Why Canada is a model, global village for the world
"Excuse me," came a voice behind me on a busy street in downtown Toronto.
"Yes," I turned around. "Are you a Sikh?" she asked, walking closer.
"Yes, I am," I smiled.
"You know what? I have never heard anything wrong about you guys," she said. "Maybe there's something I am not aware of but I have always heard good things about you people," she cheered, her eyes glowing.
Soon, two complete strangers - Nora Walhelm, a 40-year-old mother of Finnish descent, and I - posed for a photo together along the Dundas Street.
In a country that's home to multiple nationalities, Walhelm's perception about a tiny minority from the Asian subcontinent, I realised, not only encapsulated how Sikhs have evolved in Canada but summed up Canada's own wondrous embrace of global diversity as a state policy.
This diversity introduces itself dynamically the moment you arrive at a Canadian airport.
It's uniquely compelling. A surprising microcosm of the planet greets the eyes when you look around at the workforce, restaurants, bars, stores and so forth.
At 36 million, Canada's population is minuscule by Indian standards. But its trans-continental mix is astonishing.
And the beauty doesn't solely lie in an array of ethnicities from across the earth making a living in pockets of a vast territory between the North Pacific Ocean to the west, the North Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Arctic Ocean to the north.
Every developed country is a sought-after destination for economic migrants. So is every city within developing countries, where people move for jobs and residency.
But Canada is a standalone region on the world atlas for embodying seamless cross-culture synergy.
In fact, the term global village was itself coined by a Canadian-born philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, in the early 1960s.
McLuhan envisioned the world as a community in which distance and isolation are dramatically reduced by telecommunications.
But the Canadian state, I sensed, has reached out to the world outside with a human touch, over and above tools of technology.
It's no exaggeration if I say this country surpasses even neighbouring America, the most-advanced democracy, in its multicultural approach.
In the United States, diversity predominantly appears to be colour-centric, and not necessarily culture.
From personal experience, I can say many Americans, for example, are not as much exposed to Asian history as they are to their own and to, maybe, European to some extent.
American psyche, in general, is corporate driven.
Their notion of diversity, although advertised hugely, is practically limited in its scope.
It's kind of a quota system that big corporate houses in the US espouse to be able to proclaim "look how diverse we are."
In Canada, it's life that's all-encompassing.
And it all starts at Canadian schools, where students are encouraged to learn about what exists, or existed, in humanity across continents.
That perhaps ushers in a greater and healthier understanding of communities right from childhood days.
When Justin Trudeau became Canada’s prime minister in 2015, his 30-member cabinet had 15 men and 15 women.
Five of his ministers belonged to visible minorities, four of them Indian-Canadians and one Afghan-Canadian.
The world, undoubtedly, read a fascinating story about Canadian diversity.
Trudeau's cabinet isn't mere symbolism.
It's inherent to what I call Canadian worldview.
Switch on a TV station and you may spot a turbaned Sikh with a flowing beard participating in a talk show.
Unlike many Americans, Canadians are comfortable with international accents. For them, content matters.
Your cultural dresses, I noticed, are treated as an asset.
I didn't discover any stereotypes linked to languages, outfits and food.
Here, you don't really hear scary stuff about hate crimes that make headlines in the United States.
It's because diversity isn't merely a fancy corporate buzzword in Canada. It's rather an unimaginably powerful force that's leveraging the potential of world cultures for common human development.
Thanks Nora Walhelm for introducing me to Canada.