India is engaged in an ever-escalating diplomatic policy spat with Canada. More than a year ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Indian officials of being involved in the June 2023 assassination of Sikh community leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar and called on the Indian government to cooperate with Canada in its investigations on the Nijjar killing and other similar attempts.

India rejected accusations as absurd and accused Canada of harboring Khalistani separatists wanted for terrorism in India. The first iteration of the challenge resulted in the expulsion of the diplomats and the reduction of the size of their respective diplomatic presence.

The escalation of the crisis

The crisis continued with periodic flare-ups and has now turned into a diplomatic disaster with no easy paths to early resolution and normalization. For over a year, Canada has asked the Indian government to cooperate with it in its investigation. The Modi government responded by insisting that Canada had not provided any evidence to support its claims and therefore there was nothing the Indian government could do to help.

In recent weeks, Canadian investigative agencies have claimed to have introduced the Indian government with the evidence they have and India rejected it outright. The Canadians first announced that Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Verma (the most senior Indian diplomat in Canada) was a person of interest, along with several other diplomats who have since returned to India. According to media reports, Canadian officials met India’s national security adviser Ajit Doval from Singapore and shared with him the evidence they had gathered.

When they failed to get a cooperative response, Canadian law enforcement went ahead and made public their allegations that India and its officials were involved in assassinations and extortion of Canadian citizens in Canada and also in criminal activities and electoral interference. The latest escalation in the steady stream of allegations included the disclosure of Canada’s deputy foreign minister David Morrison that he confirmed to the Washington Post that India’s actions, which amounted to a transnational crackdown, were ordered by Amit Shah, India’s home minister and confidant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Furthermore, Canada now sees India as a “cyber threat adversary”, which is probably an attempt to increase diplomatic pressure.

The diplomatic crisis has not yet affected economic relations between the two nations. But the battle of narratives continues to escalate. Canada continues to insist that it values ​​good relations with India, but cannot tolerate the violation of its sovereignty by India’s actions against its citizens.

India has taken a very dismissive stance towards Trudeau and Canada, treating him as one flawed economy and accusing it of neglecting India’s legitimate concerns about anti-India activism, terrorism and separatism from some members of the Indian diaspora based in Canada. The Indian government also released a narrative which paints Trudeau as an incompetent, failed leader desperately clinging to a fragile minority government, aided and abetted by a party led by a Khalistan supporter, Jagmeet Singh. Singh is the leader of the Democratic National Party, whose non-government support in the Canadian Parliament keeps Trudeau in power.

Meanwhile, in a Parallel Universe

Two months after Trudeau’s explosive accusations against India in the Canadian Parliament, US officials filed charges against an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, alleging that he tried to hire a murderer to kill an American citizen on American soil. There was no exception, no public comment from President Joe Biden, but the indictment opened in a US Federal Court was quite damning.

India’s response to these allegations was to announce that the Indian government had instituted a high-level inquiry into to investigate information that the United States shared with the Indian government. The Indian government has responded in a rather mature manner, respecting US concerns without dismissing them as absurd and promising to take meaningful action.

The contrast between the Indian government’s response to similar accusations from Canada was striking. On the US side, the case progressed without any diplomatic drama. This is a major difference from the Canadian case, where each rising charge was met with even more severe dismissal and counter-action, such as suspension of visas for Canadians wishing to visit India.

Unlike the Canadian government, which has so far only made accusations without sharing information or evidence it has gathered with the public, US authorities have continued to advance their case. With each new step, they dealt a severe blow to the Modi government’s narrative that it was not involved in any transnational repressive activities. Most recently the US authorities filed charges against a former Indian intelligence agent for his role in the murder-for-hire plot foiled by the FBI. At every opportunity, US spokespeople insist that India must cooperate with the Canadian investigation and that the US would like to see meaningful accountability.

Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, the target, has now filed the cases a civil suit against the Indian government and named Doval as one of those behind the plot to kill him. The high-level team that the Modi government set up to investigate recently visited the United States and shared its findings. This inquiry did not share its findings with the Indian parliament or the Indian public.

The US response was to demand meaningful accountability. Vedanta Patel, the State Department’s deputy spokesman said “certainly the United States will not be satisfied until there is significant accountability that results from that investigation.”

Power and diplomacy

The two sets of accusations about the same issue, one from Canada and one from the US, and the two completely different responses they got from India must be for realists, who believe that power is the most important element in world politics, a justification. of their paradigm.

India considers itself stronger and more influential in the global order than Canada, which is a member of NATO, the Five Eyes, the G-7 and the G-20. India thus adopted a combative posture. It also bets that Canada cannot do much economic damage to India, even if the Canadians they have huge investments in India that they might withdraw and have already stalled talks on a possible free trade agreement. India also seems confident that other Western nations will not undermine their growing relations with India for Canada.

But with the United States, which India sees as a much stronger state and a much-needed partner, India’s response is much more subdued and cooperative. To be fair, the US cornered India by extraditing and arresting Nikhil Gupta and initiating legal proceedings that are not as easy to dismiss as Canada’s efforts, which at the moment amount to mere allegations without evidence presented in the public domain. S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister of India, more or less acknowledged this in a statement in the Rajya Sabha last December when he stated that the reason for the difference in response was that one nation (the US) provided important “input” while the other (Canada) did not.

The real difference is probably that the US was sharing its contribution publicly by filing charges in the courts, while Canada was doing it privately. In addition, it also matters that the US is a superpower, while Canada is not.

Questions for policy makers in India

India has legitimate concerns about anti-Indian separatist Khalistan their movement and actions in Canada as well as in India. But trying to use criminals to assassinate Khalistan activists in strong friendly democracies is not smart policy, especially given the rather sloppy covert trade displayed by its intelligence agency.

US counterintelligence not only caught them red-handed, but could also gather enough evidence to embarrass India and push it into a diplomatic corner. Given that there is no significant Khalistani activism in India, such an aggressive policy of violating the sovereignty of a friendly state is ill-advised. It brought more attention to the Khalistan cause and damaged India’s reputation as one of the best states in the international arena.

India is compounding the ramifications of its strategic mistake by trying to bully Canada. His denials seem apocryphal when seen alongside developments on the US side of the issue. India’s combative stance towards Canada undermines its affinity among the Western political elite, and its cooperative stance towards the US makes it appear weak in the eyes of the Global South. India needs the West for new technology, advanced weapons, investment, markets for its exports and allies to balance China and the high-paying jobs its citizens hold in Western countries, sending home billions of dollars in remittances. It cannot jeopardize these interests.

India has mishandled this crisis with Canada and if there is no course correction, it could damage India’s international image, diminish its soft power and create a rift between India on the one hand and Canada and its allies, including the United States, which are both members. of NATO as well as the Five Eyes intelligence consortium.

If this posture of denial and bravado towards Canada is only to demonstrate that India is a major power, then it is wrong. But if this policy is meant to shield the Indian leadership from blame for orchestrating a campaign of transnational repression, then it undermines Indian national interests by prolonging the crisis.