India expelled a senior Canadian diplomat Tuesday and accused Canada of interfering in its internal affairs, escalating a fight with Ottawa over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations of Indian involvement in the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada.
On Monday, Trudeau said there were credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh independence advocate who was gunned down June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia. As a result, Ottawa expelled a top Indian diplomat.
India has rejected the allegations as “absurd.” But New Delhi has fought against a movement to establish an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan since the 1980s, when a raid on separatists in a major Sikh temple led to the assassination of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and unleashed a wave of anti-Sikh violence.
Nijjar was wanted by Indian authorities, who accused him of involvement in an alleged attack on a Hindu priest in India and had offered a cash reward for information leading to his arrest. Nijjar was organizing an unofficial referendum on Sikh independence from India at the time of this death.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer and spokesperson for the organization Sikhs for Justice, said Nijjar had been warned by Canadian intelligence officials about being targeted for assassination by “mercenaries” before he was gunned down.
Trudeau told Parliament on Monday that Canadian security agencies were investigating “credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen.”
“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” he said.
India’s foreign ministry dismissed the allegation as absurd and accused Canada of harboring “terrorists and extremists.”
“Such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it wrote in a statement issued Tuesday.
India has long demanded that Canada take action against the Sikh independence movement, which is banned in India but has support in countries, such as Canada and Britain, with sizable Sikh diaspora populations. Canada has a Sikh population of more than 770,000, about 2% of the total.
In March, the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi summoned Canada’s ambassador to New Delhi to complain about Sikh independence protests in Canada. In 2020, India’s foreign ministry also summoned the ambassador over comments made by Trudeau about an agricultural protest movement associated with the state of Punjab, where many Sikhs live.
Critics accuse Modi’s Hindu nationalist government of seeking to suppress dissenters and activists using sedition laws and other legal weapons. Some critics of his administration, including intellectuals, activists, filmmakers, students and journalists, have been arrested, creating what Modi’s opponents say is a culture of intimidation.
The dueling expulsions of diplomats come amid tense relations between Canada and India. Trade talks have been derailed, and Canada just canceled a trade mission to India that was planned for the fall.
Trudeau told Parliament that he brought up Nijjar’s slaying with Modi at the G-20 summit in New Delhi last week. He said that he told Modi any Indian government involvement would be unacceptable and that he asked for cooperation in the investigation.
For his part, Modi expressed “strong concerns” over Canada’s handling of the Sikh independence movement, India’s statement Tuesday said.
The statement called on Canada to work with India on what New Delhi called a threat to the Canadian Indian community, and described the Sikh movement as “promoting secessionism and inciting violence” against Indian diplomats. Earlier this year, supporters of the Khalistan movement vandalized Indian consulates in London and San Francisco.
While in New Delhi for the G-20, Trudeau skipped a dinner hosted by the India’s figurehead president, and local media reports said Modi made himself available to Trudeau for only a quick “pull-aside” chat on the summit’s sidelines instead of a bilateral meeting. Making things worse, Trudeau was stuck in India for 36 hours after the summit ended because his flight was grounded because of a mechanical snag.
“Trudeau’s turbulent India trip refuses to end,” read the headline on the India Today website last week.
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It’s unclear when exactly Trudeau brought up Nijjar’s case with Modi during the G-20.
Some analysts in India question whether Canada has proof of Indian links to the killing and whether Trudeau is trying to drum up support among the Sikh diaspora.
“Such a charge against India by a G-7 nation is unprecedented. The Canadian government has deliberately made a spectacle of it to please its domestic constituency amongst the Sikh diaspora,” said K.C. Singh, a former diplomat and strategic affairs expert. He added that Canada didn’t present hard evidence and that Trudeau’s statement “unnecessarily upped the ante.”
“India should’ve seen it coming. Trudeau needed to be engaged, not snubbed during his India visit. Now it has reached a point of difficult return,” Singh, the former diplomat, also said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
On Monday, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said the expelled Indian diplomat was the head of Indian intelligence in Canada.
Joly said Trudeau had also raised the matter with President Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Canadian opposition leader Jagmeet Singh of the New Democrats, who is Sikh, called the allegations over Nijjar’s slaying shocking.
“To hear the prime minister of Canada corroborate a potential link between a murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil by a foreign government is something I could never have imagined,” Singh said.
The World Sikh Organization of Canada called Nijjar an outspoken supporter of Khalistan who “often led peaceful protests against the violation of human rights actively taking place in India and in support of Khalistan.”
India’s main opposition party issued a statement backing Modi’s position. The Congress party wrote that “the country’s interests and concerns must be kept paramount at all times” and that the fight against terrorism has to be uncompromising, especially when it threatens the nation’s sovereignty.
In 1984, Indian forces stormed the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar to flush out Sikh separatists who had taken refuge there. The controversial operation killed around 400 people, according to official figures, although Sikh groups say the toll was higher.
Gandhi, the prime minister who ordered the raid, was killed afterwards by two of her bodyguards, who were Sikh. Her death triggered a series of anti-Sikh riots, in which Hindu mobs went from house to house across northern India, pulling Sikhs from their homes, hacking many to death and burning others alive.
