Lines were drawn, arsenals repleted, and verbal missiles boomed across the oceans. A traffic jam was reported on X. Moralising Western commentators crashed loudly into Indians afflicted by stubborn memories. After all, history was replete with cases of Canadian plumbers violating the rights of Indian plumbers, even bombing an aeroplane. But Trudeau cared only about the fate of Nijjar Plumbing & Heating Ltd. Maybe he owned stocks.
More than a week later, Trudeau has still not provided evidence, only bluffed and puffed with a drip of leaks. Bad plumbing? Everyone wants India to ‘cooperate’, but the question is, on what? It seems like they want a confession, not cooperation. Strong words are getting thrown around (no ‘special exemption’, ‘transnational repression’), putting the bigger geopolitical plumbing project at risk. Guess who’s enjoying the drama – the PC brigade. The Pakistan-China corridor is working well.
Young Trudeau has managed to rile up the powerful union of Western plumbers – an attack on one is an attack on all. The Economist, a union-friendly paper filled with advice, was especially angered by the disturbance in the ‘friendly and orderly West’ where plumbers are allowed complete freedom to incite, fund, commit arson, extort, and run a ‘killer’ delivery service all the way into Punjab. India had no business to upset the balance — that is if it did.
And it had no right to stray beyond its hood. ‘If India ordered a murder in Canada, there must be consequences,’ the paper declared. For the record, only a chosen few are ‘legally’ allowed to take out plumbers, electricians, construction engineers, and physicians, wherever and whenever. They have special equipment to detect ‘imminent’ danger and scores of lawyers and tonnes of jurisprudence on pre-emptive strikes to make their case. Proper ‘kill lists’ are maintained, but how people get on them is a secret. But they don’t target plumbers on each other’s home turf. These are the rules.
They know that over the years, the ‘Indian Plumbers Association’ sent several requests demanding action, but the cases were always weak, evidence shaky, and confessions coerced. The Five Eyes can’t be expected to waste precious intelligence resources on dodgy claims. Besides, preaching secessionism in some faraway land is permissible under their law. Hey, Trudeau doesn’t even mind inviting convicts to dinner – remember his 2018 trip to New Delhi.Long and short: anyone and everyone is welcome to do business – old Nazi plumbers, Bangladeshi army plumbers, gun-running plumbers, extortionist plumbers and avengers of all kinds. Ethnicity doesn’t matter. You can be Tamil or Sikh or Muslim. As long as you can name a cause and ask for asylum, even with a fake passport. Canadians are enormously good-natured and willing to accommodate. They will put you on a no-fly list, but it won’t matter. The government is so woke, it sleeps at the wheel, and lets you indulge your wildest fantasies.You can organise armed training camps like Nijjar did and keep your day job. Take out a gory, 5-km-long procession celebrating the assassins of an Indian prime minister, and no one cares. Hail Air India bombers who killed hundreds of your countrymen and women and still be considered cool, especially if your headgear is stylish. Trudeau depends on one such leader for political survival.
If you get to Canada, you are close to the American plumbing community next door – they can teach you tricks. San Francisco saw action against the Indian consulate in March, and the mission was so well-executed that no one has been caught even after six months and plenty of CCTV footage. Uncle Sam can be sanguine, too. The vilest lawyer-plumber apparently holds both American and Canadian passports, and regularly calls for violence and secession in India but never gets into trouble.
Then there’s vote bank politics. Yes, highly evolved democracies suffer the same compulsions as their less-evolved friends. Whoever puts more into party coffers and speaks with the loudest voice gets heard. No one has time to decipher complex diasporas – so much easier to listen to the aggressive fringe that claims to speak for the entire community. But voices subdued are voices denied.
Or maybe the all-seeing, all-knowing intelligence apparatus does understand but is content to let things be. Who knows when you might want to leverage a plumber?
