DIPLOMATIC WINTER
All the warmth at the G20 summit in New Delhi—at least on the surface—had presaged a phase of uncomplicated amity along the Western axis for India. That was September 9-10, and the month seemed set to go down in golden letters in New Delhi’s foreign policy logbook. Unbelievably, it took just a week for that feelgood vibe to evaporate on one front. As the Canadian Parliament reconvened for the Fall sitting on September 18, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons to charge India with “assassination”—that too, on its soil. The man in question: Hardeep Singh Nijjar, chief of Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), a Canadian citizen, and a wanted terrorist in India. Nijjar was shot dead by unidentified men at Surrey town near Vancouver in the west Canadian province of British Columbia in June this year. Trudeau claimed that Canadian security agencies have been “actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India and the killing…”. What followed was the closest diplomacy gets to artillery shelling, and the temperatures soon rose well beyond uncomfortably warm.
First, Canadian foreign minister Mélanie Joly followed on Trudeau’s cue and announced that the country has expelled a “top Indian diplomat” —Pavan Kumar Rai, a Punjab-cadre IPS officer who was heading India’s Intelligence in Canada. New Delhi, stung to the quick, moved into angry retaliation. It rejected the allegations as “absurd and motivated” and, in a tit-for-tat move, summoned Canadian high commissioner Cameron MacKay on September 19 and expelled a senior