Bob Neal
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, dropped a bombshell Monday when he suggested to Parliament that India’s government might have been involved in the murder a Canadian citizen.
His bombshell is reverberating through Western democracies. It has the United States in a bind, caught between an ally friendly with us for 209 years and an ally we need though may not love.
Back story: Hardeep Singh Nijjar was gunned down on June 18 at the temple he headed in Surrey, British Columbia. Nijjar, born in Punjab province in India, immigrated to Canada about 30 years ago and became a citizen in 2015.
From Canada, he was a strong advocate of separating part of Punjab into a Sikh state called Khalistan, or “Land of the Pure.” Oddly, polls show support in Punjab for separation is waning.
The New York Times, to its discredit, presented Trudeau’s remarks as an accusation that India has participated directly in the assassination. But Trudeau’s words were measured.
Trudeau began his three-minute speech: “Over the past several weeks, Canadian security agents have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen.” He asked India to help in the probe.
So far, Trudeau has made public no “credible evidence,” which puts President Joe Biden and the United States and other allies of Canada in that well-worn spot twixt a rock and a hard place.
India reacted predictably, and Canada and India have traded expulsion of high diplomats.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s people have argued that Canada is interfering in India’s internal affairs. But if the premeditated murder of a Canadian citizen in Canada is an internal Indian matter, are they not suggesting that India is involved?
Turning our eyes back south, here’s the vise squeezing Biden. Canada is our top trading partner, at more than $2 billion a day. But the U.S. also needs India in the tussle with China. India and China have been at odds and even at war (briefly) since about 10 minutes after the Communists took over China in 1949. And Biden has been willing to overlook India’s tacit support of Russia against Ukraine by purchasing more Russian gas.
The overriding consideration: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
So, the president has been courting Indian Modi despite Modi’s record of suppression. And despite Biden’s campaign promises to work for human rights worldwide. At the G20 summit last week in India, Biden cozied up to Modi, and he hosted Modi last year at a White House dinner.
While India sometimes sloganeers that it is the world’s largest democracy, it might be more accurate to say that under Modi, India is a DINO, that is, Democracy in Name Only. It holds elections, but Modi’s party is dedicated to Hindu superiority even more than our Republican Party is dedicated to fundamentalist Christian superiority.
Hindus make up 80% of India’s population, according to the Pew Research Center, while Muslims make up 14%. Sikhs are actually a smaller proportion of India’s population (1.7%) than of Canada’s (2.1%). (Fundamentalists make up about 24% of Americans, according to Pew.)
Yasmeen Serhan wrote in The Atlantic: Hindus “have faced a surge in communal violence … A raft of new laws has reached into their daily lives to interfere with the religious garments they wear, the food they eat, where and how they worship, and even whom they marry.”
The crackdown may be a tactic to divert the minds of Indian voters from a weak economy, a farm crisis, sectarian violence and charges of corruption. Modi has even charged that farmers protesting their loss of livelihood were Sikh “terrorists.” That may sound familiar to Americans.
Speaking of tactics to divert voters’ attention, more than a few Canadians believe Trudeau’s motive is domestic politics. No wonder. The Angus Reid Institute, an independent political organization, shows Trudeau’s approval rating this month at 33%, disapproval at 62%.
Is this the first step in rebuilding support for an election that must be held by October 2025? Trudeau has been wracked by scandals, many minor but cumulatively evidence that he is not so smooth an operator as his late father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada’s third-longest-serving PM.
At a personal level, Justin Trudeau has been the free guest of a lobbyist. At age 30, he wore brownface to an “Arabian Nights” party. On earlier trips to India, he wore local costumes while the local officials wore Western suits. His wife was shown talking with an accused murderer.
Trudeau was reprimanded for favoring SNC-Lavalin, an engineering and construction company in Quebec, and for awarding a no-bid contract to the WE Charity of Toronto, formerly called Free the Children. SNC-Lavalin and WE have ties to Trudeau’s federal Liberal Party.
Pierre and Justin Trudeau both can come across as arrogant. They are also alike in another regard. Both have climbed out of political holes.
Can Justin Trudeau do it again?
Bob Neal worked for 4 1/2 years for The Montreal Gazette. He was an editor during Canadian federal elections in 1972 and 1974. Pierre Trudeau won both, but both were close. Neal can be reached at bobneal@myfairpoint.net.
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