To be fair, the friendship was always either nascent or tenuous at best. That Canada is host to the largest Sikh population outside of India, and like many diasporas, more enthused for more extreme political ends than those back home would set the tension level on "not good" anyway. Then you add in that India is ruled by the Hindu Nationalist Party and by Modi, so any friction becomes much hotter and much more useful for domestic political purposes back home.
One can start on either side of the Indo-Pacific region on this. Because my own start as a scholar of the international relations of ethnic politics, which included some study of South Asia, came long before my move to Canada, I will start with the India side. Modi and his party got into power by engaging in ethnic outbidding, by promising to be the best defenders of the Hindu majority, which meant, of course, targeting minorities of all kinds as threats that needed to be put in their place. So, Muslims have paid a significant price for this in India. It has meant in foreign policy that Canada is seen as a real problem, rather than Canada's self-image as the less imperial Commonwealth country that everyone loves more than the US (Canadians take great pride that Americans will put on a Canadian flag on their backpacks when the US is governed by a Bush or Trump).
In Modi's eyes, Canada is a supporter of Sikh separatism. That Sikhs in Canada are politically powerful and use that power to support separatism in the homeland. Yes, Sikhs are powerful--Trudeau at one point had four Sikhs in his cabinet, far out of proportion to their population, but their population is not small. Trudeau kept an awful Minister of National Defence because he didn't want to offend a key constituency and source of campaign dollars. And, yes, an Air India flight was blown up by Canadian-based Sikhs. The intelligence services and the cops messed up before and afterwards. So, Indian fans of Modi cite that event as Canada being a base of anti-India terrorism. The more accurate charge is that Canada continues to be lousy at stopping the flow of money to extremists of all kinds, but, no, Canada is not a place where Sikhs have bases to train for future terrorist attacks. Canada is not Afghanistan of 2001.
Turning to the Canadian side, some folks are accusing Trudeau of playing this up and publicizing this for political gain. And that is, well, laughable. There are two dynamics here that are intersecting. The first is, yes, this government (and any other) would be pandering to Sikh voters, and, yes, significant numbers of folks in this community were asking for the government to take more seriously India's role in the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The other dynamic is that the Trudeau government has faced much criticism for being slow to deal with China's election interference. So, there has been pressure for Trudeau to act faster.
Still, this government did not act precipitously in this case. They did not go public as soon as they got a hint of this. Instead, they worked their allies, and they sent several folks over to India to get their support for an investigation, including Canada's National Security and Intelligence Advisor, Jody Thomas. They were rebuffed. It seems clear that the government would have liked to have continued to handle this quietly, but they got alerted that a reporter was going to release a story on this.
With more stories coming out that the US was the country that had provided some signals intel to Canada that supported the India connection in Nijjar's death, I am pretty convinced that, yes, India through its intelligence services had this guy killed, directly or indirectly. I am biased in this, as I have long been suspicious of Modi and his Hindu National party. But the pattern of events seems to make it clear that there is more than just a little something to this.
While India can be upset that Sikhs in Canada protest against India and support Sikh separatism, and that politicians took the sides of protesters in India over changes in agriculture policy last year, none of that justifies killing a Canadian citizen on Canadian territory. This is not what friends do to each other. Unless something happened that I am not aware of, at no point did the British whack any fundraiser in Boston seeking to support the Irish Republican Army. Modi did this because he is arrogant, and he may be right that he can get away with it since the US needs India in its anti-China containment efforts. And, yes, he would not be the first autocratic-leaning leader to bully Canada. It has been open season for some time with China, Russia, and the Saudis taking turns, with the Iranians also engaged in election interference.
My pals in Ottawa who work in and near the intel scene are pretty outraged at how lamely this government and previous ones have dealt with such stuff. I am not sure better reactions would have mattered that much since the asymmetries in these situations are pretty stark, but, yes, Canada can do better on protecting its citizens, including those in the various diaspora communities, than it has.
I don't expect things to get better between India and Canada. Modi is scoring a lot of points on this at home. Trudeau is not, but he is stuck. I have often wondered why his government pandered so much to Sikhs when there are also other Indian-Canadians here, and that pandering to one side might be problematic for the other. In this case, where a Canadian was killed, taking this seriously is less about the pandering of the past and more of the challenge of defending Canadians from backsliding democracies.
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