Prime Minister Justin Trudeau weighed in from India on Wednesday on a ruling earlier this week upholding a controversial ban on Sikh ceremonial daggers from being brought into Quebec’s National Assembly.
During a press conference in Delhi, India, Trudeau was asked by a reporter about the decision by the Quebec Court of Appeal on Monday to uphold the ban on kirpans as within the authority of the Quebec provincial legislature.
READ MORE: Quebec’s top court upholds kirpan ban at the national assembly
While he did not explicitly condemn the ban or the ruling upholding it, he said his past positions should make it clear what he thinks of the matter.
“Canadians know well my position on defending minority rights, defending religious minorities’ rights to wear what they choose,” he said. “This is not an issue that on perspective on should surprise anyone.”
Trudeau is in India for a state visit along with several cabinet ministers and also his wife, Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau and their three children: Xavier, 10, Ella-Grace, 9, and Hadrien, 3.
The seven-day visit includes a mix of business meetings, round tables on education, women’s rights and human rights, tours of popular Indian sites and a meeting with Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, later this week.
WATCH BELOW: Was Trudeau’s trip to India just a photo-op?
However, the trip has been overshadowed by suggestions that Trudeau and his contingent received a cool reception and are being snubbed by Indian officials over concerns about accusations that several senior Liberal ministers support Sikh nationalism.
Indian leaders suggest some fringe elements of the Sikh community in Canada would like to see an independent Sikh state called Khalistan created out of India.
Trudeau says Canada and his ministers support a “united India” but has also been careful to hedge his comments on the matter with the caveat that Canadians have the right to hold and express a wide range of views.
WATCH ABOVE: Trudeau reiterates denial of Sikh separatists in cabinet, condemns extremism
He was also asked several times by reporters about the practice in some Sikh temples over the years of putting up posters glorifying Talwinder Singh Parmar, widely recognized as the architect behind the Air India bombing in 1985.
That attack, which killed all 329 people on board — most of them Canadian — remains the worst terrorist attack in this country’s history.
A reporter asked Trudeau specifically whether it was acceptable for people to put up posters of Parmar that glorify him.
“I do not think that we should ever be glorifying mass murderers and I am happy to condemn that,” Trudeau said.
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The same question was posed to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in October 2017 during an interview on CBC’s Power & Politics and saw him come under fire as a result of his response.
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The newly-elected Singh had been asked if he thought it was appropriate for anyone to put up posters glorifying Parmar and did not denounce the practice.
Instead, he said he condemns “any violence against anyone in the world, particularly violence perpetrated against Canadians,” that “anyone held responsible needs to be denounced,” and that “there’s still a lot of questions that are unanswered” about the attack.
READ MORE: Jagmeet Singh denounces ‘anyone held responsible’ for Air India bombing
Singh also said that he was “not here to tell what a community should or shouldn’t do.”
Parmar was killed in 1992 by Indian security forces and while he was never formally tried in court for the attack, a trial of two others held as the result of a 15-year investigation into the attack saw the Crown, the defence and the presiding judge all agree that Parmar was the mastermind.
A commission of inquiry came to the same conclusion.
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