Jagmeet Singh

Some Lesser Known Facts About Jagmeet Singh

• Jagmeet Singh is an Indo-Canadian lawyer and politician who became the Leader of the New Democratic Party in 2017. He served as a Member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament for Bramalea—Gore—Malton (2011-2017) and became a Member of Parliament for Burnaby South on 25 February 2019.

• He was born in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.

• His first name, Jagmeet, which means ‘friend of the Earth,’ is a combination of his parents’ names, Jagtaran and Harmeet.

• When Jagmeet was one year old, his parents sent him to live with his father’s mother in Punjab, India. Jagmeet’s mother, Harmeet, had a job at a bank, and his father, Jagtaran, was a trained doctor. Jagtaran had to work as a security guard at night and study during the day to become a doctor again. They were having a difficult time making enough money and couldn’t take care of the baby.
  

  

  One year later, Jagtaran got accepted into the psychiatry program at Memorial University in St. John’s, and Jagmeet returned to live with his parents. He spent his early childhood in St. John’s and Grand Falls-Windsor, both in Newfoundland and Labrador. Growing up in Villa Borghese, he attended the Oakwood School.

• For a while after returning to Canada, he would refer to his mother as ‘aunt’ because he was used to calling his grandmother ‘mom’ in India.

• Jagmeet was called Jimmy at school. During those days, all the Sikh children had names that sounded more like those of kids from England. Their parents gave them these names so they could blend in better at school. He also used to cut his hair, which is against the Sikh faith. However, when he was eight, he decided to stop cutting his hair and use his real name to embrace his heritage and cultural roots.

• When Jagmeet stopped cutting his hair, his classmates started bullying him. They would yank and twist his headgear and call him a girl for having long hair. They would say that his skin was brown because he was dirty and didn’t shower. He recalled the same in an interview and said,
  

  I faced some significant racism as a kid growing up with a unique identity—you know, brown skin, long hair for a boy, with a funny sounding first name like Jagmeet, while going through childhood in a small Canadian city with little diversity. But because of having to deal with racism myself, I became very sensitive to unfairness.”

• His parents noticed his struggle and decided to teach him martial arts to defend himself, starting off with Taekwondo. Later, he also learned Aikido, Jiu Jitsu, and Judo. Talking about the same in an interview he said,
  

  I started martial arts when I was about nine years old and have been training in one form or another ever since. I started off with Taekwondo and some Akido. I did a lot of wrestling in high school. Later on I did traditional boxing and Muay Thai. I did a lot of striking, but my speciality was grappling so fighting around wrestling, Jiu Jitsu, and Judo was my main focus.”

• Jagmeet was sexually abused by his taekwondo coach when he was 10. Realising Jagmeet’s dedication to the sport, his coach invited him to his home for extra training, where he assaulted him. Jagmeet didn’t tell his parents about it until he was 25. He disclosed the incident publically many years later by mentioning it in his book Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected. ^[1]CBC News

• Jagmeet was around 12 when the family moved to Windsor, Ontario where his father was hired as a Psychiatrist in a hospital. He was bullied to such an extent that his parents pulled him from his class and enrolled him across the border to attend school in Detroit.  He attended Detroit Country Day School in Beverly Hills, Michigan, US from sixth to twelfth grade.

• Jagmeet’s mother helped him grow spiritually by sharing stories about Sikh history and philosophy. Meanwhile, his father pushed him to be athletic and learn horseback riding and pursue private tennis and golf lessons. He also played sports like skiing, hockey, and soccer.

  

• Jagmeet later became the captain of his high school wrestling team and also went on to win the Toronto championships in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Between 2003 and 2007, he was the Greater Toronto Area’s undefeated champion for his weight class in submission grappling — a form of judo, wrestling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
  

• Before jumping into politics, Jagmeet practised as a criminal defence lawyer, initially with the law firm Pinkofskys, and then, he established his own firm ‘Dhaliwal Law,’ alongwith his brother Gurratan.

• As a lawyer, Jagmeet provided free of cost legal counsel to people and organizations in need. He also gave legal advice to activist group that protested the visit of Kamal Nath, the then Minister of Commerce and Industry, to Toronto, in March 2010. Nath had allegedly led armed mobs during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots after the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, was shot dead by two of her Sikh bodyguards.

• It was at his brother’s insistence that he ventured into the politics.

• During his first election campaign, he deliberately took out ‘Dhaliwal’ of his name as it indicated that he belonged to the upper-class community in Punjab. He said that he wanted his candidacy to represent a message of equality and justice. He said,
  

  I want everything we do to have some meaning, so I decided that if I’m running to represent the people of my riding, I want it to be known that I will represent all people, not just my clan.”

• In October 2011, Jagmeet became first NDP MPP to represent the Peel region and the first turbaned Sikh to sit at Queen’s Park.

• In September 2023, Jagmeet Singh made a commitment to pursue justice for the killing of the Khalistani extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, which he expressed in a social media post following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s remarks. In the post, Singh asserted that he would leave no stone unturned, even if it would require holding Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, accountable in the pursuit of justice.