New Delhi: A week after Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau accused India of the trans-border assassination of a Canadian citizen, the Indian external affairs ministry has officially rejected the charge, top United States and ‘Five Eyes’ officials have asked India to cooperate and most of the world’s media has taken note. But it has not gone unnoticed that India’s usually outspoken foreign minister has chosen to remain silent despite the unprecedented allegation levelled against his government.
On September 18, Trudeau went public with an accusation that no other country has made against India, except Pakistan. He said that Canadian authorities were pursuing “credible allegations” of a “potential link” between “agents of government of India” and the June killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The Indian government regarded Nijjar as a terrorist and a leading proponent of ‘Khalistan’ – a separate homeland for India’s Sikhs.
The first reaction when India woke up early Tuesday morning was a press release from the Ministry of External Affairs that dismissed Canada’s allegations as “motivated” and “biased”. It also said that Canada has been soft on India’s repeated concerns about the activities of pro-Khalistan groups on its soil.
The second press release announced that India had expelled a Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat measure after Ottawa declared an Indian high commission official as a persona non grata.
Two days later, on September 21, the MEA’s weekly media briefing became the platform for India to escalate its response. The ministry’s spokesperson announced the suspension of all visa services, including e-visas, for Canadian nationals, and the high commission of Canada was instructed to reduce its size. Additionally, Canada was labelled a “safe haven” for terrorists, a term India had previously reserved for Pakistan.
But since then, there has been no official statement from Jaishankar or anyone in the Indian government. This, despite the fact that there has been a virtual line-up of statements from the political side in Canada and its closest allies in the west and a raft of reports in the US, British and Canadian press about how the Canadian authorities had signals and human intelligence linking Indian officials to the murder.
In Canada, along with Trudeau, foreign minister Melanie Joly had issued a statement soon after the allegations went public. From the other Five Eye group of countries that share intelligence – i.e. the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand – there was a slow and steady escalation in the level of statements issued.
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Initially, there had been a sense of relief in India over what was seen as lukewarm support from Canada’s allies, largely based on a Washington Post article. The article had claimed that there had been pushback from the other members of Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, including the US, on Canada’s proposal to issue a joint statement.
After Ottawa started to face criticism that it was all alone diplomatically, the Post report was strenuously denied multiple times by the US, including at the level of US national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The weekend was capped with the US ambassador to Canada David Cohen confirming that intelligence from Five Eyes countries had actually contributed to the body of information which led Trudeau to make his allegation against India.
Earlier, all the foreign ministers of the Five Eyes countries, one by one, had made public statements.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken went to the extent of saying that “transnational repression” cannot be tolerated and that Washington was not just consulting but “collaborating” with Canada. Australian foreign minister Penny Wong described the allegations as “concerning” and said that she raised the issue with her Indian counterparts.
UK foreign secretary James Cleverly posted a statement on his official account on X, which was cautiously worded but called the allegations “serious”. Even the smallest Five Eyes member, New Zealand, had its foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta say that if the reports were true, it would be a “serious concern” and that her government was “monitoring developments closely with our partners”.
There was no public condemnation of India, but that was not surprising as all of them said that the legal process had to take its course.
While the political heads of the foreign ministries of the Five Eyes countries made public statements, there has been no such declarations from the Indian foreign minister – or any other political figure of the Union government.
This is a bit unusual as Jaishankar has usually robustly defended the Narendra Modi government against criticism from foreign quarters and been vocal whenever India has had a major difference with the West. His words criticising the ‘European mindset’ in the aftermath of the demand that India stop buying Russian oil following its invasion of Ukraine went viral and turned him into a hero for social media nationalists.
It was also Jaishankar who recently led the charge from the Indian government against China’s new political map in August that continued to show Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese territory.
In April 2023, the minister jumped on the spokespersons of the German foreign office and US state department for taking note of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification as a member of parliament following his conviction in a defamation case. “The West has a bad habit of commenting on others,” Jaishankar said. “They somehow think it is some kind of god-given right. They will have to learn only by experience that if they keep doing this, other people will also start commenting and they will not like it when it happens.”
The year before, Jaishankar indirectly responded to US secretary of state Blinken’s public criticism of India’s human rights record by noting that India also had serious concerns about human rights in the US. Blinken had told reporters – in Jaishankar’s presence – that there had been “a rise in human rights abuses in India by some officials”. Though the minister kept silent at the time, he responded indirectly one day later. “We take up human rights issues when they arise in [the US], especially when they pertain to our community,” he said, adding, “And in fact, we had a case yesterday”. The case he referred to was the mugging of two Indians in Queens, New York, though it was not immediately apparent why Jaishankar was equating street crime with human rights violations by officials.
All eyes on UNGA session, DC visit
After last week’s parliamentary special session, the foreign minister left for New York for the UN General Assembly. He met several of his counterparts and took part in an event on the sidelines of the UNGA.
Though he spoke of “double standards” in the international system by those who had influence and dominant economies and a section of the media sought to read that as a reference to Canada and its allies, Jaishankar’s focus was vague. “In the name of the market a lot of things are done, like in the name of freedom a lot of things are done,” he said, in terms of the agricultural markets for wheat and millet.
On September 26, Jaishankar will have a bigger platform to make India’s stance when he speaks at the General Assembly. It is, of course, not clear if he will address the Canadian issue in his speech, which may largely be about India’s G20 summit and quest for leadership of the Global South.
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Even if he doesn’t directly address the spat with Canada, Jaishankar will very likely refer to “double standards” on terrorism, which is a known position that he has made several times in the past, which will then be interpreted as a swipe at Trudeau by the Indian media in the current context.
The Indian minister will then be travelling to Washington to meet with the US leadership and think tanks, where he will have to naturally address questions on the Nijjar killing.
It will be a tightrope for Jaishankar as he may find it difficult to parse the official Indian statement which was unambiguous. When he does speak publicly, he will certainly need to replicate the aggressive tenor of the official position, which means that there is no possibility of de-escalation from the Indian side.
“What could he possibly say?” a Western diplomat told The Wire. “India has taken such a clear position that there is not much left to say. No word of caution or deescalation [is] possible. I know it is election time but I am amazed how polarised this has become in no time.”
India had left the door slightly ajar when the MEA spokesperson said that New Delhi would be willing to look at specific information but had asserted that none had been provided till now. Prime Minister Trudeau retorted that Canada had conveyed the information “many weeks ago”. There was no public response in New Delhi, but in private, Indian officials reiterated the earlier position that nothing has been shared.
The Canadian media has reported how that country’s national security advisor, Jody Thomas, had made two trips to India in recent months, spending more than nine days in meetings with Indian officials to discuss the information Canada had about an Indian link to Nijjar’s killing. The Financial Times has also reported that US President Joe Biden had raised the issue with Prime Minister Modi during the G20 in Delhi. If indeed Canada and its closest allies have raised their concerns about India with high Indian officials, that may help explain why the job of issuing denials has so far been left to the MEA spokesperson, with the minister keeping himself out of the picture.
The US has already asked India to join the investigation, so it will be critical if this issue of sharing of evidence is addressed by Jaishankar, especially after the US envoy to Canada made it clear there was a Five Eyes hand behind the “credible allegations”.
