LETTER: Eby must stand up to \u2018tyrants\u2019 in New Delhi<\/p>\n
Published 7:00 am Tuesday, September 15, 2026<\/p>\n
Editor,<\/p>\n
On Friday, Sept. 11, the representatives of the BC NDP government shamelessly went to a show in Surrey featuring Anupam Kher, a visiting Indian actor from Bollywood.<\/p>\n
A certificate was presented to Kher on the stage by Attorney General Niki Sharma, the Minister for Mining Jagrup Brar and Burnaby MLA Rohini Arora on behalf of the Premier David Eby. Not to be left behind, Mayor Brenda Locke also went there to honour Kher. <\/p>\n
This was despite growing opposition against the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi within the Punjabi community in Surrey. Attacks on religious minorities have increased in India ever since Modi\u2019s BJP came into power in 2014. As if this wasn\u2019t enough, the Modi government faces serious allegations of engineering transnational repression in Canada, including the assassination of Surrey-Delta gurdwara president Hardeep Singh Nijjar in 2023. <\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Eby chose to ignore the popular sentiment and sent in his representatives to honour Kher, who is a staunch supporter of Modi. So much so, his wife has previously served as a BJP MP. For the record, he was joined by Swaroop Sampat, an actress wedded to a former BJP MP Paresh Rawal, who is also an established actor. It is pertinent to mention that Kher himself is a vocal supporter of Modi\u2019s policies and has acted in propaganda movies glorifying the cause of Hindu nationalism and portraying minorities, particularly Muslims, in a poor light.<\/p>\n
By sending in his retinue to welcome such folks in Surrey, Eby has shown lack of spine to stand up against tyrants in New Delhi. It also reflects very badly on people like Brar whose father had risked his life by protecting Muslims during the riots caused by the division of India and Pakistan on religious lines back in 1947. History will never forgive a provincial government and a mayor who claim to be the defenders of inclusion and human rights and yet continue to rub shoulders with bigots.<\/p>\n
Gurpreet Singh, North Delta <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LETTER: Eby must stand up to \u2018tyrants\u2019 in New Delhi Published 7:00 am Tuesday, September 15, 2026 Editor,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":896778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-896777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}