As FTA Talks Are Put on Hold, India-Canada Ties Continue to Deteriorate

Deferring the FTA was a reflection of Trudeau’s unhappiness with India’s alleged role in the Nijjar killing.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

(Photo: PTI)

India’s relations with Canada are now in the doldrums. After years of tortuous negotiations, a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was on the verge of being signed, has now been placed on hold indefinitely.

Canada’s decision to defer the agreement was a clear-cut reflection of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unhappiness with India’s alleged involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an activist for Sikh separatism whom India deemed to be a terrorist sympathiser.

Retaliatory Steps Taken by New Delhi and Ottawa

Statements from diplomatic sources ranging from Australia to the United States have suggested that they found Trudeau’s charges against India to be credible.

However, none of Canada’s allies, let alone Ottawa itself, have provided a shred of evidence that would clearly implicate the government of India in Nijjar’s killing. Their standard argument, quite predictably, has been that providing such proof of India’s involvement in his assassination would compromise “sources and methods” that intelligence agencies routinely rely on.

Nevertheless, Ottawa has refused to back down on its allegations and has sought the cooperation of New Delhi to help ascertain who was behind Nijjar’s killing.

For its part, New Delhi has categorically dismissed the charges that have been leveled against it. And, to signal its displeasure with Ottawa it has induced Canada to significantly trim the size of its mission in New Delhi with forty-one Canadian diplomats being induced to leave.

Furthermore, the Indian High Commission in Ottawa had also stopped issuing visas to Canadians in September. Subsequently, about a month later, it partially restored visa services.

Despite this minor improvement amidst the diplomatic spat,  both countries have engaged in the reciprocal expulsions of intelligence officials who had been operating in the respective capitals under diplomatic cover.

Quite unsurprisingly, relations between the two states remain fraught and are unlikely to be placed on an even keel anytime soon. 

Current Impasse Has Been in the Making for Years if Not Decades

During the Punjab crisis there was credible evidence that segments of the Sikh diaspora in Canada and elsewhere were not only Khalistani sympathizers but actually aided and abetted the movement.

Worse still, there was ample evidence that certain members of the Sikh diaspora were incontrovertibly involved in placing a bomb on an Air India flight in 1985 from Canada to India via the United Kingdom killing all the passengers and crew as the bomb detonated when the plane was near Ireland.

To New Delhi’s dismay and frustration Canada only managed to successfully prosecute the bomb maker who received a ten-year sentence.

Unfortunately, long before the latest fracas over the killing of NIjjar, India had had a troubled relationship with Canada over the extradition of individuals whom New Delhi deemed to be implicated in acts of terror. In 1982, for example, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had raised the issue of the possible deportation of Talwinder Singh Parmar, a member of a militant separatist organization, the Babbar Khalsa, who was later implicated in the bombing of an Air India airliner. 

Furthermore, prior to Canada’s public allegation that New Delhi had a direct role in Nijjar’s assassination, Prime Minister Modi had expressed serious misgivings at the G-20 Summit in New Delhi in September with Prime Minister Trudeau about the resurgence of Khalistani sentiments and activities on Canadian soil.

Furthermore, earlier in June, Indian authorities had formally protested the depiction of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination in a public parade in Canada. To New Delhi’s dismay, Trudeau had dismissed these qualms on the grounds that the display was permissible under Canada’s free speech laws.

The Exigencies of Domestic Politics

The issue of India’s possible involvement in Nijjar’s killing remains unresolved. However, there is little or no question that Ottawa’s tough stance on this issue does not solely stem from its concerns about the assassination of one of its citizens on its soil.

Instead, its position on the subject, without question, stems from the exigencies of domestic politics. Trudeau’s shaky coalition government is dependent on its political survival upon the New Democratic Party which is known for its support of the Khalistani cause.

Consequently, it is hardly a surprise that Trudeau has been quite solicitous of the views and sentiments of its leader, Jagmeet Singh. As political scientists would argue, he is playing a two-level game: on the one hand he is dealing with India about its possible involvement in Nijjar’s death. Simultaneously, he is also signaling to a powerful domestic electoral constituency that he is not oblivious to their concerns.

Is this impasse in Indo-Canadian relations likely to persist for the foreseeable future? At least two factors suggest that it will. First, as Prime Minister Modi gears up for a national election next year, he can ill-afford to appear to cave in to Canadian and other external demands about an investigation into the circumstances that led to Nijjar’s death. The Indian electorate takes threats to its territorial integrity seriously and there is little or no sympathy, even amongst Sikhs within India, for the Khalistani cause.

Second, Trudeau, having made the accusation public while beholden to his coalition partner, also cannot easily walk away from the charges that he has leveled against India. These two imperatives are fundamentally at odds.

Consequently, regardless of the veracity of the allegations the issue is currently so politically freighted in both capitals that any swift diplomatic resolution is simply not in the offing. The matter of the free trade agreement, in which both states had invested much effort, now seems trivial in comparison with the overall frosty quality of the bilateral relationship.

Restoring even a small amount of amity and trust will require both capitals to undertake good-faith efforts to defuse tensions. Neither side, at the present time, has much room for maneuver. The BJP faces a national election next year and Trudeau remains hemmed in owing to the exigencies of coalition politics.  

(Sumit Ganguly holds the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington and is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)