India-Canada ties going ‘south rapidly’ amid row over killing of Sikh separatist

India’s tit-for-tat expulsion of a Canadian envoy over the killing of a Sikh separatist near Vancouver could snowball into a long-term deterioration of ties between two countries which have otherwise enjoyed strong trade, investment and people-to-people to contacts, analysts have said.
On Tuesday, New Delhi rejected as “absurd” accusations by Ottawa that Indian intelligence agents were involved in the June murder of Canadian man Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia.
Hours earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had told an emergency parliament session that his government had “credible allegations” linking Indian agents to the death of Nijjar, an exiled Sikh leader. It was an “unacceptable violation of our sovereignty”, he said.
Nijjar had campaigned for an independent Sikh nation known as Khalistan, a movement that had rocked India’s Punjab state in the 1980s and early 1990s. Today, the advocates are mostly among Punjabi overseas diaspora, many of whom are settled in Canada. India has often complained to Canada’s government about the activities of Sikh hardliners.

Analysts say the warning signs for a potential deterioration in the bilateral relationship should have been heeded long ago.
“Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has strong domestic reasons to raise the issue and so has India because of the Khalistan issue. There seems to be now a free fall in the relationship,” said Harsh Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London. “The underlying issues have been there for a while and have not been resolved.”
C. Uday Bhaskar, director of New Delhi-based Society for Policy Studies, called the matter a “very low point in bilateral relations [that] could have been avoided”.

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