NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh talks to reporters after kicking off his first cross-country tour at a rally in Ottawa on Oct. 15, 2017.

OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh thinks a controversial CBC interview in which he was asked repeatedly to denounce the veneration of alleged Air India mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar was racist.

"Should I just say 'yes' directly? I think there was definitely some sort of clear problematic line of thought behind that question, so I'm definitely concerned with it," he told reporters Sunday when asked if he felt the questions were racist.

Earlier this month, CBC journalist Terry Milewski, who spent much of his career following the Air India investigation, asked Singh to denounce those in the Sikh community who hang pictures of Parmar — a man believed responsible for the worst terrorism act affecting Canadians — and who celebrate him as a martyr.

Parmar, a naturalized Canadian citizen from British Columbia, was identified by an inquiry into the botched RCMP and CSIS investigation as the leader of the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people, most of them Indo-Canadians. Flight 182 exploded on June 23, after Sikh extremists fighting for an independent state from India planted two bombs on the plane. Parmar was killed by Indian police in 1992.

View photos Flowers are left at the Air India memorial in Vancouver on July 27, 2007. More

During the CBC interview on the "Power & Politics" show, Singh did not address Milewski's question directly. He denounced the violence but did not denounce the posters of Parmar. Milewski asked him five times.

"I don't know who is responsible," Singh told Milewski. "But I think we need to find out who is truly responsible, we need to make sure that the investigation results in a conviction of someone who is actually responsible. And we need to, as a society, collectively, unequivocally denounce any time innocent lives are lost. That is something unacceptable.

"All Canadians stand together united against any forms of violence, terror against Canadians, and, in fact, against anyone around the world."

Singh said Sunday that he wasn't sure what Milewski was asking about when the CBC interview veered towards Parmar.

The question, to me, was very troubling.

Jagmeet Singh

"At the time, I didn't know who he was referring to," the NDP leader said in response to a HuffPost question about why he had not denounced the posters. "But I made it absolutely clear, unequivocally, that I condemn any violence against anyone in the world.... It was offensive to me that that was even a question. It is so obvious, that any Canadian would unequivocally denounce anyone who is held responsible...

"The question, to me, was very troubling. He put that question forward with such an obvious response [expected]. I responded very clearly. I denounce anyone, anyone held responsible for any act of violence perpetrated against any innocent lives. It is just unacceptable. It is, fundamentally, something that we all denounce."

Watch Singh's full answer:

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