A tweet by Brian Lilley, a political columnist for the Toronto Sun, drawn a sharp criticism from Sikh community in Canada & worldwide. Brian tweeted about NDP leader Jagmeet Singh‘s turban after the parliamentary committee gathered to hear testimony from Loblaws CEO Galen Weston about soaring food inflation and insecurity in Canada. Jameet Singh was also present in the committee. Brain after the meeting, took it to the twitter to press Singh, who is Sikh, about the colour of his yellow turban. He wrote in his tweet, now deleted –
“Jagmeet looks like he wore his no Name turban today just to grill Galen Weston at committee”, Lilley wrote, referencing Loblaws’ iconic yellow generic brand. “I know he changes the colours for special days or occasion [sic] but didn’t expect to see. No Name yellow today. Is it on purpose or a coincidence?”
After this tweet, twitter gets inundated with messages calling it a ‘racist message’ & draws criticism from Sikh community residing in Canada. They called it "insensitive", "inappropriate" and “hurtful”. Quite a few people responded to the tweet and told the columnist to delete it and apologize to Singh.
Sikhs face constant hate crimes & racist comments outside India. In Jan 2023, prominent Indian-American Sikh attorney, Harmeet Dhillon was reportedly attacked by her fellow Republican Party leaders over her religion in US.
According to data released by Statistics Canada from the census data of 2021, there are over 7.71 lakh Sikhs in Canada.Of these, over 2.36 lakh (30 per cent) are Canadian citizens by birth, over 4.15 lakh are immigrants (permanent residents) and over 1.19 lakh are non-permanent residents.Between 2006 and 2016, the number of Punjabi-speaking citizens in Canada grew from 3.68 lakh to 5.02 lakh, a growth of 36.5 per cent.Punjabi has for years been the third-most spoken language in Canada, after English and French.
Last year, the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba,Canada passed the Turban Day Act, stating that April 13 will be celebrated as Turban Day across the province every year to spread awareness against racism that Sikhs face in the country due to their articles of faith.
