The flags of India and Canada.
Credit: iStock Photo
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's explosive allegation that his government has “credible” evidence that “agents of the Government of India” were behind the murder in June of Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a gurdwara in British Columbia, is a serious downturn in bilateral ties.
For decades, Delhi-Ottawa ties have remained hostage to Canadian tolerance of elements in the Sikh diaspora who pose a serious security threat to India. Canada forgets too easily that one of the biggest terrorist attacks in the West before 9/11 was the bombing of Air India 182, which killed all 329 passengers on board.
The “Kanishka Bombing”, as it is now known, originated in Canada. It was held to be the work of the Khalistani terrorist group Babbar Khalsa International. Most of the victims were Canadian citizens. It took years for Canada to acknowledge that it had botched up the investigation to the point where no one was punished for the crime.
As the Khalistani spectre rears its head again, India's internal and external security agencies have been only too mindful of the attempts to take Punjab down the 1980s road once again, when violent extremism and terrorism, and the government's efforts to contain it, inflicted deep wounds in the state's psyche.
They have repeatedly flagged to foreign governments with large Sikh communities -- Canada, US and UK -- of the danger posed by Khalistani elements to India from their soil.
The response has been indifferent, going by the attacks on Indian missions and threats against diplomats in these places. Secessionist threats to India are routinely dismissed by western intelligence agencies as exaggerated by Delhi to cover up for its “discriminatory” treatment of minorities.
The latest row has led to the expulsion of an Indian intelligence official stationed at the Indian High Commission in Ottawa, and a tit-for-tat expulsion by India of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service station head, which will make cooperation between the two agencies even more difficult.
Trudeau once boasted that he had more Sikhs in his cabinet than Modi, unwittingly acknowledging what External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar called Canada's “vote-bank politics”.
An election is due in Canada in October 2025. As such, India has learnt the hard way that it can expect no help from the Canadian government. It may be a while before India-Canada relations, which include good business and trade ties and people-to-people contact, especially the thousands of Indian students and professionals that go to Canada each year, can recover from this setback.
Canada's recent embrace of an Indo-Pacific strategy, over its earlier Asia-Pacific outlook, offers some hope as a wider platform for repairing ties. Both countries must grab the chance before it’s too late.