Relations between India and Canada had reached their nadir during September-October, 2023 after the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had publicly implicated India in the killing of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023 outside a Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia.

Returning home from New Delhi after attending the G-20 Summit, Prime Minister Trudeau told the House of Commons on 18 September 2023 that the government of Canada had “credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.” Nijjar was a leader of the Sikh diaspora and an activist calling for an independent homeland for the Sikhs (Khalistan) and was known to be close to the Khalistan Tiger Force that is listed as a terrorist organization in India.

Canada insisted that he was an ‘innocent’ religiousminded head of the Guru Nanak Gurdwara at Surrey. The Canadian Prime Minister told Members of the House of Commons: “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.” India rejected the allegations of Prime Minister Trudeau as “absurd and motivated”. Significantly, the Canadian government has failed to provide any concrete evidence of India’s involvement in the killing of the Khalistani leader till date, although the US government officially stated that it shared the information about the Indian government agency’s involvement in the killing, with its ‘Third Eyes’ partner, Canada. Later, the Canadian Foreign Minister Melania Joly said Canada had expelled a prominent Indian diplomat over the incident. India retaliated by expelling a Canadian diplomat, while India-Canada trade talks, scheduled to be held in October were postponed by the Canadian Trade Minister. In an unprecedented move, India also sought to curtail people-to-people contact by suspending all visas to Canadians till “further notice”, with the student community, businessmen and the Indian diaspora being hit hard.

This was a hasty decision, as instead of a blanket ban, India could have been more cautious and selective in issuing visas only to those persons who did not have any history of anti-India activities. However, after reviewing the situation, India decided to resume visa services in Canada from 26 October for four categories: Entry Visa, Business Visa, Medical Visa and Conference Visa; and on 22 November, External Affairs Minister Dr. Jaishankar announced that after reviewing the security situation India decided to resume issue of e-visas to Canadian citizens to facilitate people-to -people contacts and business activities.

Did this mean a thaw in the deteriorating relations between the two nations? Such hopes were belied by a fresh charge of India’s interference in Canada’s domestic politics. At the height of the diplomatic spat, India asked Canada to reduce the staff of its diplomatic mission in New Delhi by 10 October 2023, to bring parity between the diplomatic missions of the two countries, as the presence of a higher number of Canadian diplomats in India and their continued interference in India’s internal affairs warranted such parity. The government of Canada tried to portray this move by India as a violation of international norms. The Ministry of External Affairs, on the other hand, reminded Ottawa that New Delhi’s move was quite consistent with the Article 11.1 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

This diplomatic slugfest was hardly conducive to the improvement of bilateral ties between the two states and Canada, after sensing that India was quite serious about the move, withdrew 41 diplomats from India by the middle of October. But the million dollar question is why did the Canadian Prime Minister choose to publicly implicate India in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar when Canada could not provide any definitive proof of India’s involvement, despite two visits by Canada’s National Security Adviser to New Delhi, and when Canada had not completed its own investigation?

As the Indian High Commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma told a Canadian TV channel, India was ‘convicted’ in the Nijjar murder case, even before a probe. One possible reason for this could be that Prime Minister Trudeau felt humiliated when the Indian Prime Minister publicly rebuked him for allegedly allowing “antiIndia activities of extremist elements in Canada”, a reference to the activities of the proKhalistan elements. Even if one accepts the veracity of Prime Minister Trudeau’s allegations about India’s role in the killing of Nijjar, would it not have been better for Ottawa to take up the issue through diplomatic/political channels, as indeed was being suggested by the Canadian Foreign Minister, when New Delhi asked the Canadian government to reduce its diplomatic presence in India?

By publicly implicating India in the killing of Nijjar, was Mr Trudeau playing ‘vote bank’ politics? This was in sharp contrast to the developments in India-Canada relations during the early years of India’s independence, especially during the first half of the 1950s. Canada looked upon India as a valuable partner in Asia. Canada and India had a shared history; both were former British colonies and after independence emerged as multi-ethnic, multicultural states within the Commonwealth of Nations. Both had opted for federal democratic structures for governance. Moreover, India’s size, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s quest for an independent foreign policy that enabled India to play an important mediatory role in cold war conflicts, particularly in Asia, seemed to make New Delhi an ideal partner for Canada for resolving cold war conflicts in Asia.

Support for a democratic India, wrote Salim Mansur later, “allowed Canada the semblance of autonomy in foreign policy, enabled Ottawa to reach out toward other emerging Afro-Asian countries, provided a sense of distance from the dominant voice of the United States within the Atlantic Alliance” and fostered a belief that Canada would be an “an honest broker” in world affairs.

Canada, therefore, tried to develop closer relations with India within the Commonwealth and, in dealing with the cold war conflicts in Asia, despite their differences over the Kashmir issue. It was India’s mediatory role that broke the deadlock over the repatriation of the prisoners of war, and led to the Korean truce in 1953. India was made the Chairman of the Neutral Nations’ Repatriation Commission (1953-54). Equally significant was India’s initiative on Indo-China. On 24 February 1954, Prime Minister Nehru, in a speech in Parliament appealed for an immediate ceasefire in Indo-China; Canada supported this.

At the Four-Power Geneva Conference that met to discuss developments in Indo-China, V K Krishna Menon and Lester B. Pearson of Canada worked closely to facilitate the signing of the Geneva Agreement that brought to an end the conflicts in Indo-China. During this period (February-June 1954), relations between Canada and India reached a new high, described by then High Commissioner to New Delhi, Escott Reid, as a ‘special relationship’.

Such close cooperation between the two states was made possible by the good personal relations between the Prime Minister Nehru and his Canadian counterparts, Louis St. Laurent and his successor Lester B. Pearson, which is lacking between the current leadership of the two states. Both states accepted membership of the International Control Commission (ICC) for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. But such close cooperation between New Delhi and Ottawa did not last long, as the Geneva settlements started collapsing within six months after the signing of the Agreement. Differences that emerged in the peacekeeping missions established by the ICC had a profound effect on India-Canada relations in subsequent years. While India felt Canada had become ‘an apologist’ for the US-backed South Vietnamese regime, Ottawa felt India invariably voted with Poland that supported the communist position. More important than the voting differences was the “antipathy that scores of Canadian diplomats and military officers” had developed towards their Indian counterparts with whom they worked.

The reservoir of ill-will created “a strong anti-India feeling within the Ministry of External Affairs”, wrote Ivan L. Head and Pierre Trudeau in 1998. This became an important factor in the development of Canada’s relations with India in subsequent years. India’s stand on the two international crises that had developed in 1956 ~ the Suez War launched by the UK and France and the Hungarian Uprising that was brutally suppressed by the Soviet Union ~ and the attitude of the Conservative Government that came to power in Canada in 1957 under the leadership of John Diefenbaker towards Nehru’s India did not help matters either.

(The writer is Professor (retired) of International Relations and a former Dean, Faculty of Arts, Jadavpur University)