Why has India reacted differently to Canada & US? Trudeau did politics, America hard diplomacy

Canadians have kept Nijjar case on a high political & emotional plane. US meanwhile has pushed for accountability in the alleged attempt on Pannun's life, without emotional outrage.

Featured image: Soham Sen | ThePrint

An important question is being asked: why is the Indian response to the US on the Pannun issue so qualitatively different from what it is to Canada on Nijjar?

We could begin with asking why Canada’s approach towards India has been so qualitatively different from America’s? Both are the closest allies, and both have similar issues based on shared intelligence. We need to explore this deeper, really declutter in a clinical manner.

Note, for example, that this day after, as Canada and India pick the debris of their relationship that has taken six years’ wrecking, something quite different is afoot between India and the US.

As I write this, in New Delhi, teams from the two sides are signing the deal for India’s purchase of the MQ-9B drones, the first time the US has sold these to a non-Treaty ally. 

In Washington, at the same time, teams of intelligence/law enforcement professionals from the two sides are meeting to exchange notes on the progress of their mutual inquiries on the failed attempt on Gurpatwant Singh Pannun’s life. The American and Indian sides have also kept their preferred publications on either side informed of the ‘progress’. India hasn’t called the US allegations preposterous or dismissed them as nonsense as with Canada’s. There is also no justification sought for an assassination bid in a friendly country. India’s approaching the allegations as if investigating a real crime. Very different from Nijjar in Canada. 

On the Indian side, now we know that ‘CC-1’ (CC for co-conspirator)—the lower mid-level CRPF officer seconded to RAW who’s already been named—has been moved out, most likely dismissed from service, and probably arrested. On the US side, the trial of the alleged drug dealer Nikhil Gupta for trying to secure a hired gun for his ‘principals’ in RAW will begin soon.

Two immediate points arise and make our first important takeaway. One, that no side is abusing, cursing the other, ratcheting it up into a diplomatic dustup, no one is calling the other a thug, or state sponsor of terror and either way claiming victimhood. Second, no politician, no top official has spoken out from every side. Search me, I can’t even tell you the names of the members of this Indian delegation, forget the American one. They are just some, mostly anonymous police officers. This is being handled entirely between professionals from the two sides, with clear instructions from their bosses to resolve the issues as calmly and fairly as possible. That’s the approach of enforcing accountability, punishing the guilty while at the same time throwing a protective blanket around a very vital, strategic relationship. That’s how big, mature powers deal with their differences. In simpler terms, it is also called not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

In contrast, the Canadians have kept it on a high political and emotional plane, with Justin Trudeau making the charge first in his House of Commons. Canadian media tells us he panicked into making that statement because news leaked that The Globe and Mail had scooped it and was about to publish. The Americans, on the other hand, ‘let’ a newspaper (Washington Post) break the true story. One G-7 and Five Eyes ally wanted the headlines, a blaze of glory and political dividends by the garbage-truckload, the other pushed for accountability, without emotional outrage, naming and shaming at any political level. They’ve pushed it over the edge. We see the outcome. Which side is seeing justice, and which is a train wreck.

Third, for Trudeau’s approach to be called a success, this needs to help him win the next election. Tough, given the latest opinion poll numbers—his party’s at about half the level of support compared to his conservative rival Pierre Pollievre. Or the hope is that he gets enough for a hung parliament and Jagmeet Singh’s NDP becomes the usual ally. Who knows, elections can throw surprises. But just that calculation makes these sudden expulsions look politically loaded, with his election months away. 

Again, see the US in contrast. Three weeks from their presidential election, they would have also put it off by a few weeks. They are a superpower because they can separate electoral and strategic interests and ride their bipartisan unanimity on enhancing the partnership with India.

Fourth, it became more evident from his 2018 visit which was part holiday, part election campaign in Punjabi and Gujarati fancy dress, that Trudeau looked at India with a degree of indifference, if not contempt. It is possible—in fact quite likely—that he started out with a serious liberal dislike of Narendra Modi. But adding to his invitees’ list a man convicted in Canada of attempting to assassinate an Indian Sikh minister on a visit to Canada? You would need to be Trudeau’s parent to be so forgiving as to dismiss that as honest error or incompetence. This was playing to a gallery back home and so what if it rubbed a finger in India’s eye. India, that poor miserable country, millions of whose people are desperate to crack IELTS and migrate to my country as useful low-skill, low-wage workers and ultimately votebanks? The disrespect for India wasn’t lost on anybody.

Fifth, the most touching thing is the Canadians accusing Indian diplomats of playing games with the Sikh underworld in Canada. Did Indian diplomats build that underworld, or bring India’s most wanted gangsters there? If India is accused of fishing in a pond of Indian immigrant mafias, a question arises: who dug the pond and invited the fish to it by fast-tracking visas and citizenship to notified Indian criminals, often on fake passports? Every democracy has vote bank politics. Trudeau’s has been more cynical than most.

Sixth, you could say these are Canada’s mafias to deal with and move on. But that’s half the story. Most of their mafia activity is carried out in India. Goldy Brar, an associate of Lawrence Bishnoi, fled to Canada in 2017. Five years later in 2022, he was reported to be in the US, but his whereabouts are now unknown. He took responsibility for the assassination of superstar Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala in May 2022. Why, because he was said to be close to the so-called Bambiha gang of Punjab. Davinder Bambiha was killed in a police encounter in September 2016. And now it seems that Arsh Dalla, who is a member of the Khalistan Tiger Force and works with the Bambiha gang, is also operating out of Canada. Much of these gangs’ extortion, hits, drug and gun running is being carried out in India. In the separatist stuff Pakistanis become an accessory too as many of the Canada-based radicals travel there often.

And finally the most breathtaking, the Canadian assertion that Indian agencies are working through Lawrence Bishnoi jailed in Sabarmati. Now, we just heard that his shooters assassinated Baba Siddique, a significant leader of the BJP-led coalition in Mumbai. Bishnoi is like the new Charles Sobhraj. You can blame or credit him for anything, and he might accept it too. That’s why I have an idea that can solve both India and Canada’s problems.

Since Ottawa considers Bishnoi to be the kingpin of it all, it should seek his extradition and India should gift-wrap and send him. With a thank you note. I know this sounds facetious, but that’s how the Canadians have conjured up this plot.