The Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, on Sept.19, where two masked men gunned down Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18.DON MACKINNON/AFP/Getty Images
The day after the explosive allegation, there was digging in.
The Canadian government wasn’t going to be easing the tension with India. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wasn’t trying to escalate the situation, but that the Indian government had better realize it is serious.
India called Mr. Trudeau’s allegation that its agents were potentially linked to the assassination of B.C. Sikh community leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar “absurd” and politically “motivated.”
There was more. The long-running tensions between New Delhi and Ottawa over the Indian government’s assertion that Canada is soft on Khalistani separatist extremists in Canada, and its accusation that some of Mr. Trudeau’s ministers support them, seethed out in the open in a public statement – and a bitter response.
Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan dismissed the suggestion that ministers like him support extremists as part of years of false accusations against him and other Sikh Canadians.
“I have answered this question for a very long time. I’ve served my country in the military. I’ve been a police officer. You can just imagine the scrutiny that you end up going through,” he told reporters.
“And then, I think you guys can do your own math on this when accusations are made and then looking at what other nations may potentially do in trying to ruin somebody’s reputation just for the sake of trying to create a certain narrative,” he said.
“This is something that all Canadians need to be mindful of. It’s something that our community and some other communities have been very mindful of for a very long time.”
To say the least, Monday’s very public, shocking allegation wasn’t followed by cool diplomacy. The Canadian government was sticking to its call for India to co-operate with an investigation. The Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded to Canada’s expulsion of an Indian diplomat by expelling a Canadian.
India is denying it all. And accusing Mr. Trudeau’s government of politicking with a false allegation of state-backing assassination.
Of course, the question of whether Canada does enough to investigate extremists among Khalistani activists is not the issue right now. It’s one thing for the Indian government to express dismay at what people do in Canada. It would still be unjustifiable to send agents to Canada to kill one of its citizens. That is the unprecedented allegation Mr. Trudeau has made on the world stage. And it’s not clear what happens next.
“This is the opening act in this drama,” said University of Ottawa professor of international affairs Roland Paris, who was Mr. Trudeau’s foreign-policy adviser in the Prime Minister’s first year in office. “And we don’t know what the subsequent acts might be.”
It is perhaps no surprise the two governments are digging in. Mr. Trudeau can’t back off now. And it appears the Canadian government had shared intelligence and sought co-operation from Indian authorities for weeks before the allegation was made public.
The Prime Minister’s national security and intelligence adviser, Jody Thomas, travelled to India twice, and the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, David Vigneault, also visited.
The key question remains whether Canadian police will gather usable evidence in their investigation. Without that, it’s not clear whether there will be any international outcome other than years of tension between India and Canada.
Some of Canada’s allies, led by the U.S. but including others such as Australia, expressed their concern about the allegation in a supportive tone. But none will go further, to condemning India, until there is evidence garnered in an investigation and made public.
Even if the allegation is proven, there is no practical form of international justice to wait for beyond a criminal trial for the perpetrators in Canada. The biggest impact, Prof. Paris said, would be on India’s reputation, and its ambition to be seen as a fulcrum between the U.S. and Western nations, developing countries, and China and Russia.
But he noted that Canada’s major allies won’t want their relations with India to sour, either, especially at a time when there are serious tensions with both Russia and China. “The United States sees India as a really important partner in its regional diplomacy and its competition with China,” he said.