The Curse of Khalistan: Canada’s Unfinished Reckoning
- authored by Jay Mehta
Terry Milewski exposes how five decades of institutional failure and political appeasement allowed the Khalistani movement to transmogrify from a separatist movement in a foreign land into poison coursing through Canada’s soul.
“... if we are serious about being a multicultural society… we might have to move beyond food and dance recognition and actually have a discussion about core values like the rule of law….”
This was the powerful testimony that Renee Saklikar gave on October 5, 2006, before the Air India Inquiry Commission, led by retired Supreme Court Justice John C. Major. Saklikar, a Vancouver-based lawyer, lost her aunt and uncle in the bombing of Flight AI182, Canada’s deadliest act of terrorism. All 329 lives—men, women, children, infants—aboard, including 268 Canadian citizens, were lost to a Khalistani terror plot.
When Hindu Canadians raise concerns about Khalistani extremism, the typical response, especially from white Canadians, is to be dismissive of the issue. “It’s a problem with multiculturalism,” they say, or that “Foreign conflicts shouldn’t be brought into Canada.” Terry Milewski’s Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project (HarperCollins India, 2021) is required reading for such individuals.
It lays bare the uncomfortable truth: In its current avatar, Khalistani extremism—from the radicalization of youth in select large gurdwaras occupied by Khalistani leaders, particularly in British Columbia and Ontario, to the bombing of AI182—is a Canadian problem. It shows how Canada’s institutions—through incompetence, negligence, and appeasement—have allowed extremism to flourish while failing to uphold the rule of law that was supposed to protect all Canadians. Multicultural or not, a society that fails to uphold the rule of law is bound to devolve into chaos.
Blood for Blood is a wake-up call for Canada. This meticulously researched and powerfully written exposé documents the rise, evolution, and international entrenchment of the Khalistani movement. This violent separatist campaign has claimed thousands of lives till date and continues to endanger the social fabric of not just Canada but other countries such as the US, the UK, and Australia where it has made its presence felt.
Alongside Kim Bolan’s Loss of Faith: How Air India Bombers Got Away With Murder (McClelland & Stewart, 2005), which we discussed in one of our earlier posts, Milewski’s book offers a complete picture of how Canada’s institutional complicity powered Khalistani extremism. While Bolan’s book dissects the legal and investigative collapse around the Air India bombing, Blood for Blood zooms out to show the global architecture of Khalistani extremism. Bolan exposes the state’s failure to deliver justice; Milewski shows how, even after the bloodshed, the movement has evolved, thrived, and has been mainstreamed under identity politics.
Milewski peels back the layers of the Khalistan movement that have soaked itself in blood for over five decades. Its present-day epicentre? Canada. What began as a violent separatist movement in India’s Punjab has now found sanctuary in Canadian cities, mainly Brampton and Surrey.
Kanishka Bombing: Foundation Stone of the Sanctuary
This “sanctuary” didn’t build itself. It was cemented with institutional negligence, political cowardice, and financial loopholes. The section on the Kanishka bombing is a gut punch. Despite clear, timely warnings—including precise intelligence from insiders—and only one logical flight to target, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) stood down. The result: 329 dead.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s ensuing investigation was a textbook example of institutional rot. Evidence was destroyed, and witnesses were intimidated, silenced, or flat-out ignored. Judge Ian Bruce Josephson’s courtroom rulings veered from baffling to outrageous, as he dismissed credible testimonies and let the accused off the hook. Canada didn’t just fail the victims; it abandoned justice altogether.
Milewski also highlights the jaw-dropping incompetence of Canadian policing in dealing with Khalistani violence against moderates. The assailant who attacked Ujjal Dosanjh, at that time a young lawyer who went on to become premier of British Columbia and a Member of Parliament, was let off due to a rookie error—only to later attempt to assassinate an Indian cabinet minister. In the case of journalist Balraj Deol’s near-fatal beating, police interrogated the victim—not the attackers—because of his ties to the Indian consulate. Deol was treated as the problem. The criminals, as usual, slipped away.
The rot extended to financial institutions as well. There were several cases of federal funds earmarked for ‘multiculturalism’ being misused, of the state being defrauded through sham non-profits that enjoyed ‘charity’ status, and of the state-funded defence team being swindled.
Damning Revelations on Political Appeasement
The most eye-opening aspect of Blood for Blood is its unflinching portrayal of political pandering. Milewski calls out the moral bankruptcy of Canadian politicians—those who, in their scramble for ethnic votes, legitimized terror apologists by participating in rallies that glorified and venerated suicide bombers, terror masterminds, and assassins.
In a rare display of biting wit, Milewski describes how a Member of Parliament, flabbergasted over the veneration of the likes of Talwinder Singh Parmer, the mastermind of the AI182 bombing, at a parade he attended, quickly “unflabbergasted” himself after consulting with party headquarters. Real enlightenment in Canada often begins at party headquarters, eh?
Page 83 delivers the book’s most haunting line: “The curse of Khalistan doesn’t have a favourite party. It dooms them all.” This was evident even during the 2025 federal election when every major party indulged in Khalistani appeasement. In doing so, they betrayed not only the victims of terrorism but also the foundational principles of justice, secularism, and peace.
A Call to Conscience
This book is not polite. It does not tiptoe because the time for caution has passed.
As Hindu temples are vandalized, as moderate Sikhs and Hindus face threats, as journalists like Milewski and Bolan live under heavy security for exposing Khalistani extremism, our leaders look away. Some even pose with extremists. Canadians deserve better.
Canadians deserve the truth. And Milewski delivers it without mincing words.
Conclusion
Blood for Blood is a searing indictment of Canada—a moral reckoning that should rattle every Canadian conscience. It is a blistering critique of how a free, democratic society allowed extremism to grow in plain sight. It challenges the reader to reject complicity, to confront uncomfortable truths, and to demand change. We owe it to the victims of the Kanishka bombing. We owe it to the communities terrorized by extremism. And we owe it to future generations who deserve an extremism-free and safe Canada.
Read this book. Share it. Talk about it. Write about it. Demand better. Not someday. Today.
(- Jay Mehta is Vice President of CoHNA, Canada)
Selected Excerpts from Blood for Blood
Canadian Police’s Inverse Priority After Attack on Balraj Deol
“Officers came to grill Deol — as if he were a suspect in the Air India bombing — on the grounds that he was friendly with the Indian consulate, and because Sikh militants were claiming that the Indian government blew up its own plane. The police seemed to think that Deol was punished in a reprisal for the bombing, and that catching the thugs who nearly killed him was not a priority.”
(Page 39)
Canadian Taxpayers Paying to Kill Indians
“Posted to New Delhi in the early 1980s, Canada’s high commissioner, Bill Warden, was repeatedly summoned to be scolded for Canada’s nonchalant attitude to the violence – first by Indira Gandhi’s government and then, after her death, by Rajiv Gandhi’s.
Warden’s position was especially painful because he thought the Indians were entirely correct. He reported in his memoirs that two months before she was assassinated, Indira Gandhi’s last letter to a Canadian official was to then prime minister John Turner, complaining ‘in explicit terms’ that Sikh groups in Canada were financing violence against India while receiving ‘multiculturalism’ funds from the government in Ottawa. Indirectly, in other words, Canadian taxpayers were paying to kill Indians.
(Page 40)
Khalistanis Never Ask for Pakistan’s Punjab
“So, we cannot say the map-makers were not bold — at least, on the eastern side of the Pakistani border. When we look to the west, though, that boldness suddenly and entirely evaporates.
The map makes clear that the western half of historic Punjab, which is now in Pakistan, would stay in Pakistan. In fact, the proposed Khalistan reaches not one inch past the border decreed by the British in 1947. Who gave Cyril Radcliffe a veto on where Khalistan should go? Answer: the Khalistanis did. They demand nothing of Pakistani Punjab — not even Lahore, the erstwhile capital of Ranjit Singh’s Sikh Empire. But forget the Sikh Empire; this map of Khalistan does not even include the holy ground of Nankana Sahib, the very birthplace of the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak. His resting place at Kartarpur, just 4.7 kilometres from the border, is also excluded from the Khalistan map.
All of these places are plainly fundamental to the history and culture of the Sikhs, and an enormous effort has gone into maintaining access to them for Indian Sikh pilgrims via the so- called Kartarpur Corridor. But the Khalistanis don’t even ask for them.
So, they want Delhi, but not Lahore? It is as though Palestinians gave up on Jerusalem without a murmur of dissent. Yet even the most fervent Khalistanis seem to accept this amputated version of their new nation.”
(Page 47)
Politicians Think Majority Sikhs are Khalistanis
“…Trudeau’s top aide, Gerald Butts, scoffed at the affair. Butts told me, “I suppose you’re going to do a story about how the Sikhs are taking over the Liberal Party.
Actually, the story was about Sikhs quitting the Liberal Party. But the remark provided a glimpse of the mindset that the separatists had propagated – the notion that ‘real’ Sikhs were separatists and that it was anti-Sikh to be anti-separatist. Evidently, Butts thought the minority of Sikhs who stood with the WSO were ‘the Sikhs’, while those walking out of the party were not really Sikhs.”
(Page 71)
Counter to the ‘No Convictions’ Conspiracy Theories by Khalistanis
“Parmar’s bomb-maker, Inderjit Reyat, was convicted first for the explosion of a suitcase bomb at Narita airport in Japan, then for the one aboard Flight 182, and finally for perjury. Reyat also confirmed that Parmar ordered both bombs.”
(Page 75)
Reyat Scamming Canadian Taxpayers Who Were Funding His Defence
“Reyat calculated that he should hunker down, do his time, hold his tongue and milk the taxpayer – who would soon be on the hook for his massive legal bills. As his sentence for the Narita bomb drew to a close, he was added to the trial of Malik and Bagri, accused with them of mass murder in the Air India case. It would be a huge trial and the state would provide a team of defence lawyers. Opportunity beckoned to skim some money off the top.
Reyat reasoned that his legal defence could be a gravy train, and he suggested to his lawyer, David Martin, that his children could work on the defence team and make $15,000 per month. Martin allowed that $10,000 might be possible. Reyat’s two older children were duly hired and submitted inflated accounts for time not spent and work not done…”
(Page 135)
Police Losing the Trust of Witnesses
“So nobody saw the gunman who crept into the garage as Hayer lifted himself from his car to his wheelchair. This time, he did not survive. Five years later, as the Air India trial finally got going without him, Hayer’s daughter, Rupinder, observed that it was easy to see why there was a shortage of witnesses: “You have to show the public, if they were to come forward, their safety won’t be jeopardized. My father wasn’t afraid to die. But not everybody’s like that. You have to show the people they can trust the police. And that hasn’t been done. So why should people come forward?”” (Page 152)
Our Justice System Is Not Made For Truth
Ms D herself, though, lives with her regrets under an assumed identity in witness protection. She kept in touch with her friend, Kim Bolan of the Vancouver Sun, and gave her a grim quote for her book. Would she advise a witness in her shoes to take the risk and help the police? No, she told Bolan. “If they still had their family, if they still had their life, I would never say to them to do it, never. Our justice system is not made for truth.””
(Page 172)