How the US and Canada took very different approaches to alleged Indian assassination plots
Relations between Canada and India are at rock bottom.
Relations between Canada and India are at rock bottom with both countries expelling their top diplomats this week in the latest episode in the ongoing international row over the assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023.
But in contrast to the tough line taken by Canada in public, the United States government has taken an altogether different approach, confining its discomfort with alleged Indian involvement in a plot to assassinate another Sikh leader in New York largely to private conversations with Indian officials. The gulf between the two diplomatic styles demonstrates that allied countries are adopting markedly different strategies when it comes to handling the rise of India as a geopolitical power.
Earlier this week, the Canadian police announced that it had uncovered a network of Indian agents who have allegedly been involved in “homicides, extortion and violent acts” against supporters of the Khalistan movement who advocate for the creation of a breakaway Sikh state in India, accusations that Delhi dismissed as “preposterous”.
The pro-Khalistan movement was at its peak during the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s with numerous Sikh armed groups engaged in a violent struggle with the Indian state. Although the bloody insurgency was essentially defeated by the mid-1990s with the movement no longer retaining a significant presence in the Indian state of Punjab and loudly disavowed by all mainstream Indian political parties, there remains some support for the pro-Khalistan movement amongst diaspora communities particularly in Canada which is home to the largest Sikh population outside of Punjab.
With Canadian authorities claiming that it has “credible, irrefutable evidence” of Indian government officials’ direct involvement in the murder of Nijjar on Canadian soil, Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats including the high commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma who Canada claims oversaw Delhi’s intelligence collection operation against Sikh activists in the country. The information obtained by the Indian embassy in Ottawa was then allegedly passed onto India’s foreign intelligence service The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) who, according to Canadian officials, used this material to identify individuals who would subsequently be targeted by Indian criminal proxies.
Delhi responded in kind to Ottawa’s expulsion of six diplomats, expelling the same number of Canadian officials from India including the Charge d’Affaires Stewart Wheeler, a new diplomatic low that the countries had previously managed to avoid even when Canada expressed outrage at Indian nuclear tests in the 1970s and 1990s.
This diplomatic dispute creates something of a dilemma for Canada. Washington, which would typically provide public support for Ottawa on such an issue, has largely remained silent with the US not keen to antagonise India; a country that it views as central to its China Plus One strategy of encouraging companies to divert their investments and “derisk” from China. A key component of this “friendshoring” approach, which seeks to reduce American dependence on Chinese manufacturing, involves India which, with its large domestic market, plentiful labour pool and low wages, are viewed by some as the ideal alternative for Western companies.
This relocation of American capital has already begun with Apple opting to expand its manufacturing facilities in India at the expense of China in 2022 with Foxconn, the largest company involved in the production of Apple’s iPhones, currently constructing three new factories in Southern India.
While there remain a number of significant challenges to attracting foreign investment in India such as infrastructure and bureaucratic obstacles as well as the overvaluation of the rupee compared to other currencies, Washington views India as strategically vital in its competition with Beijing, a reality which Delhi is happy to cash in on.
This realpolitik partnership, often accompanied by language lauding shared democratic values, potentially explains the diverging reaction to the discovery of alleged Indian attacks against Sikh activists in the United States compared to Canada.
Indeed, while the diplomatic discourse in the aftermath of Nijjar’s murder in Canada played out in public, the news that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) had indicted a serving Indian government official for alleged involvement in the failed assassination plot against Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on US soil flew somewhat under the radar.
Pannun, an American national, who is a Sikh leader in the pro-Khalistan movement and designated as a terrorist in India, was allegedly targeted in June 2023 at the direction of an individual the DOJ has only identified as “CC1”. India has since stated this individual is no longer a government employee and now under arrest pending an investigation.
The announcement on Monday that members of the Indian inquiry committee investigating the incident would visit the US to discuss the matter with American officials was in stark contrast to the diplomatic spat unfolding between the Canadian and Indian governments that same day. The fact that the Pannun investigation has largely remained out of the public sphere is by design, with US officials privately discussing the matter with the Indian government during August and October last year before the issue came into the public domain.
This divergence between the United States and Canada’s public reactions highlights the diplomatic realities that the US has had to juggle while it tries to simultaneously defend international norms and build an international network of alliances to isolate Beijing. In this instance, Washington has put its strategic desires first perhaps at the expense of reprising its role as the “world’s policemen”.
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