state forces and many Punjabi Sikhs; from 1984 to 1995, over 20,000 unclaimed and unidentified bodies were found. ^[61] The assassination of Gandhi on October 31, 1984, by her two Sikh bodyguards ignited the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom in New Delhi, a four-day period of mass violence resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000 Sikhs. ^[62]

Singh has long been associated with Khalistan in the Canadian and Indian global imaginations. A longtime critic of the Indian government, Singh has advocated to declare the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide as just that—a genocide. In 2013, he became the first Western legislator to be denied a visa to India by the Indian government. Due to his human rights work surrounding the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide, Singh had been awarded “Sikh of the Year” by the Social Educational Welfare Association (SEWA), based in Punjab, India. He applied for a visa to collect the award in person. The Indian state defended its decision to not issue him a visa by stating that those “who seek to undermine” Indian territorial sovereignty “and foment contempt to the country” are not welcome. ^[63]

In 2018, a host of media reports began to circulate concerning Singh’s presence and speech at an event in San Francisco which reports labeled as a “Sikh separatist rally” that “denounced India and called for an independent Sikh state.” ^[64] Singh himself defends his presence at “separatist rallies,” stating he was at the rally as a “human rights advocate,” defends his argument that India committed “genocide,” and states that he does not condone terrorism or acts of violence. In a video from the rally, Singh code-switches between Punjabi and English when speaking, and a translated version of his speech states, “Why do we talk about genocide, what happened to us? We are talking about it because, in our country where we live, that country intentionally tried to wipe us out, that in that country it was a planned process to attack the Golden Temple.” ^[65]

Figure 2. Jagmeet Singh speaking at a separatist rally

In a video created and produced by CTV News, “Jagmeet Singh says he’d attend future Sikh-separatist events,” Singh is explicitly questioned about his loyalties to Khalistan. Not once throughout the video does Singh make any indication that he would indeed attend future Sikh-separatist events, and instead he focuses on raising awareness of those who were victims of Indian state-sanctioned violence. He continually highlights the “pain and trauma” of the Sikh community. This is another example of Singh mobilizing affect without critique of the structural roots of the widening inequalities in Punjab. When questioned about whether he condemns Talwinder Singh, the architect of the Air India Flight 182 terrorist attack, Singh details how Punjabi-Sikh communities felt as if they were being painted as architects of the terror attack and lumped together with a few extremist individuals. ^[66] In this controversial interview, Singh does not take a hard stance on the validity of the Khalistani movement, instead generally speaking about his belief in the right to self-determination.

Singh’s use of the term “genocide” to describe state-sanctioned violence in Punjab is no mistake. To bring awareness of the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide to Canadians, Singh enacts “assumptive solidarities” by building a line of transnational solidarity between forced Indigenous sterilization by the Canadian nation-state and the trauma inflicted upon Punjabis by the Indian nation-state. He begins his seminar at the University of Waterloo by relating the five factors necessary to genocide as proclaimed by the United Nations. First, he defines the term: “Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole, or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” He goes on to state the five factors: “One: killing members of the group. Two: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. Three: deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Four: imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. And five: forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” ^[67] His students quickly agree that what happened in India was a genocide, with one student stating that criteria four and five remind her of the Canadian government’s sterilization of First Nations people and residential schools. Singh replies that “moving the conversation from Sikh genocide to the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada” leads to a broader discussion about the importance of recognizing genocide as genocide to “prevent it from happening again.” He goes on to lecture:

Acknowledging the harm suffered helps survivor communities on their pathway to healing, and to reconcile the harm suffered. Bringing the responsible parties to justice can also help in the healing process. But all of this plays a role in the broader goal of preventing these injustices from ever happening again. Every time we recognize a genocide, we are effectively denouncing what happened and affirming that we won’t let it happen again. ^[68]

Singh enacts “assumptive solidarity” as he places the two disparate, and wildly dissimilar, genocides on an equal playing field. He collapses temporal frames to relegate the genocide of Indigenous peoples firmly to the past while situating the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide as a matter of the present. In Singh’s calls for acknowledgement and justice for those impacted by the 1984 genocide, he erases the contemporary violence of settler colonialism to Indigenous peoples and his own role in that violence as a settler colonial. Relegating the ongoing Canadian settler colonialism to the past is inherently violent and serves to hide the contemporary justice sought by Indigenous peoples. This discussion makes clear that Singh is leveraging the genocide of Indigenous peoples to make his own community’s pain more legible in the eyes of Canadian society. In doing so, Singh enacts a Sikh proxy indigeneity to Canada, similar to claims of indigeneity made by earlier Punjabi-Sikh settlers of the SS Komagata Maru. Therefore, Singh’s “transnational solidarity” does not acknowledge the power differentials inherent in connecting the two genocides. This “assumptive solidarity” falters as it serves only the Sikh community. Importantly, the term genocide loses its meaning if its ongoing consequences are not mentioned.

A return to our earlier discussion on multiculturalism elucidates how the Punjabi-Sikh community benefits and reifies its logics. Only certain “different” bodies are deemed permissible and essential to Canada’s brand as a “diverse” nation-state. The futurity of the nation-state is threated by bodies who do not perform their countries and are instead politically dissonant. In this way, under the white multicultural gaze, there is a sharp difference between the Punjabi-Sikh and Indigenous communities. Singh’s career and the Punjabi-Sikh community benefit from its logics, enjoying visibility and raising awareness for the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples exist outside of multiculturalism to threaten its logics, serving as a reminder of ongoing genocide.

Today, those First Nations peoples existing outside the realm of multiculturalism are active in their calls for decolonization and reparations. More than a decade ago, in 2008, the Defenders of the Land, “a network of Indigenous communities and activists in land struggle across Canada, including Elders and youth, women and men, dedicated to building a fundamental movement for Indigenous rights,” established a basis of unity and a set of demands for the Canadian government. These demands include Canada “repudiating the concept of Terra Nullis and the Doctrine of Discovery,” changing its constitution to allow self-determination, and honoring all prior treaties and commitments to indigenous peoples. ^[69] Another Indigenous group, the Chiefs of Ontario, explain on their website the concept of First Nations sovereignty: “Self-determination means we freely and independently determine and exercise our own political, legal, economic, social and cultural systems without external interference. In other words, we have jurisdiction over all aspects of our livelihood.” ^[70] Moreover, the authors of Decolonization is not a Metaphor further argue that attempts to decolonize have to be accompanied by calls for redistributive justice and reparations. By not making such a call, Singh leverages his status as a persecuted minority to stabilize Canadian state power.

Although Singh professes to stand in solidarity with Indigenous peoples while advocating for the recognition of state-sanctioned violence faced by the Punjabi-Sikh community, his words are inimical to this so-called solidarity. On November 14, 2019, Mehdi Hasan sat down with Jagmeet Singh to discuss Canada as a progressive haven in a podcast episode titled “Deconstructed Live From Toronto: Is Canada Really a Progressive Paradise?” Hasan asked Singh about “Indigenous communities, First Nations, who still face so much discrimination, racism, marginalization. What is the duty of Canada’s leaders toward First Nation communities, actual concrete, demonstrable responsibilities?” To this question, Singh replied:

Well, first off, clean drinking water, that should be a basic human right. The fact that in 2019, it isn’t and the fact that with the wealth and the technology that we have that the vast number of indigenous communities that don’t have clean drinking water is a shame. Equal access to funding, education, child welfare—right now, as we speak, Minister Hussen’s government, Mr. Trudeau, is appealing a Human Rights Tribunal decision that said that indigenous kids should get equal funding. And one of the things I called on Mr. Trudeau to do just last week is drop the appeal, basic justice— ^[71]

When Hasan interrupted to interrogate how Singh defines “basic human right(s),” Singh replied that the Human Rights Tribunal stated that Indigenous children deserve equal funding and that is the starting point for justice. Singh’s response demonstrates that he is not listening to Indigenous leaders and their calls for self-determination. His lack of support is especially troubling given that Singh tokenizes the genocide of Indigenous peoples for the purpose of expediting his own community’s needs and goals.

As stated by Indigenous leaders, decolonization in this context also means dismantling neoliberal structures which continue to oppress and marginalize First Nations people, compounding the impacts of settler colonialism. Capitalism necessitates settler colonialism for the purpose of resource extraction and market creation. A “decolonization” of North American land would involve reparations of the material land owed to Indigenous peoples as well as the eradication of economic structures which perpetuate the oppression of Indigenous people as well as the descendants of enslaved peoples. ^[72]

Singh’s assumptive solidarity does not confront the fact that the settler futurity of the Canadian nation-state is predicated on the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples. He himself is invested in the continuance of this genocide, as a transformation of its conditions would initiate the end of the white settler state. This in turn would mean that the Punjabi-Sikh community would no longer maintain its “model” status, garner recognition for the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide, or accrue state power to create a territorially unbounded Indian empire.

 

Conclusion and Discussion 

As a figure, Jagmeet Singh collapses seemingly disparate histories, temporalities, and space. He is a part of an Indian diaspora in Canada who package, perform, and situate their bicultural and binational identities in alliance with whiteness. To build political capital, Singh adeptly manipulates multiculturalist logics by performing his ethno-religious identity. His political deployment of affect within a multicultural environment functions to strengthen the borders of the Canadian nation-state as well as its futurity as a settler nation. Singh shows us how Indians in the Canadian diaspora mobilize political capital through a “decaste-ing” of self, which erases the complicities of caste amongst an upper-caste Indian diaspora. On the global stage, Singh transnationally mobilizes his binational identity to the benefit of the Punjabi-Sikh community. “Assumptive solidarities” serve to strengthen the Punjabi-Sikh community’s exceptional status under the Canadian nation-state at the expense of Indigenous lives. As discussed, under multiculturalism, the exceptional status of the Punjabi-Sikh community serves as a regulating community for the Canadian nation-state’s borders. Although Singh rightly highlights the violent nation-building tactics of the Indian nation-state during the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide, his assumptive solidarity temporally relegates the genocide of Indigenous peoples to the past while ignoring the structural oppression facing this population. An end to the settler state necessitates decolonization: a dismantling of neoliberal structures which continue to oppress and marginalize Indigenous people, compounding the impacts of settler colonialism.

Overall, an interrogation of Jagmeet Singh as a case study leads me to argue that Indians within the “model” diaspora ascertain an exceptional status and state power due to their ongoing complicities in oppressive racial ideologies, the caste system, and settler colonialism. This complicity and reification of the white settler state enables these Indians to accumulate political capital, which they then re-invest into furthering the interests of their own communities, even at the expense of others. This is how the diaspora claims power, mobility, and a unique form of authority in global politics. The complicities of Indians in the “model” Canadian diaspora propel the creation of a territorially unbounded Indian empire.

 

Endnotes

^[1] Krichel, Sarah. “Heckler Who Hurled Racist Comments at Canadian Sikh Politician Swears She’s Not Racist.” Vice, September 11, 2017.

^[2] Rise Canada is an Islamophobic organization advocating for the mass deportation of all Muslims from Canada.

^[3] Singh, Jagmeet. Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected: a Memoir (Toronto: CNIB, 2019), pp. 4–5.

^[4] Landau, Emily, and Luis Mora. “Behind the Scenes with Jagmeet Singh, the Left’s Greatest Showman.” Toronto Life, September 7, 2018.

^[5] Singh, Jagmeet. Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected: a Memoir (Toronto: CNIB, 2019), pp. 6–7.

^[6] McCullough, J.J. “Rising Star Jagmeet Singh Could Be Justin Trudeau’s Worst Nightmare.” The Washington Post, April 1, 2019.

^[7] Clement Nocos, “A Chat with Jagmeet Singh, the Incredibly Well-Dressed Rising Star in Canadian Politics,” GQ, August 9, 2017.

^[8] Daniel Block, “The Hard Questions Facing the Poster Boy of Canadian Multiculturalism,” Caravan Magazine, August 29, 2018.

^[9] Image source: Emily Landau and Luis Mora, “Behind the Scenes with Jagmeet Singh, the Left's Greatest Showman,” Toronto Life, September 7, 2018.

^[10] “Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh Denied Visa to Visit India.” The Globe and Mail, May 12, 2018, accessed May 3, 2019.

^[11] Bilefsky, Dan. “Finding Lessons on Multiculturalism in the Experiences of Sikh Canadians.” The New York Times, August 9, 2019.

^[12] The 1908 Immigration Ban prohibited the immigration of people who did not travel to Canada continuously from their country of origin, also known as the “Continuous Journey” requirement. Its 1910 amended version included a revision to the regulation that allowed the Canadian government explicit permission to exclude people based upon their race.

^[13] Nishant Upadhyay, “‘We’ll Sail Like Columbus’: Race, Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and the Making of South Asian Diasporas in Canada.” York University, 2016, p. 2.

^[14] Ibid., p. 8.

^[15] Today, the point system continues to determine the mobility of economic migrants in Canada, with sixty-seven points as the threshold for economic migration.

^[16] Block, Daniel. “The Hard Questions Facing the Poster Boy of Canadian Multiculturalism.” The Caravan, January 31, 2018.

^[17] On pages 9 and 10 of The Minor Intimacies of Race: Asian Publics in North America, Christine Kim writes, “Following the passage of the Canadian Bill of Rights (1960), Canada’s Multiculturalism Act (1988) can trace its origins to Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau, the father of current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Act seeks to “recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturalism reflects the cultural and racial diversity of Canadian society and acknowledges the freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance, and share their cultural heritage.” This invocation of cultural heritage erases the histories which create the formulation of that cultural heritage. It was originally enacted to better integrate its Quebecois population within the larger Canadian populace.

^[18] Ahmed, Sara. “Multiculturalism and the Promise of Happiness.” New Formations 63 (Winter 2007):123.

^[19] Christine Kim, The Minor Intimacies of Race: Asian Publics in North America (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2016). 10–11.

^[20] Michael Connors Jackman and Nishant Upadhyay, “Pinkwatching Israel, Whitewashing Canada: Queer (Settler) Politics and Indigenous Colonization in Canada,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 42 (2014):195–210.

^[21] Nishant Upadhyay, “‘We’ll Sail Like Columbus’: Race, Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and the Making of South Asian Diasporas in Canada.” York University, 2016, p. 2.

^[22] Ibid p. 204.

^[23] Ibid., p. 5.

^[24] Jagmeet Singh, Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected: a Memoir (Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2019), p. 14.

^[25] Bhangra is a traditional Punjabi folk dance.

^[26] Eve Tuck and Wayne K. Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” (Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1.1, 2012), p. 5.

^[27] Nishant Upadhyay, “‘We’ll Sail Like Columbus’: Race, Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and the Making of South Asian Diasporas in Canada.” York University, 2016. p. 6.

^[28] Eve Tuck and Wayne K. Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” (Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1.1, 2012), p. 3.

^[29] Eve Tuck and Wayne K. Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” (Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1.1, 2012), p. 18.

^[30] Ibid., p. 17.

^[31] “Key elements of neoliberal capitalism,” U.S. Intervention Lesson Plan. Sierra Becerra 2018.

^[32] Dan Irving, “Elusive Subjects: Notes on the Relationship between Critical Political Economy and Trans Studies.” In Anne Enke, ed., Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013), p. 157.

^[33] Jagmeet Singh, Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected: a Memoir (Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2019), p. 14.

^[34] Hartosh Singh Bal, “How the Congress Propped up Bhindranwale,” The Caravan, June 8, 2019.

^[35] Other terms used for the caste system include the Brahmanical caste system, Brahminism, and Brahmanical supremacy.

^[36] Nishant Upadhyay, “‘We’ll Sail Like Columbus’: Race, Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and the Making of South Asian Diasporas in Canada.” York University, 2016, p. 151.

^[37] Michel Foucault’s theory of “governmentality” contends that there are knowledges and techniques that guide and regulate everyday conduct by organizing and instrumentalizing the strategies that individuals use to deal with one another.

^[38] Jeffrey Witsoe, Democracy against Development: Lower-Caste Politics and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 1.

^[39] Ibid., pp. 10–11.

^[40] Uma Chakravarti. “Whatever Happened to the Vedi Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism, and a Script for the Past” In Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid. Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), p. 29.

^[41] Ibid., p. 30.

^[42] Ibid., p. 34.

^[43] Ibid., p. 78.

^[44] Gregory Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers.” In The Affect Theory Reader, edited by Gregory Seigworth and Melissa Gregg (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 1–25.

^[45] Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2015), 125.

^[46] Ibid., p. 123.

^[47] “Jagmeet Singh Delivers Emotional Reaction to Trudeau Brownface Photo.” YouTube. Global News. Accessed November 8, 2019.

^[48] Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 2015).

^[49] Anjali Gera Roy, “Becoming Men in the Global Village: Young Sikhs Reenacting Bhangra Masculinities.” In Young Sikhs in a Global World: Negotiating Traditions, Identities, and Authorities, edited by Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold, 167–90. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015.

^[50] Jagmeet Singh, Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected: a Memoir (Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2019), p. 8.

^[51] Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2015), p. 130.

^[52] Ibid. p. 131.

^[53] Angela Davis. “A vocabulary on feminist praxis: on war and radical critique.” In Robin Riley et al., Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism (London: Zed Books, 2013), p. 26.

^[54] Michael Connors Jackman and Nishant Upadhyay, “Pinkwatching Israel, Whitewashing Canada: Queer (Settler) Politics and Indigenous Colonization in Canada,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3–4 (2014): pp. 195–210.

^[55] Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 4.

^[56] “ON ASSUMPTIVE SOLIDARITIES IN COMPARATIVE SETTLER COLONIALISMS,” feral feminisms, accessed February 21, 2020.

^[57] Shaista Patel, “Complicating the Tale of ‘Two Indians’: Mapping ‘South Asian’ Complicity in White Settler Colonialism Along the Axis of Caste and Anti-Blackness.” Theory & Event 19, no. 4 (2016).

^[58] Khalistan, meaning the land of the Khalsa.

^[59] Daniel Block, “The Hard Questions Facing the Poster Boy of Canadian Multiculturalism,” The Caravan, January 31, 2018.

^[60] In international human rights law, an “enforced disappearance” occurs when one is “disappeared” by a state organization or an organization supported by the state. “Fake encounter” is a term used on the South Asian subcontinent to refer to extrajudicial executions by the police and armed forces when they encounter “suspected” terrorists or threats. These are staged to seem as though they are in the name of self-defense. These definitions are from oral histories taken from the Punjab Disappeared and Advocacy Project. These definitions are from oral histories taken from the Punjab Disappeared and Advocacy Project.

^[61] Lionel Baixas, “The Anti-Sikh Pogrom of October 31 to November 4, 1984, in New Delhi,” Sciences Po, June 9, 2009. www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/anti-sikh-pogrom-october-31-november-4-1984-new-delhi.html

^[62] A pogrom is a violent riot or massacre aimed at the persecution of an ethnic or religious group.

^[63] “Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh Denied Visa to Visit India,” The Globe and Mail, May 12, 2018, accessed May 03, 2019.

^[64] Robert Fife and Steven Chase, “Jagmeet Singh Attended 2016 Seminar with Sikh Youth Leader Who Advocated Political Violence,” The Globe and Mail, March 15, 2018.

^[65] Michael Easton, “NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh Spoke at Sikh Separatist Rally in San Francisco That ‘Extolled a Violent Extremist’ (Video),” Easton Spectator, March 14, 2018.

^[66] In “The Hard Questions Facing the Poster Boy of Canadian Multiculturalism,” Daniel Block writes how the incident of the Air India Flight 182 bombing was a transnational manifestation of the Khalistan movement. Carried out in 1985, it served as a retaliation by Khalistani separatists against the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide and is Canada’s deadliest terror attack, killing 329 people who were mostly Canadian citizens. After 9/11 it stands as the world’s second most deadly plane attack. The bomb was constructed by Babbar Khalsa International, a Sikh militant group dedicated to the creation of an independent Khalistan and headed by Canadian Sikh Talwinder Singh Parmar. Parmar continues to be controversially supported by some within the Sikh community as a “martyr.” Parmar was killed by police in Punjab in 1992 while on a visit to India.

^[67] The 2000 Nanavati Commission was carried out by a former Indian Supreme Court Justice and was an independent investigation into the genocide.

^[68] Jagmeet Singh, Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected: a Memoir (Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2019), pp. 287–290.

^[69] “Defenders of the Land: Indigenous Peoples Have Clear Demands for Real Change.” Indigenous Environmental Network. Accessed December 11, 2019.

^[70] “Understanding First Nations Sovereignty.” Chiefs of Ontario iCal. Accessed December 10, 2019.

^[71] Deconstructed, “Deconstructed Podcast: Is Canada Really a Progressive Paradise?” The Intercept, November 14, 2019.

^[72] Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2015).

 

Bibliography

Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Ahmed, Sara. “Multiculturalism and the Promise of Happiness.” New Formations 63 (winter 2007/2008): 121; ProQuest Direct Complete.

Baixas, Lionel. “The Anti-Sikh Pogrom of October 31 to November 4, 1984, in New Delhi.” Sciences Po portal, June 9, 2009. www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/anti...

Bal, Hartosh Singh. “How the Congress Propped Up Bhindranwale.” The Caravan, June 8, 2019.

Ballantyne, Tony. Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007.

Bilefsky, Dan. “Finding Lessons on Multiculturalism in the Experiences of Sikh Canadians.” The New York Times, August 9, 2019.

Block, Daniel. “The Hard Questions Facing the Poster Boy of Canadian Multiculturalism.” The Caravan, January 31, 2018.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Chakravarti, Uma. “Whatever Happened to the Vedi Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism, and a Script for the Past.” In Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

Chase, Steven, and Robert Fife. “Jagmeet Singh Attended Sikh Separatist Rally in 2015.” The Globe and Mail, March 14, 2018.

CTV News. “Singh Pokes Fun at Trudeau’s Bhangra Dance Moves during Press Gallery Dinner.” YouTube, May 27, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIcrNdPIK54&t=422s

Danius, Sara, Stefan Jonsson, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. “An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.” Boundary 2 20, no. 2 (1993): 24–50.

Deconstructed. “Deconstructed Podcast: Is Canada Really a Progressive Paradise?” The Intercept, November 14, 2019.

“Defenders of the Land: Indigenous Peoples Have Clear Demands for Real Change.” Indigenous Environmental Network. Accessed December 11, 2019.

Easton, Michael. “NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh Spoke at Sikh Separatist Rally in San Francisco That ‘Extolled a Violent Extremist’ (Video).” Easton Spectator, March 14, 2018.

Fife, Robert, and Steven Chase. “Jagmeet Singh Attended 2016 Seminar with Sikh Youth Leader Who Advocated Political Violence.” The Globe and Mail, March 15, 2018.

Irving, Dan. “Elusive Subjects: Notes on the Relationship between Critical Political Economy and Trans Studies.” Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013.

Jackman, Michael Connors, and Nishant Upadhyay. “Pinkwatching Israel, Whitewashing Canada: Queer (Settler) Politics and Indigenous Colonization in Canada.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 42, nos. 3–4 (2014): 195–210.

“Jagmeet Singh Delivers Emotional Reaction to Trudeau Brownface Photo.” YouTube. Global News. Accessed November 8, 2019.

“Jagmeet Singh Says He’d Attend Future Sikh-Separatist Events.” YouTube. Accessed December 13, 2019.

“Jagmeet Singh Set to Play Kingmaker as Justin Trudeau Fails to Get Majority in Canada: Rise of pro-Khalistani Sikh Leader May Make India Edgy.” Firstpost, October 23, 2019.

Johnston, Hugh M. “The Komagata Maru and the Ghadr Party: Past and Present Aspects of a Historic Challenge to Canada’s Exclusion of Immigrants from India.” BC Studies 178 (2013). doi.org/10.14288/bcs.v0i178.183768

“Key elements of neoliberal capitalism,” U.S. Intervention Lesson Plan. Sierra Becerra 2018.

Kim, Christine. “Multiculturalism, Minor Publics, and Racial Intimacy.” In The Minor Intimacies of Race: Asian Publics in North America. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2016.

Krichel, Sarah. “Heckler Who Hurled Racist Comments at Canadian Sikh Politician Swears She’s Not Racist.” Vice, September 11, 2017.

Landau, Emily, and Luis Mora. “Behind the Scenes with Jagmeet Singh, the Left’s Greatest Showman.” Toronto Life, September 7, 2018.

McCullough, J.J. “Rising Star Jagmeet Singh Could Be Justin Trudeau’s Worst Nightmare.” The Washington Post, April 1, 2019.

Nocos, Clement. “A Chat with Jagmeet Singh, the Incredibly Well-Dressed Rising Star in Canadian Politics.” GQ, August 9, 2017.

“ON ASSUMPTIVE SOLIDARITIES IN COMPARATIVE SETTLER COLONIALISMS.” feral feminisms. Accessed February 21, 2020.

Ong, Aihwa. Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Ong, Aihwa. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

“Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh Denied Visa to Visit India,” The Globe and Mail, May 12, 2018, accessed May 3, 2019.

Patel, Shaista. “Complicating the Tale of ‘Two Indians’: Mapping ‘South Asian’ Complicity in White Settler Colonialism Along the Axis of Caste and Anti-Blackness.” Theory & Event 19, no. 4 (2016).

Poppins, Tom Jose, K Bhattacharjee, Nirwa Mehta, et al. “Canadian Politician Jagmeet Singh under Radar of Indian Intelligence.” OpIndia, October 26, 2019.

Riley, Robin, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Judy Rohrer, Micere Mugo, Berta Joubert-Ceci, Shahnaz Khan, et al. Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism. London: Zed Books, 2013.

Roy, Anjali Gera. “Becoming Men in the Global Village: Young Sikhs Reenacting Bhangra Masculinities.” In Young Sikhs in a Global World: Negotiating Traditions, Identities, and Authorities, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015.

Seigworth, Gregory and Gregg, Melissa. “An Inventory of Shimmers.” In The Affect Theory Reader, ed.  Gregory Seigworth and Melissa Gregg. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

“Sikhism in Canada.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Accessed November 19, 2019.

Singh, Jagmeet. Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected: a Memoir. Toronto: CNIB, 2019.

Shah, Nayan Bhupendra. San Francisco’s “Chinatown”: Race and the Cultural Politics of Public Health, 1854–1952. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Smith, Andrea. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.

Tatla, Darshan Singh. The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.

Todd, Douglas. “Sikhs Air Mixed Views on NDP’s Jagmeet Singh.” Vancouver Sun, March 14, 2018.

Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1.1 (2012).

“Understanding First Nations Sovereignty.” Chiefs of Ontario iCal. Accessed March 5, 2020.

Upadhyay, Nishant. “‘We’ll Sail Like Columbus’: Race, Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and the Making of South Asian Diasporas in Canada.” York University, 2016.

Veer, Peter van der. Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1995.

Wallace, Isabel. Komagata Maru Revisited: “Hindus,” Hookworm and the Guise of Public Health Protection, 2013.

Wente, Margaret. “The Strange Loyalties of Jagmeet Singh.” The Globe and Mail, March 15, 2018.

Witsoe, Jeffrey. Democracy against Development: Lower-Caste Politics and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013