‘Very messy’: India-Canada row over Sikh killing causes diplomatic shock waves
The sun was setting on a June evening as Hardeep Singh Nijjar walked across the car park of the gurdwara. As he reached his pickup truck, two heavy-set, masked gunmen lay in wait. Shots rang out and Nijjar, killed instantly, crumpled to the ground as the suspects fled.
The incident attracted little international attention until Monday, when Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, stood up in parliament and made an explosive announcement: there were credible allegations that this was an assassination carried out with the involvement of the Indian government, who had targeted Nijjar for his involvement in the Sikh separatist cause. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Trudeau said.
The ramifications were instant. Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat who was reportedly involved in intelligence. India hit back, calling the accusations “absurd” and politically motivated, and expelling a Canadian diplomat in return. Trade talks between the two countries halted.
The diplomatic barbs did not stop there. On Wednesday, India updated its travel advisory to warn its citizens to “exercise extreme caution” in Canada due to “growing antiIndia activities and politically condoned hate crimes”. By Thursday, India had suspended all visa applications for Canadians, citing security threats against its diplomatic staff and “inaction by the Canadian authorities” on hate crimes, and accused Canada of being a safe haven for terrorists. Speaking at the UN later that day, Trudeau called on India to cooperate with Canadian authorities to “uncover the truth” behind the killing.
While any evidence Canada has on the killing is yet to be made public, “for Trudeau to have made the statement he did, given the obvious implications and backlash, would imply a really significant level of confidence in the evidence that they have”, said Walter Ladwig, a senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London. According to sources who spoke to Canadian media, when confronted privately with the evidence, Indian officials did not deny government involvement.
The response among analysts was disbelief, with many saying that foreign killings have not historically been part of India’s intelligence playbook. “If these allegations are true, then there is a radical reimagination of Indian intelligence and Indian intelligence operations outside the country,” said Yogesh Joshi, a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.
Yet, as Joshi emphasised, under the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government, India’s position on the world stage has never been so prominent and influential, as a geopolitical counterweight to China and also as a growing economic powerhouse.
While the language towards India from its western allies has been cautious so far, analysts say Trudeau’s accusations could point to the perils and limitations of liberal democracies hitching their wagons to Modi’s India, where there has been a significant shift towards authoritarianism and persecution of minorities.
“We are looking at a very messy geopolitical and diplomatic scene in the coming weeks and months,” said Joshi.