Air India Flight 182 - Background and Motivation

Background and Motivation

Most official accounts place responsibility for the attack on Sikh extremism, though many groups believe their movements have been unfairly blamed. Tensions go back before the Partition of British India in 1947, which resulted in much death, violence and hardship. The partition created Pakistan and India.

The state of Punjab was also divided. Later, the Khalistan movement arose to create another Sikh homeland in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan, harking back to the 18th century Sikh Empire. Canada's RCMP Security Service had followed the Khalistan movement since 1974, but did not consider it to be a threat until 1981. Sikh immigration to Canada began before the early 1900s, where immigrants suffered discrimination in British Columbia. During the 1970s, many of those who would become the leaders and members of the Babbar Khalsa, such as Talwinder Singh Parmar, Ajaib Singh Bagri, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Inderjit Singh Reyat, had settled in Canada. By the 1980s, the area around Vancouver had become the largest center of Sikh population outside India.

The Babbar Khalsa in its modern day form was created as a result of the violent clash between rival Nirankari and Akhand Kirtani Jatha (AKJ) sects on the festival of Vaisakhi on 13 April 1978, where thirteen Sikhs were killed. The founders of this Panthic group vowed to avenge the deaths of Sikhs. On 24 April 1980, Gurbachan Singh, the Baba (head) of the Nirankaris, was killed; responsibility was claimed by Babbar Khalsa. Talwinder Singh Parmar led the militant wing of AKJ, which became the Babbar Khalsa, to "punish" the Nirankaris who had been cleared on wrongdoing.

On 19 November 1981, Parmar was among the militants who escaped from a shootout in which two Punjab Police officers were gunned down outside the house of Amarjit Singh Nihang in Ludhiana district. This gained the Babbar Khalsa and its leader notoriety. In 1982, India issued a warrant for Parmar's arrest for six charges of murder stemming from the killing of the police officers. India notified Canada that Parmar was a wanted terrorist in 1981 and asked for his extradition in 1982, which Canada denied in July 1982.

After an Interpol alert, Parmar was arrested while attempting to enter Germany. Germany chose to handle the case locally rather than hand him over to India. Parmar went on a hunger strike to win his right to turban and vegetarian meals in the Düsseldorf jail. After India received information that Parmar had made assassination threats against Indira Gandhi, they found that Germany had decided that the evidence was weak, and he had been expelled and released to Canada on June 1984 after nearly a year in jail.

On 3–6 June 1984, the Khalistan movement was sparked into action as Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi ordered Operation Blue Star, the storming of the Golden Temple. Separatists led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (who was killed) had amassed weapons in the Sikh temple. Some independent estimates of the death toll of the operation ran as high as 1500 civilian deaths, which led to an uproar amongst Sikhs worldwide. On 31 October 1984, Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Thousands of Sikhs were killed in 1984 anti-Sikh riots guided by certain Indian National Congress members.

Shortly after Blue Star, Parmar visited auto mechanic and electrician Inderjit Singh Reyat, who lived in Duncan, British Columbia, a small community north of Victoria on Vancouver Island, to ask him to construct a bomb, though Reyat would later claim he had no idea what it would be used for. Reyat asked various people in the community about dynamite, claiming he wanted to remove tree stumps on his property. Reyat also discussed explosives with a co-worker while expressing anger at the Indian government and Indira Gandhi in particular.

Later that year, Ajaib Singh Bagri accompanied Parmar as his right hand man in the armed struggle against the Indian government. Bagri worked as a forklift driver at a sawmill near the town of Kamloops, but was also known as a powerful preacher in the Indo-Canadian community. The pair travelled across Canada to rally Sikhs to the cause of avenging the attack on the Golden Temple. Meetings were used as fundraisers for Babbar Khalsa. A former head priest in Hamilton testified that Bagri stated "the Indian Government is our enemy, the same way the Hindu society is our enemy” Bagri told the congregation "Get your weapons ready so we can take revenge against the Indian Government". Bagri called for action:

We are slaves in Punjab. Our brothers and sisters are being killed and so we have to stand up for ourselves. Nobody’s going to help us. So to make our own state we need an army, we need ammunition, we need rifles to fight with the Indian Government to make our own state, Khalistan”