{"id":82742,"date":"2023-09-20T00:45:40","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T04:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=82742"},"modified":"2023-09-20T23:05:54","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T03:05:54","slug":"the-devastating-accusation-by-canadian-pm-justin-trudeau-against-india-leads-to-a-row-between-canada-and-india-that-could-draw-in-america-and-britain-the-economist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=82742","title":{"rendered":"The devastating accusation by Canadian PM Justin Trudeau against India Leads to a Row between Canada and India that could draw in America and Britain\u201d- The Economist"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On the evening of June 18th Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh leader whom India considered a terrorist, was sitting in his truck in a car park outside a gurdwara (a Sikh temple) in Vancouver when two masked men shot him dead. They escaped through a park and disappeared.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On September 18th Justin Trudeau, Canada\u2019s prime minister, told lawmakers in Ottawa that \u201ccredible intelligence\u201d from the country\u2019s security services linked India to the killing. It is a highly unusual accusation for the leader of one democracy to make against the government of another.<\/p>\n

Mr Trudeau said that he had discussed the allegation with Narendra Modi, India\u2019s prime minister, on the sidelines of a g20 meeting in Delhi on September 10th, and that he would push India to co-operate with an investigation. \u201cAny involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,\u201d he told Parliament.<\/p>\n

The accusation marks a new low in the already frosty relationship between the two countries. Shortly after Mr Trudeau\u2019s remarks, Canada\u2019s foreign minister announced the expulsion of the head of India\u2019s intelligence agency in Canada. <\/p>\n

But India\u2019s foreign ministry categorically denied the allegation, calling it \u201cabsurd\u201d and politically motivated, and declared the reciprocal expulsion of a Canadian diplomat. It accused Canada of sheltering \u201cKhalistani terrorists and separatists\u201d, a reference to those who seek an independent homeland for Sikhs in the state of Punjab and other parts of northern India.<\/p>\n

In India, right-wing media and supporters of Mr Modi echoed the government\u2019s line, accusing Mr Trudeau of pandering to terrorists. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yet they also suggested that the row may help the prime minister. \u201cJustin Trudeau starts campaigning for Modi ahead of the 2024 General Elections by blaming his govt of neutralising a terrorist on Canadian soil,\u201d Nupur J Sharma, the editor of OpIndia, a right-wing website, wrote on X (formerly Twitter).<\/p>\n

The deterioration in the India-Canada relationship had been apparent for some time. On September 1st Canada said it had paused trade talks with India. In the days leading up to the g20 Canada, while sticking to its allegation, had apparently attempted to reduce tensions by quietly sending the head of its intelligence service and Mr Trudeau\u2019s national security adviser to India. If so, it did not help.<\/p>\n

At the g20, where other Western leaders held long meetings with Mr Modi, Mr Trudeau was fobbed off with a ten-minute huddle on the sidelines. A smiling Mr Modi draped a silk scarf around his neck in what now appears to have been an ironic welcome. (A previous trip by Mr Trudeau to India in 2018 turned into a fiasco after a convicted Sikh extremist was invited to an official reception for him, although the invitation was later withdrawn).<\/p>\n

Sikh separatism, the cause behind a bloody insurgency in India in the 1970s and 1980s, has long been a sore point between India and Canada, which is home to a large Sikh diaspora.<\/p>\n

India accuses Canada of being soft on militant separatists. Canadian former security officials say that India\u2019s government has conducted surveillance on Khalistani groups in Canada for years. Canada itself became the victim of Khalistani terrorism in 1985, when a bomb blew up an Air India aeroplane flying from Montreal to London, killing 329 people, mostly Canadians. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack against Canada in history. Just one suspect was convicted in connection with the bombing; another was shot dead, in British Columbia, last summer.<\/p>\n

Yet that crime does not overshadow relations between the 770,000 Sikhs in Canada and their fellow Canadians. An important political constituency, Sikhs are courted by all Canadian parties. Canada insists that it has cracked down on the small minority who have brought their fight for Khalistan to the country. Mr Nijjar had been a vocal advocate for an independent Khalistan, but denied involvement in violence.<\/p>\n

A deepening estrangement between the two countries would have economic implications, if modest ones. Canadian investors have become more important in India as they seek to profit from its fast-growing economy: cpp Investments, a giant Canadian national savings fund, has some $20bn invested in the subcontinent. India is Canada\u2019s tenth-largest trading partner.<\/p>\n

But the ramifications of Mr Trudeau\u2019s accusations go far beyond the relationship between Canada and India. He said that Canada was \u201cclosely co-ordinating\u201d with allies on the matter. Yet his eagerness to court support from Joe Biden, America\u2019s president, and Rishi Sunak, Britain\u2019s prime minister, on investigating the killing is awkward for both leaders. Joining Mr Trudeau in his condemnation of Mr Modi would make more difficult their efforts to court India as a way of reducing Chinese influence in Asia.<\/p>\n

And yet to say nothing would mean leaving a close ally in the lurch. On September 18th the White House National Security Council cautiously said that it was \u201cdeeply concerned about the allegations referenced by Prime Minister Trudeau earlier today\u201d. <\/p>\n

On the following day Mr Sunak\u2019s spokesman also took a cautious line. He said the British prime minister would not comment while investigations are under way and would not now take diplomatic action against India. India has also recently expressed concerns about support for Sikh separatism in Britain and Australia, raising concerns that it may take matters into its own hands in those countries, too.<\/p>\n

If Mr Trudeau\u2019s allegation is correct, the assassination points towards an activist turn in the operations of India\u2019s intelligence services in the West, not least the Research and Analysis Wing (raw), India\u2019s foreign-intelligence arm, the likeliest candidate for such a deed. <\/p>\n

Carved out of the domestic Intelligence Bureau in 1968, reputedly with help from the cia, raw has focused mainly on gathering intelligence on, and conducting operations in, Pakistan, China and other neighbours of India. It has been suspected of conducting black operations to influence India\u2019s neighbours, and to arrest and sometimes to kill its foes. But it is hard to find a precedent for such a seemingly overt attack in the West. It would be \u201cmadness to perpetrate an act like this in a Five Eyes country\u201d, says one European former intelligence official, referring to the Western spy pact that connects Canada to America, Australia, Britain and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

India may hope to emulate Israel\u2019s Mossad, whose famously long arm strikes foes far away. But it risks being classed with Russia, whose murders abroad have provoked widespread condemnation and Western sanctions. If the allegation is correct, raw may have spotted a chance to get rid of a troublesome separatist in Canada and send a message to others like him. It is unclear how high a price India will pay.
\n
\nCourtesy: The Economist<\/em><\/p>\n

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On the evening of June 18th Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh leader whom India considered a terrorist, was sitting in his truck in a car park outside a gurdwara (a Sikh temple) in Vancouver when two masked men shot him dead. They escaped through a park and disappeared. On September 18th Justin Trudeau, Canada\u2019s …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘The devastating accusation by Canadian PM Justin Trudeau against India Leads to a Row between Canada and India that could draw in America and Britain\u201d- The Economist’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82743,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82742\/revisions\/82743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}