Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had raised the delicate matter with his host, Narendra Modi, at the Group of 20 summit, a carefully choreographed event the Indian leader took great pride in.
The revelation, had it come out then, would have surely spoiled Modi’s moment and there were broader geopolitical stakes too.
Days later the palpable tension between the two men spilled out into the open when Trudeau accused India’s government of involvement in the fatal shooting in June of a prominent Sikh activist on the outskirts of Vancouver. The allegations were swiftly denied, but the damage to the relationship is now done.
Modi, leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has suggested Trudeau is soft on Sikh separatism. But in Canada, the Sikh diaspora is politically powerful, with politicians at high levels in all major political parties, and they form an influential voting bloc in key election battlegrounds.
It’s a delicate matter and Trudeau has not always navigated those sensitivities well. On a 2018 trip to India, for example, he was widely mocked for wearing “fancy dress” at the holiest of sites for Sikhs.
On this occasion, he probably had little choice on when to go public as the news was about to leak. He’s also been criticized for not responding forcefully enough to allegations of foreign meddling in Canadian elections.
Less than a year ago, India-Canada relations appeared to be on an upward trajectory. Trudeau’s government unveiled a strategy to reduce Canada’s reliance on China — by far its largest Asian trading partner — by deepening economic ties with others, including India.
That plan now looks at risk. —Brian Platt and Flavia Krause-Jackson