India must stand firm against Canada

K. P. Nayar

AS the standoff between India and Canada over Khalistani separatists having a haven in the liberal North American country shows no sign of subsiding, there is a salutary lesson in how a small but rich nation — the United Arab Emirates — brought Canada, the second largest country in the world, to heel some years ago.

Canada broke an unwritten code of honour in espionage when it named Pavan Rai as the RAW officer it had expelled.

Canada has long nursed illusions of being equal to the US because of its size, prosperity and a long-running alliance with its superpower neighbour, including a nuclear umbrella. Exuding that arrogance, for several years beginning 2007, Ottawa turned a deaf ear to the UAE’s requests for more flying rights for their national carriers owing to demands from Indo-Canadians living in the Gulf and the increased potential for air cargo.

In 2010, the UAE took the bull by the horns, terminated the lease of a Canadian military base and ultimately refused landing permission in Dubai for a special flight carrying Canada’s two ministers and the Chief of Defence Staff. The flight, on its way from Afghanistan, had to be rerouted to Europe.

Like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is dealing with India now, his predecessor Stephen Harper went public on the dispute with the UAE, abandoning quiet diplomacy. The Gulf emirate was incensed. It fiercely campaigned against Canada’s election to the UN Security Council. Ottawa bit the dust in that election. A month later, the UAE imposed visas on Canadians entering the Emirates. In 2013, Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird went to Abu Dhabi, seeking a thaw. Five more years passed, and Canada gave in to the UAE’s demand for additional flights. Ottawa also allowed visa-free travel to Canada for Emirati nationals.

India, too, must stand firm and drive home to the Canadians that they are not equal to the US, as Trudeau has implied in his most recent statements. Washington’s ways of dealing with disputes are different — and more mature — than Ottawa’s.

For these reasons, India’s official response to allegations that its agent conspired in a plot to assassinate Khalistan propagator and designated terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun marks a turning point in this country’s public diplomacy. In the many decades that this columnist has reported on South Block, the seat of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), it has been the ministry’s stock-in-trade to dismiss inconvenient media reports as ‘speculative’ at best, ‘without factual basis’ at worst. Naturally, reporters on this beat have got used to such denials as confirmation of the reports in question. It has also been South Block’s standard practice to lapse into silence when such reports are later proved to be correct via other fora, such as Parliament or a court of law.

The turning point came last month after the Financial Times — followed by the White House spokesperson — claimed that the US took up with India at the ‘highest level’ the conspiracy to kill Pannun. For the first time since anyone can remember, the ministry did not rush to deny the report in the British newspaper and repent later. Without naming Pannun or the Financial Times or any White House official, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said: “India takes such inputs seriously since they impinge on our national security interests as well.” In a change in the media strategy, Bagchi confirmed that “the US side shared some inputs”. He said these pertained to a “nexus between organised criminals, gun-runners, terrorists and others”. In New Delhi’s diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, seasoned diplomats, trained in their craft, are interpreting the incongruous use of the phrase ‘others’ clubbed with three other categories of undesirables as confirmation that India has a problem on its hands. Bagchi further said that “on November 18, the Government of India constituted a high-level inquiry committee to look into all the relevant aspects of the matter and that the government would take action based on its findings”. So far so good.

Some sections in India and abroad have interpreted the differing approaches to the US charges and Canadian allegations of an Indian connection to the murder of Surrey resident Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June as capitulation to Washington. This analysis would be superficial and self-defeating. Nijjar was designated as a terrorist by India, like Pannun. The likeness in their cases ends there.

Canada’s allegations against India are a negation of accepted practices in intelligence work. They are of the kind that the MEA dismisses in news reports as speculative and without factual basis. Worst of all, Canada broke an unwritten code of honour in the practice of espionage when it named Pavan Kumar Rai as the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) officer it expelled after the public spat between India and Canada. The US, correctly, did not name any Indian official in the Pannun episode. In many reciprocal declarations as persona non grata, by India and foreign countries over many years, only Pakistan and India have named officers being expelled. But Pakistan is a special case for India and vice versa.

Canada has a big lobby in New Delhi and other Indian cities. This lobby serves Canada’s interests more than India’s. This lobby has been briefed in recent months that Trudeau escalated the problem with India because Toronto’s mass circulation daily The Globe and Mail was about to publish a speculative story about India’s alleged complicity in the murder of Nijjar. A panicky Trudeau said what he did in the House of Commons. Last week, he admitted this in public.

When Trudeau was in New Delhi for the G20 summit in September, Canada’s media trashed him for not defending the country’s interests against China. The media claimed that Canada did not do anything about Chinese spying.

Trudeau may not have politically survived more such criticism, this time alleging Indian interference in his country’s affairs. Ottawa’s allegations against India, so far, are weak, unlike Washington’s. This is why India has agreed to investigate the US allegations. No such locus standi exists with Canada.

All in all, the India-Canada relations will remain strained for the foreseeable future, even if Trudeau’s party loses the next election and another government assumes office in Ottawa.

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