Sort it out, and move on

For the past week, the world has watched with incredulity the escalating row between India, the world’s most populous nation, and Canada, the second largest by territory and home to the largest Sikh diaspora outside India. The dispute is over the alleged assassination by Indian agents of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist figure and India-born Canadian, in a Vancouver suburb. While Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood in Parliament to say that he had “credible evidence” linking the Indian state to the murder, New Delhi dismissed the claim as “absurd” and accused Ottawa of tolerating “politically condoned hate crimes”. Both have conducted tit-for-tat expulsions of intelligence station chiefs.

The blow-up has global ramifications. Canada is the United States’ closest neighbour and steadfast ally, even sharing telecommunications country codes. On the other hand, the swiftly developing strategic partnership with India is described by Washington as the “most consequential” for its approach to the Indo-Pacific. From Britain to Australia, the Western world is in a quandary; caught between standing up for principles of non-interference in domestic affairs by foreign powers, and the imperative of staying on the right side of the world’s fifth-biggest economy, and emerging power. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged India to work with Canada in its investigation and said that the US “wants to see accountability”.