Allegations against India have isolated Canada in the global arena

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations that his government has been investigating “credible allegations” of the involvement of Indian government agents in the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader and Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, on Canadian soil, has hit the already strained Indo-Canada ties.

As expected, a resilient New Delhi vehemently denied the allegations, which have plunged India-Canada relations into a crisis. Canada expelled a top Indian official from the country in the wake of the allegations, and India responded by expelling a Canadian diplomat from New Delhi.

The past couple of days have seen several tit-for-tat moves, with both countries expelling each other’s envoys and issuing travel advisories flagging risks in each other’s territories.

In its latest move, India suspended the issuing of visas to Canadian citizens “till further notice”. India has long expressed its concerns about the massive presence of Sikhs in Canada who advocate an independent homeland, Khalistan in the Indian state of Punjab.

Until recently, the issue hadn’t affected cooperation between India and Canada. In the past few years, the two countries have scaled up trade and defence ties, converged strategically around their mutual concerns about China, and engaged in multilateral partnership through groups such as the G-20.

However, tensions continued to simmer deep below. In 2020, Trudeau’s support to protesting farmers in Punjab, many of them Sikhs, didn’t sit well with New Delhi.

The support came at a moment when demonstrations by pro-independence members of the Sikh diaspora were starting to increase, not only in Canada but also in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

This year, several pro-Khalistan protests led to acts of violence perpetrated against Indian diplomatic setups. In 2020, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders accused the protesting farmers of being separatists; the same year, it formally declared Nijjar as a Khalistani terrorist.

When it comes to Sikh activism in Canada, India has taken an uncompromising line, linking any separatists there to a pro-Khalistan movement with a violent past.

New Delhi harbours no tolerance for those who advocate Khalistan, whether at home or abroad. Trudeau, currently grappling with rising unpopularity, may also seek more political support from the Sikh community, which numbers nearly 800,000 in Canada.

If Trudeau’s allegations are to be believed, New Delhi chose to take matters into its own hands. A few weeks ago, Ottawa announced that it would suspend talks with New Delhi on a new trade deal, a move likely connected to the investigation into Nijjar’s killing.

Canada is one of its key defence and commercial partners and a major investor; it is also home to a rapidly growing Indian diaspora and a top foreign destination for Indian students.

Other countries that are home to many people sympathetic to Sikh separatist causes; Australia, Canada, the U.K., New Zealand and the United States, are all members of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance.

India is being courted by the United States and others as a counterweight to China, and this means Canada, with a population of just 40 million people, is severely outgunned diplomatically.

With allies unwilling to contemplate any kind of joint condemnation of India, the Canadian options now look limited, at least until it can provide incontrovertible evidence.

But it’s more than that. Modern India has a fast-growing economy that many analysts believe, will overtake Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest by 2030.

It has become a major power in world affairs, with more than 1.4 billion people and has one of the world’s largest militaries. Now the stakes are higher, and it’s unclear, at least publicly, whom Canada can count on for full-throated support while it has challenged India.