Canadian Diplomacy Towards India Is A Strange Game

Diplomacy can be a strange game. On the one hand, Justin Trudeau lines up next to Joe Biden and Narendra Modi at the G20 Summit in Brazil for a group photo, smiling gamely into the camera. On the other hand the Canadian security agencies accuse first the Indian ambassador and his consular staff in Ottawa, then the Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, and now the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of complicity and prior knowledge of the murder of Khalistani terrorists on Canadian soil.

For some months now, indeed from before the earlier G20 Summit in New Delhi a year ago, this has been the refrain from Justin Trudeau’s Canada. Trudeau made public pronouncements accusing India in the Canadian parliament, based on his intelligence reports, rather than proof or evidence. Both he and his foreign minister urged the Indians to cooperate with Canadian agencies in investigations. They threatened to use the pressure of their allies in the G7 and elsewhere.

Since then, despite multiple Indian requests, nothing by way of substance let alone proof has been offered. But the accusations have continued, and become ever more strident. Both sides reduced their diplomatic presence in each other’s countries including at the senior most levels.

Canada has been nominally backed in its hostile agenda by the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence group that has the US, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, in addition to Canada, as they are its members.

India has made a series of extradition requests to Canada to return various  newly-minted Canadian nationals ( mostly of Sikh origin) or other Indians from Punjab and elsewhere who have run away to Canada, wanted in India as terrorists, murderers, drug smugglers, gun runners, extortionists, people traffickers, money launderers and worse. All of this has fallen on deaf ears. The Canadian government is content to allow Khalistanis in all their criminal and extremist hues to run free, employing some of them in their own  bureaucracies and police forces.

A Canadian political party with over 20 seats in parliament and populated by ethnic erstwhile Sikhs that back the Khalistani movement is allowed to retain considerable influence in mainstream politics, both as a supporter (now from outside the government), of the ruling Liberal Party, and also the opposition Conservative Party. So much so, that a recent rally of Khalistanis demanded that Whites and Jews should return to Europe leaving Canada to its ‘native’ Khalistani population.

In India meanwhile, a large number of Sikhs are saying the Khalistanis are not Sikhs at all and have no business to masquerade as such. The Khalistani alignment with Pakistan’s ISI and Chinese intelligence agencies have nothing to do with Indian Sikhs, and indeed the overwhelming bulk of Canadian Sikhs.   They should not be allowed to use Sikh symbols without any permission of the Sikh Panth in Amritsar, and many of the Khalistani publicity seeking antics and pronouncements are deeply offensive to the majority of Indian Sikhs.

Their frequent attacks on Hindu temples in Canada, Australia,Britain and elsewhere are condemned by the Indian Sikhs who regard Hindus as their brothers in the faith, with many Punjabi families contributing one or the other child into the Sikh faith.

So if the Canadian backing of the Khalistanis residing on their soil is an attempt to balkanise India alongside Pakistan’s ISI, the Chinese intelligence agencies, elements of the deep state in the US,the CIA and others in the Five Eyes, they are bound to fail.

One of the main reasons apart from the shallow support that the Khalistanis enjoy in Canada and elsewhere, is the huge popularity of the Modi government largely identified with Hindus. The BJP/NDA is not only the dominant political party in government in India, but the prime minister’s personal popularity is palpable both in-country and around the world.

It is not only the Indian diaspora that celebrates the Modi phenomenon wherever he goes, but leaders around the world too, in the G7, the G20, BRICS and elsewhere.

Trudeau meanwhile is steadily losing popularity in Canada because of his ineffective handling of the economy, high prices, rising unemployment, a redundant immigration policy, his political mistakes vis a vis both China and India, and his obdurate backing of a Khalistani movement that has no chance of success.

A constant upping of the ante by accusing the Indian home minister and the prime minister is probably a sign of his desperation. India meanwhile is unperturbed, and refusing to over react to these Canadian provocations. It is able to see good relations with Canada from a longer-term perspective beyond the rule of the Justin Trudeau government. Most of the bilateral trade between the two countries continues undisturbed and the investments of te Canadian pension funds in the Indian stock market are more or less intact. There has been some selling in line with FPI selling in general but nothing more marked.

The Trudeau government has more immediate issues. It will have to pass its budget through parliament in February 2025, and face a general election in or -before October 2025.

The election of Donald Trump in America is probably worrisome for him as the former is not known to be a Trudeau fan. America under Trump will likely not support Trudeau’s bizarre politics with regard to India. India can afford to ignore Trudeau and wait out this unusual brand of diplomacy.

 (887 words)

November 20^th, 2024

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee