After the “surgical strike” at the Line of Control (LoC) along the Pakistan border in September 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi compared the Indian Army to the Israeli Defence Force. “Our army’s valour is being discussed across the country these days. We used to hear earlier that Israel has done this. The nation has seen that the Indian army is no less than anybody,” he said. And after the Balakot strike in 2019, he said during an election rally in Ahmedabad: “Yeh hamara siddhant hai. Hum ghar mey ghus ke maarenge.”

The words were spoken in the context of Pakistan, which was not specified by name, and where the LoC provides legal cover for such cross-border actions. But Hindutva galleries duly absorbed the message as a warning to India's enemies everywhere.

After the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, BJP constituencies – which believe that India is a colossus on the global stage, that flies like a butterfly around the US and Europe and stings like the Mossad – have been only too eager to conclude that Indian intelligence agencies were involved.

Delhi has denied as “absurd” Canada's allegation that “agents of the government of India” had a role in the murder of Nijjar, a Khalistani activist, in June this year outside a gurdwara in the British Columbian city of Surrey. But Indian social media warriors, known for praising the government's “muscular” and “tough” policies, greeted the news of his killing with barely concealed glee, quickly deciding that under a muscular leadership Indian intelligence agencies were now proactively protecting the country.

An anonymous tweeter who uses the pseudonym The Skin Doctor, and has over 600,000 followers threatened Jagmeet Singh, leader of the Canadian New Democratic Party with the same fate as Nijjar after the politician vowed to hold Modi accountable for Nijjar's killing.

“No Jagmeet, you can't do anything to the Indian PM. What you can do: Avoid going out of your house, but if you have to, always remain alert and aware. Increase your security, hre bodyguard, bulletproof cars. Don't let them meet you Nijjar (sic)”.

What the Canadian allegation has done is to call out the paradox: abroad, the Modi government wants to be seen as Vishwaguru, a rules-abiding global leader who is a reliable partner of the West, and at home as a take-no-prisoners, tough-talking don, who can ghus ke fix all perceived enemies.

On the day that Nijjar was shot dead, one tweeter, with uncharacteristic restrain, posted a short message, that code-like, conveyed much. “Khalistanis are dropping like flies”.

Many joined the dots between the deaths of three Khalistanis in quick succession this year – the other two were Paramjit Singh Panjwar, who was shot dead in Lahore; and Avtar Singh Kanda, who died in a Birmingham Hospital – and praised India's security agencies for taking a cue from Mossad and going after its enemies in hot pursuit. A WhatsApp forward helpfully compiled a list of Khalistanis and LeT jihadists who had been taken out since 2022, with the line, “Some people are doing their job.”

One web portal, on its programme titled 'Our Men In Shadows Rock', interviewed a retired senior Army officer who said the killings showed that “the dawn of a new India” had come. Another online portal declared: “Paramjit Singh Panjwar shot dead: Keep Calm and Trust the Armed Forces”.

Some also floated the theory that Pakistan's ISI could have carried out the hits, as these men, purported “Pakistan ISI agents”, had been exposed to Indian security agencies by Amritpal Singh, whose Khalistani-style movement in Punjab ended with his arrest earlier this year. All such posts concluded that “whoever it was”, India had scored big from the killings.

Even a mainstream Indian weekly trod similar ground. It blamed inter-gang warfare for the killing, but could not contain itself from projecting this as a “swift counter-terrorist operation by New Delhi” that had inflicted a setback to an alleged Pakistan plan for a new Khalistan project in India. “Nijjar's killing proves that UK, Canada, Pakistan no longer safe havens for pro-Khalistani fugitives,” the publication headlined the report.

In the aftermath of Trudeau's allegation, many pointed to Western double standards – they cause death and destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we can't take out our terrorists without being scolded for it.

Five Eyes vs teesri aankh

For Delhi, which wants to be seen rubbing shoulders at the high table with the G7 even as it claims the leadership of the “global south”, Canada's allegation has created a dissonance in the post-G20 narratives about India, its influence and clout, its convening power, and its bridging capabilities. All this because India has worked hard to project itself as a land of 1.5 billion people that is not China.

India thinks of itself as a part of the Western security/intelligence alliance, and there has been talk that it should be inducted into the Five Eyes – the partnership between Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand. But some of these security agencies have been wary for a while of their Indian counterparts even if the political leadership has gone all out to engage with the Modi government. Canada's accusation is unlikely to increase confidence levels. For reasons not clear, the R&AW station chief's post in Washington DC, which fell vacant a few months ago, is yet to be filled as the host government is yet to agree to India's nomination.

India wants the global spotlight on itself, but that brings more scrutiny, sets a higher bar.

Also Read: Canada’s Allegations Will Bring Unwanted Attention on Indian Immigrants Abroad

Not the first accusation of “interference” by Canada

Canada's own problems with RAW go back decades. But as recently as 2018, in a federal court in Canada, India was accused of “interference” in that country's politics.

Canadian media reported that R&AW and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had attempted to use money and disinformation through an Indian citizen to “covertly influence” Canadian politicians to support Indian interests.

The matter came to light when the Indian citizen, a journalist, identified only as AB and “editor-in-chief” in court documents, was accused of acting at the behest of two Indian intelligence agencies. He had applied to emigrate to Canada – his wife and daughter were already Canadian citizens at the time – and his role as a paid influencer of R&AW and the IB came up during checks on his application.

The application was turned down, but a Canadian federal court overturned the charges against him and allowed him to stay but not before he was questioned threadbare by the court about his links to Indian intelligence agencies.

This was perhaps the first “publicly” alleged instance of clandestine foreign influence targeting Canadian politicians. Delhi did not respond to the charge.

History of bad blood

In the 1980s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a law-enforcing agency, also performed the main intelligence role. As allegations of human rights violations mounted against what was principally a police organisation, it was decided to set up the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The CSIS came into existence in 1984, just a year before the Kanishka bombing.

As a result of the circumstances in which it was created and the botched investigation into the Kanishka bombing, CSIS and R&AW fell out quickly. The presence of a large Sikh diaspora in Canada, and the country's rights-based approach to the Khalistani activists among them, has been a major irritant in ties, surfacing every now and then over the last few decades.

CSIS redlines, R&AW withdraws

It is not too well known that at the time, the CSIS wanted R&AW to sign off on a MoU listing do's and don'ts for foreign intelligence operatives, which the Indian agency refused to do. Over the next few years, R&AW and IB did not post anyone in Canada. A semblance of Indian intelligence presence in Canada was maintained through the Bureau of Security in the Ministry of External Affairs, manned mainly by police officers. These officials are posted to missions abroad to manage the security of the diplomats. In Canada, in a decade crucial for India's battle to save Punjab, they were tasked with part-time intelligence work too. This continued until matters were resolved in the mid-1990s, but the larger relationship was always a case of one step forward, two steps back.

Another G20 summit, another row and an apology

In 2010, Canada was the host of the G-20 summit. A month before the event, which was to be held in Toronto, a massive row erupted over refusal of visas to former intelligence and former Army officials who apparently wanted to visit their family members in that country. The Canadian High Commission in Delhi rejected the visa of S.S. Sidhu, a retired IB official. Lt Gen (retd) A.S. Bahia, a member of the Armed Forces Tribunal in Chandigarh, was also refused a visa in May of the same year. After BSF jawan Fateh Singh Pandher, who had his visa application rejected on the ground that he had been associated with a “notoriously violent” force, went to town with the denial, several Army and paramilitary officers came out too with their own rejections. The reasons ranged from apprehension that the person would engage in espionage, or violent activities, to causing harm to Canadian citizens.

It emerged that a serving IB officer, in the prime minister's security liaison office, who was deputed to travel with him to Toronto, had also been denied a visa – but was given one after the government stepped in.

As public outrage grew and the BJP stepped up attacks on the government for a “weak” foreign policy, the Ministry of External Affairs summoned the Canadian high commissioner in Delhi Joseph Caron twice – just like the current envoy Cameron McKay was earlier this week. According to then external affairs minister S.M. Krishna, the message was conveyed that Canada's remarks against Indian security services were “unacceptable”. Canada made a public apology.

BJP-Khalistan backchannel talks?

A columnist in Canada's National Post newspaper has pointed to a “covert operation, a backchannel reconciliation effort between Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party and veteran Khalistanis” who were wearying of their cause.

Terry Glavin, the columnist, is a well-known figure in Canadian journalism. In the column, in which he lights into Trudeau for “irreparably” damaging ties with India and handing Beijing a victory, Glavin suggests that the BJP was in touch with Ripudaman Malik, one of three main accused in the Kanishka bombing case.

Malik had been acquitted by the courts, and in January 2022, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Modi thanking him for removing names of some Sikhs abroad from a list that barred them from entering India. He also wrote that anti-India elements in the Sikh community were orchestrating a campaign against the Indian prime minister. There was a backlash against him in Surrey, where he had become a successful businessman.

According to Glavin, his murder “points directly to the BJP-Khalistani peace talks”, quoting a UK-based Sikh, who he describes as a backchannel mediator to support his theory that Trudeau bowed to the Khalistani lobby to sabotage the talks. At the time, Indian media reports quoted unnamed Indian intelligence sources suggesting that Malik had been eliminated by Nijjar, with whom he had crossed swords over control of a gurudwara in Surrey.

Glavin's speculation about the BJP-Khalistani backchannel could not be confirmed independently, but it suggests that relations between the security agencies of the two countries have been far worse than they have seemed for quite a while.

The tit-for-tat explusions of the RAW station chief at the Indian mission in Ottawa and the CSIS head in the Canadian mission in Delhi hark back to the 1980s when Indian intelligence officials were hounded and exposed in cities like Vancouver and Toronto. India may be the bigger loser in this revenge game because of the asymmetry in their respective priorities: it is not as important for CSIS to maintain a presence in India, as it is for RAW to be in Canada.

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