Often a fixture on Canada’s far-right protest circuit, Ron Banerjee was shown on video calling for the Indian army to come to Canada and “storm those f*****g Sikh temples.”
Peter Smith
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
A screen capture of Ron Banerjee taken in 2022. Source: YouTube
A man with a long history of racist organizing including calling for the killing of Muslims and Sikhs has been arrested after a video surfaced of him at a protest in Ontario, calling Sikh temples places that promote “hate” and “terrorism.”
Footage of Ranendra “Ron” Banerjee from the night of November 4, shows him shouting into a megaphone during a march of hundreds of people through the streets of Brampton, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto.
“The Indian army come here to Canada and storm those fucking temples, “ he yells at a crowd that is heard responding with cheers. “Yeah, come to Canada and storm those fucking Sikh temples.“
BREAKING | Ron Banerjee, of the Hindu Conference of Canada, has been arrested by @PeelPolice in connection to his speech inciting violence against Sikhs.
— Baaz (@BaazNewsOrg) November 7, 2024
Banerjee's call to storm Gurdwaras was met with loud cheers during the Monday evening @CoHNACanada led pro-India protest. https://t.co/VcotThYvaE pic.twitter.com/QmHWcDj5vi
“They have no right to have those kinds of temples, they promote hate, they promote terrorism. The Indian army must come to Canada and must storm the Khalistan Sikh temples.”
Other footage from the protest showed a crowd of individuals kicking vehicles attempting to make their way through the filled streets.
Additional Arrests and Charges Following November 4 Demonstrations in Brampton.
— Peel Regional Police (@PeelPolice) November 8, 2024
Read More: https://t.co/ed7gKmPcW2#PRPVNR pic.twitter.com/aetXvGyBXS
The protest was declared an illegal gathering by the Peel Regional Police who said weapons were observed in the hands of the protesters. Police released a statement alleging that Banerjee had been inciting hatred.
Two other men in their early 20s are also being sought for uttering threats to cause harm or death, conspiracy to commit assault with a weapon, and conspiracy to commit mischief.
The incident was one of a series of protests and confrontations in Canada outside of Hindu and Sikh places of worship, with various individuals on both sides blaming the other for starting fighting between the two.
Video of one protest outside of Hindu Sabha Mandir, a Hindu temple in Brampton, Ontario, that shows a fight breaking out between protesters gathered outside on November 3. One of three protests taking place that day, the actions were organized to take place on the sidewalk outside temples. The protesters said these were aimed against members of the Indian Consulate who were arriving to hold meetings at the site.
According to Baaz News, a blog focused on Sikh diaspora news in Canada, a group of pro-Indian counter-protesters gathered on the sidewalk, shouting “Long live Lawrence Bishnoi”— an Indian crime boss responsible for organizing killings of Sikh separatists. Bishnoi’s gang was recently linked to the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada by the RCMP.
The groups confronted each other and quickly brawling started between the two groups. Police on scene separated them, but not before the fighting entered the parking lot of the temple.
The violence was quickly condemned by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, members of local government, and Indian President Narendra Modi.
“I strongly condemn the deliberate attack on a Hindu temple in Canada. Equally appalling are the cowardly attempts to intimidate our diplomats,” he wrote on the social media platform X. “Such acts of violence will never weaken India’s resolve. We expect the Canadian government to ensure justice and uphold the rule of law.”
Peel Police report responding to a trespassing complaint and arresting three individuals on site. Another person was picked up on an outstanding warrant unrelated to the matter.
The bouts of violence have been condemned by Sikh and Hindu leaders. Reports also allege that one employee of the Mandir was fired for their statements to the crowd after the first brawl.
Banerjee has been a fixture in the fringes of the Greater Toronto Area’s protest scene for over a decade. Emerging as an executive in a succession of organizations, it is often not clear that membership in these groups includes anyone other than Banerjee. Initially claiming to be the director of the Hindu Conference of Canada, he wrote reflective articles on his life as a French born Hindu man growing up in New Brunswick since the age of two. Crediting his faith and community with inspiring his academic achievement at an early age, in 2008 he wrote in the CBC about how he felt the media reduced Hinduism to the issues of "cows and caste.”
“Hindus consider it to be a sin to impose our faith on others, so tolerance and acceptance of others in a multicultural society came naturally,” he wrote. “Hinduism, with its numerous female deities, also promotes gender equality.”
This seems a far cry from the man now known for his repeated calls for genocide, shouting “convert to Hinduism” over a megaphone, and repeated organizing with the far-right.
The author of this article first met Banerjee during a hearing to determine if there would be an investigation into white nationalist media figure and failed Toronto mayoral candidate Faith Goldy’s campaign finances. By then he was a “senior adviser” to RISE Canada, a group intended to “defend Canadian values, which often conflict with the Islamic way of thinking.”
Banerjee refers to himself as a Hindu nationalist, a political movement with the goal of making India a “Hindu nation.” This has grown into a general championing of an ideology called Hindutva (“Hindu-ness”) that includes groups the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), founded in 1925, that has expressed admiration for fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
India’s current government, headed by Prime Minister Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has openly adopted right-wing nationalism.
Modi himself was an organizer for the RSS and a current member and critics are accusing him and the BJP of remaking India through the framework of “Hindu supremacy.”
“I’m a hardcore Hindu nationalist,” Banerjee told an interviewer in 2022, voicing support for the administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I encourage them to look at the Modi government.”
Adding he would like to see Modi running Canada as well as India, Banerjee goes on, “We kill Muslim terrorists, we kill Sikh terrorists, it’s awesome what Modi is doing.”
“Muslims need to understand that if they’re going to live in our country they gotta follow our rules and if they don’t, they will get it. They will get it.”
With the line, “I support the killing of the Muslims and the Sikhs in the republic of India because they deserve to die,” the interview comes to a close.
The arrests after the protests are also hardly the first time Banerjee has run afoul of the law with his statements.
In August 2017, far-right blogger Kevin J. Johnston and Ron Banerjee made videos in front of Paramount Fine Foods during an anti-Muslim demonstration and made comments that were overtly hateful towards Muslims and specifically targeted the restaurant’s owner and his business.
While Johnston would go on to famously lose the case in court and be ordered to pay what was, at the time, the largest cyber-libel case in Canadian history, Banerjee instead chose to retract his statements and issue a video apology.
“I said that in order to be permitted entry into the Paramount Fine Foods restaurant you gotta be a Jihadist. I also said you need credentials, you have to have raped your wife a few times to be allowed in there,” Banerjee told the camera. He also was required to pay an undisclosed amount.
He has also been a regular fixture at Toronto’s COVID-conspiracy protests and when tensions in India between the government and farmers, many of whom are Sikh, reached a boiling point, Banerjee shifted his focus to targeting Sikhs.
In a tweet from a since-deleted account, Banerjee stated that “White Canadian Patriot groups” are calling on the Indian Army to send forces to Canada to control the Khalistani-Sikh problem.
Far from the only incident, he has made statements saying that Canada would roll out the red carpet for the Indian Army and the RSS, a right-wing Hindu Nationalist paramilitary group, to “cleanse the country” of Sikhs.
“We badly need Operation Blue Star 2. Hindu Nationalists should be imported for this task,” he wrote on the same Twitter account. Operation Blue Star was an attack carried out by the Indian Army which resulted in the destruction of the Golden Temple, the holiest site in the Sikh religion, as well as the deaths of civilians and Sikh separatists in 1984.
With files from Ahmar Khan.
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