The sun was setting on a June evening as Hardeep Singh Nijjar walked across the car park of the gurdwara. Nijjar’s day job was as a plumber but this gurdwara, in the city of Surrey, in British Columbia, was where he dedicated most of his energy. That day he had made an impassioned speech on the fight for an independent state for Sikhs.
But as he reached his pickup truck, two masked