New Delhi has withdrawn its High Commissioner and other diplomatic staff from Canada. It has also given marching orders to six high-ranked Canadian diplomats posted to India. The unprecedented step has been necessitated by a flurry of what India has described as “preposterous” allegations by Canada under the stewardship of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
India took these steps 24 hours after New Delhi received a diplomatic communication from Canada suggesting that the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats are “persons of interest” in a matter related to an investigation in that country.
In fact, Trudeau has alleged that Indian officials were involved in the murder of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar and other South Asians in Canada, using organised criminal gangs. It’s a claim India categorically rejects.
Before withdrawing its High Commissioner, New Delhi had issued a scathing denunciation of Canada. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs called the decision to treat India’s diplomats as suspects as “imputations” borne out of a thinly veiled “political agenda of the Trudeau government which is centred around vote bank politics”.
The charge alludes to Trudeau’s sinking approval ratings and his hopes to mend fences with a one-time ally — a party headed by a Canadian Sikh Khalistan apologist.
The Modi government let it be known that “since Prime Minister Trudeau made certain allegations in September 2023, the Canadian government has not shared a shred of evidence with the government of India, despite many requests from our side. This latest step follows interactions that have again witnessed assertions without any facts. This leaves little doubt that on the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains”.
Clearly, New Delhi feels the time for polite conversation is over.
From India’s point of view, it had no choice but to be confrontationist. This is because Canada, under Trudeau, is behaving like a Western version of Pakistan.
This observation is not without exaggeration.
Consider the similarities. Like Pakistan, a famous redoubt of psychotic religious obscurantists, Canada too has become a hub for religious revanchists who plot the extermination of supposed “infidels”. A whole legion of hardline Sikh radicals (Nijjar included), who champion the cause of establishing a religious state in India mythically called “Khalistan”, have taken up “permanent residency” in not just the vast “liberal” wilderness of Trudeau’s Canada but also in the hallowed chambers of its Parliament. Over the last few decades, several Sikh members of its Parliament, belonging to one party, are out and out advocates of Khalistan.
Just like in Pakistan where the acts of sociopathic violence are glorified, in Canada too, there is a growing constituency of terror eulogists. And this unabashed glorification of genocide is hiding in plain sight. If you’re staying long enough in Canada you might even see a truck-mounted tableau depicting the slaughter of Hindus and a former Indian prime minister cruising past you while out picking groceries in quaint Brampton, British Columbia.
And much like in Pakistan where often the state is in bed with extremists, in Canada too, the head of the executive, who in this case would be PM Trudeau, is routinely seeing shimmying on stage with “Khalistanis” that actively plot and bankroll insurgencies in India to murderous consequences.
There’s even a freedom to express the longing to assassinate Indian envoys and the incumbent Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Routinely, wanted posters are pasted on walls around ghettos where Sikhs with “Khalistani” inclinations hang out, advertising bounty for anyone who can carry out these dastardly assassinations.
By being soft on terrorism directed against India from Canadian soil, Trudeau is only tracing an arc that is all too familiar to Indians.
Trudeau’s father, a former prime minister, in the late 70s and 80s also played footsie with a then still incipient Canadian-based movement for Khalistan. Trudeau senior overlooked evidence supplied by New Delhi urging prosecution of certain “Khalistani” Canadians of South Asian descent that would eventually blow up two airliners in audacious terror attacks.
The Trudeaus have a long tradition of nursing “Khalistani” Indian diaspora but while Trudeau senior got away with it, his son is finding out that New Delhi is not going to provide him the same diplomatic elbow room.
India under Modi is a much more resilient and assertive actor on the global stage than it has ever been. India has not let greater powers like China, US or even Russia to push it around.
If Justin Trudeau has any claims of being prudent, he must accept this.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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