Khalistani extremists target Hindu temples in Canada, under cover of “political” speech

Brampton, ON, and Surrey, BC, April 6, 2026: The Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) strongly condemns the targeted protests carried out by Canada-Based Khalistani Extremists (CBKE) outside Hindu temples in Brampton, ON, and Surrey, BC, on Sunday. The protests took place during Hanuman Jayanti celebrations over the weekend when large numbers of Hindu devotees had gathered at temples across Canada. Coming on Easter weekend and during Passover, the disruption extended beyond the Hindu community, unsettling neighbourhoods where families of multiple faiths were observing sacred occasions.

CoHNA representatives were present at both the Triveni Mandir in Brampton and the Lakshmi Narayan Mandir in Surrey, where local law enforcement took proactive steps to prevent the kind of escalation we witnessed during the Diwali celebrations on November 3, 2024.

In Brampton, Peel Regional Police enforced the city’s Protecting Places of Worship from Nuisance Demonstrations By-law 173-2024, maintaining distance between the protesters and the temple grounds. In Surrey, a similar buffer zone was established through an injunction, obtained by the Lakshmi Narayan temple, from the Supreme Court of British Columbia—even as provincial legislation in the form of Bill 13-2026, Safe Access to Places of Public Worship Act, is currently being advanced. 

“These specific legal mechanisms were critical in preventing direct confrontation and ensuring the safety of devotees”, said CoHNA Canada president Rishabh Sarswat. “However, they do not resolve the core issue, which is, the deliberate targeting of Hindu places of worship.” 

Despite the buffer zones, devotees seeking solace at a temple had to navigate past graphic displays of a woman being killed! Children had to hear loud, abusive slogans, simply to connect with their roots. Indeed, while Sunday’s events were described as “orderly” due to effective police management, CoHNA cautions against equating crowd control with genuine public safety. 

“While Khalistani provocateurs engage in the worst kind of sloganeering, the burden falls on the worshippers to keep the peace—they are advised to avoid contact, adjust their movements, and navigate around a conflict they did not invite,” observed Sarswat. Public safety cannot be reduced to crowd management. CoHNA is not calling for bans on symbols or speech but we ask authorities to account for context, intent, and balance the right to access a place of worship without intimidation.” 

The CBKE have sought to justify these protests by claiming opposition to Indian state activity at temples rather than to Hindus themselves. CoHNA rejects this framing entirely. Hindu temples are autonomous institutions with the same right as any other Canadian religious body to invite guests and host activities of their choosing—including consular services for elderly Indian-origin Canadians seeking pensions and life certificates. Who a temple chooses to host is not a decision that belongs to the CBKE.

Beyond its broader pattern of provocation and intimidation at Hindu temples, the CBKE’s targeting of Brampton’s Triveni Mandir stands out as a particularly stark illustration of how they treat any expression of Hindu identity as a legitimate site for political confrontation. This temple, like several others in the Greater Toronto Area, was founded and continues to be administered by the Caribbean Hindu community—a fact that underscores the hollowness of the CBKE’s attempts to frame such institutions as extensions of the Indian state. 

This flawed narrative has also been rejected by Hindu community leaders. “I challenge… (those) who contend that these mandirs are sites of transnational repression to prove to me that any of these mandirs are involved in any nefarious activities,” said Shawn Binda, a leading voice for Canadian Hindus, whose family immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago, wrote on X. Binda, who is also a member of CoHNA’s Advisory Council, cautioned that while the CBKE may be a fringe element, others have begun to uncritically echo their accusations, simply for want of adequate pushback. 

The impulse to police Hindu expression, however, extends well beyond the CBKE. In 2023, Hindu students at OCAD University were pressured to drop the term “Rath Yatra” for a sacred religious procession on the grounds that the name itself might cause offence. In 2022, when MP Chandra Arya hoisted a saffron flag on Parliament Hill to mark Hindu Heritage Month, hostile non-Hindu voices demanded the government denounce it as a symbol of hate. 

In each case, the pattern is the same: outside actors, some with demonstrable hostility to Hinduism, positioning themselves as arbiters of what Hindu expression is acceptable in Canada. This in itself constitutes a form of religious intimidation—one that finds its most acute expression in the systematic harassment of a religious minority at its most sacred sites. A society committed to equal protection and freedom cannot allow the deliberate targeting of sacred spaces to become the norm.