The India dilemma
Canada's serious diplomatic dispute with India has lessons for Australia and other countries hoping to court the country as a counterweight to China.
In June, two masked gunmen sprayed a vehicle with bullets outside a Sikh temple in suburban Vancouver, before making a swift getaway. The victim, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a leader of a separatist Sikh movement who was wanted by Indian authorities, died of his wounds.
On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rose in parliament and made the incendiary allegation that “agents” of the Indian government, according to Canadian intelligence, were behind the assassination. He said he had raised the matter “in no uncertain terms” directly with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi earlier this month.
A senior Indian diplomat has already been expelled from Ottawa. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” he said. If true — and it’s worth pointing out India swiftly rejected Trudeau’s allegations as “absurd and motivated” — the allegations of a brazen extrajudicial execution on foreign soil pose an awkward interlude for Western nations, including Australia, that are so eager to court India both for its undeniable economic promise but also its emerging potential as a strategic counterweight to China.
Modi’s dominant electoral popularity in India can in part be attributed to his success in projecting his country’s resurgent strength on the world stage, but also by playing to the country’s Hindu majority — often, his critics say, at the cost of minorities like Sikhs and Muslims — and through democratic backsliding (India, much to its annoyance, has slid to 161st in the latest World Press Freedom Index.)
