Canada on Monday expelled six Indian diplomats, including India’s High Commissioner to Canada, for being part of a widespread criminal network to intimidate and harass Sikhs in Canada. India responded by expelling six Canadian diplomats.
The expulsion escalated a conflict between the two countries that began last year with the assassination of a Canadian in British Columbia. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India of orchestrating the brazen killing, setting off a chain reaction of accusations and diplomatic clashes between the two countries.
Here’s what we know — and what we don’t know — about the complex chain of events that tore apart once-friendly relations between India and Canada.
How did this all begin?
Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the abbot of a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, was ambushed and shot dead by three masked men on June 18, 2023. He was a Sikh activist who sought an independent state carved out of northern India.
In September 2023, Canada's prime minister told MPs that “agents of the Indian government” were involved in Nijjar’s murder, angering the Indian government.
On May 3, three Indian men were arrested in Canada and charged with murder.
The Indian government has vehemently denied accusations that Mr. Trudeau was involved in Mr. Nijjar’s murder, saying he was pandering to Canada’s large Sikh community for political gain.
Who is Hardeep Singh Nijjar?
Mr. Nijjar was born in the northern Indian state of Punjab. He immigrated to Canada in the mid-1990s after a period of repression of the Sikh movement by India.
In Canada, Nijjar worked as a plumber, got married and had two sons. Mr. Nijjar obtained Canadian citizenship in 2015. In 2020, Mr. Nijal became the chairman of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurudwara, a Sikh temple in Surrey.
According to an open letter to the Canadian government in 2016, Nijjar was a self-described “Sikh nationalist who believes in and supports the right of Sikhs to self-determination and the independence of Indian-occupied Punjab through a future referendum.” He was a key figure in British Columbia’s efforts to gather votes for a Canadian referendum supporting the creation of a state called Khalistan, which would include parts of Punjab.
The Indian government declared Nijjar a terrorist in 2020, decades after he left India. He was accused of planning violent attacks in India and leading a terrorist organization called the Khalistan Tiger Force. However, politicians and journalists in Punjab claimed that despite the accusations, many locals had never heard of him or his movement.
Who are the Sikh separatists?
Sikhism is the fifth largest organized religion in the world, with approximately 26 million followers worldwide, approximately 23 million of whom live in the state of Punjab. Sikhs make up less than 2% of India’s 1.4 billion people.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the movement for an independent state gained momentum among the Sikhs of Punjab and the Sikh diaspora around the world. This movement eventually sparked an armed rebellion that lasted more than a decade. India responded with force, including torture, illegal detention, and extrajudicial killings to suppress the movement.
In 1984, then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the military to storm the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, in Amritsar and arrest rebels hiding there. Hundreds of people died in the attack.
Later that year, Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards. This led to widespread anti-Sikh violence in northern India. Thousands of Sikhs were massacred in organized pogroms.
The Indian government now claims that Canada’s lax stance on politically influential Sikh extremism poses a national security threat to India. But analysts, political leaders and residents say there is little support for the separatist cause in Punjab, which peaked in deadly violence decades ago.
This phrase is still shouted among some of the Sikh diaspora of around 3 million people, especially in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Why is Canada involved?
Many Sikhs immigrated to Canada. According to Canada’s 2021 Census, Sikhs make up 2.1 per cent of the population, making Canada the country with the largest Sikh population outside of India.
India said it had warned Canada that Canadian Sikh extremists like Mr. Nijjar were planning violence in Punjab in a bid to turn it into an independent Sikh state.
India has accused Prime Minister Trudeau of being sympathetic to Sikh separatists because many Sikhs support the Liberal Party.
Officials also claim that Sikh separatists have destroyed India’s diplomatic missions and threatened Indian diplomats, and blame the inaction of their counterparts in Britain, the United States and Australia.
These allegations came under new scrutiny when another assassination plot against a Sikh activist was narrowly thwarted, this time in the United States.
What happened in the US?
In November, American prosecutors charged Indian national Nikhil Gupta with murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire. Officials said the target was Gurpatwant Singh Panun, general counsel for Sikhs for Justice, a group that supports the separation of Punjab from India.
Prosecutors pointed to a connection between this assassination attempt and Mr. Nijjar’s murder in June. Anonymous Indian government officials then announced that they had orchestrated the assassination attempt.
The plan failed. The man who planned the assassination hired a hitman who was actually a secret agent.
Why did Canada claim that Indian diplomats were part of a criminal network?
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a press conference Monday that it believes the six diplomats are part of a broader criminal network involved in murder, intimidation, harassment and extortion targeting Sikhs in Canada. .
He said the operation has been expanded across the country, wherever the Sikh community is present. Among other details, the Indian operative group said it collects information to blackmail Sikhs through paid informants or by blackmailing and threatening individuals within the community. .
After Canada arrested three men in connection with Nijjar’s murder, Canadian public broadcaster CBC reported that the suspects belonged to an Indian criminal organization.
CBC reported that the gang the hitmen were involved in was led by Lawrence Bishnoi, who is accused in several cases of murder, extortion and drug trafficking. Officials say he orchestrated most of the attacks from an Indian prison, where he has been held since 2014.
Mr. Bishnoi wields tremendous power behind bars, giving television interviews from prison last year in which he pitched himself as a nationalist fighter rather than a criminal mastermind.
“I am a nationalist,” Bishnoi said in the interview. “I am against Khalistan. I am against Pakistan.”
India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has long been suspected of infiltrating and conducting operations in criminal networks while maintaining deniability, analysts and former officials said.
What happens next?
Relations between India and Canada are at an impasse. This dramatic development means that it will take time for the two countries to restore diplomatic relations.
Meanwhile, Canada releases further details about its ongoing investigation into what it calls a criminal network run by the Indian government in Canada, particularly allegations that Indian government officials are involved in “murders.” There will be pressure to do so.
Canadian authorities did not say on Monday who else besides Mr. Nijjar was killed as part of these operations.
What impact will this have on world affairs?
Apart from its immediate law enforcement implications, this rift also has geopolitical significance. Canada and India are two important countries on the world stage, each with their own ways of doing things, and a breakdown in their relationship would disrupt global affairs.
Canada is a member of NATO, the Group of Seven Wealth Nations and the Group of 20, and is also one of the Five Eyes group of intelligence-sharing Western nations that includes the United States. Canada tends to have a lower profile than other countries within these groups, but as a traditional moderate power, it is present in all major geopolitical global decisions.
India is not an obscure middle power, but a fast-growing country. It is the world’s most populous country, an economic powerhouse, a major trading partner and a sought-after ally for countries such as the United States and the European Union.
But as other governments favor Mr. Modi, they argue that he has led India down a path of authoritarianism and that he and his allies have mistreated the country’s minorities as they pursue Hindu nationalist policies. To varying degrees, they have chosen to turn a blind eye to the accusations that they are
The Biden administration has been cautious about its own concerns about Mr. Modi, who has received a warm welcome, even as U.S. officials support Canada’s efforts to crack down on criminal networks that India allegedly operates in the country. Ta. at the White House last year.
Nevertheless, following the recent conflict between Canada and India, Western governments have come under increased pressure to stand up against transnational repression, that is, the intimidation and killing of people within another country’s territory. It will probably happen.
