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Trudeau accuses India in killing of Sikh leader on Canadian soil
First of all, I want to state that my epistemic status is huh, rather an informed opinion, but I struggle to think of anyone in a better position on The Motte to discuss this, so bear with me.
India has had its share of irredentists, separatists and good old fashioned terrorists over the years. You have the Maoists still lurking in the north east, playing hot and cold with the government via their jungle boogaloo. Islamic terrorism was a serious issue in 2010s, though it's died down. There were the Tamil Tigers down south, who proved a severe PITA for a decade or so, and then the Khalistanis, who have been largely neutered in-country but find refuge in the numerous, prosperous Sikh diaspora abroad.
The last two have had the dubious distinction of getting confirmed kills on two Indian Prime Ministers (relatives to boot).
Khalistan is the supposed homeland of the Sikh peoples, largely surrounding Punjab in the west. Unable to get it during the original Partition of India, they waged a brutal war against the Indian government for decades, peaking in the 70s and 80s. There were quite a few pogroms and riots, with Hindu on Sikh violence in the rest of India, and vice versa in their population centers.
These days, the movement is moribund within India itself, most young Sikhs don't really pay it any heed, and the older aren't the demographic to go planting bombs for the large part. Sikhs are well integrated into Indian society, and haven't had that consistent friction that the Muslims have had with their Hindu co-ethnics.
Not that you'd know this abroad. Much like IRA sympathizers hanging around in New Jersey bars, the exodus of Sikhs in the 70s and 80s ossified in amber a large migrant population with a grudge to bear against the Indian government.
I'd draw a distinction between these first-wave migrants, and a more recent influx of Sikhs who are drawn more by the prospects of making it big in Canada, or the West in general, rather than any real grievance.
While Khalistan is dead in the water, it's a popular rallying cry there, with Western governments treating it with a mixture of bemused tolerance and kid-gloves for fear of pissing off the strong Sikh voting bloc. Speaking ill of them is, from what I've heard, a surefire way of losing a narrow election, but they're otherwise model citizens and nobody wants to press the issue.
Now, Modi stands accused of the shooting of this dude sometime in June, when he was shot by unidentified gunmen in the parking lot of a gurdwara in Surrey. If there's more substance to the accusation, they haven't been made public, but the heads of state have met to hash it out.
From what I can tell, Modi's response was "we didn't do it, but if it happened, he had it coming", strongly protesting the accusations while demanding Canada be less lenient in harboring terrorists.
Modi also stands accused of the assassination in Lahore of another Khalistan leader, not that anyone particularly cared at the time, and that's just the usual India-Pakistan bhai-bhai at play.
That's the gist of it, on one hand, we have the fact that India has largely refrained from extraterritorial assassinations, certainly not to the degree that the US, Russia or Israel are fond of. I struggle to think of a single example, not that I'm an expert.
On the other, who the fuck else has a motive to whack the dude? I don't think relations between India and Canada are bad enough for the latter to make entirely unfounded accusations, and they've even roped in a few other countries like the UK and US to bring diplomatic pressure to bear. The Head of Foreign Intelligence for India was kicked out from Canada, and some bloke named Oliver Sylvester was the tit to that tat.
I'd wager 50% odds that India was responsible based on the balance of evidence, and I wonder if this will be a flash in the pan that peters out when the Sikhs are mollified, or if Canada really wants to pick a fight with an otherwise neutral/positively inclined major nation.
But if you're curious, this means zilch in terms of impact on Modi's popularity of home, you think supporters of a strongman are going to be mad when he strongmans? Even the libs over at /r/India who foam at the mouth at the sight of Modi are of the opinion he had it coming.
The «[if we did it,] he had it coming» attitude is already almost as bad as if Indian state involvement gets confirmed.
I don't predict but weakly suspect that in 10 odd years Western progressives (if they still exist and aren't distracted by the extreme escalation of conflict with China, of course) will think about the Indophilic rhetoric with «fellow/largest/ democracy|«biggest/youngest English-speaking nation|Superpower by 20XX» etc with the same disdain they now express for that kind of stuff applied to Israel or (relative obscurity aside) Turkey or Azerbaijan. The vegetarian smiles of fast-talking wonks will become associated with repulsive alien menace as much as inarticulate, idiomatic Chinese saber-rattling is today. Charisma, managerial acumen and geopolitical alignment are important but can only go so far when there's a billion-strong and swelling mass of dimwitted hubris beneath, bolstered by a populist regime.
India is not Western, not liberal, not a democracy, and not on the track to become more of any of those things (unlike, say, Ukraine, flawed though it is). I don't judge. Were I more friendly to Indians, I probably should have.
Commentators in the west frequently tempt themselves into 'us vs the rest of the world' narratives. Non Christian / Non Anglo-Saxon societies are all viewed from a 1000 ft lens, where all nuance is readily thrown out in favor of stereotypes. India isn't some shallow extrapolation of headlines you've seen over a few years of news. It has layers and layers of nuance, each of which follows millenia long lineages. I couldn't tell you if Indians still like Shahrukh Khan, and you've got external viewers confidently predicting a deterministic path for the country.
From a civilizational perspective, India has the longest history of being a sanctuary state for those persecuted from outside. Jews, Parsis, Buddhists and in fact Sikhs and Muslims (Ismailis, Shia, Ahmediyyas, ex-Muslims) too have found India to be the one country that has welcomed them with open arms. India is the only civilizational state, that has never bothered to proselytize or expand past its borders. Most of India's famous losses have come after being too trusting or too forgiving. Sounds like a liberal place to me.
From a recent perspective, no country has had its democracy tested more often than India. Yet, its democracy has held together. The electoral process is iron clad and no-one dares interfere with the electoral commission. The Supreme court routinely overturns the Govt. of the day, and occasionally even the titular President (Gyani ZailSingh) has refused to fall in line. In the face of much resistance, the institutions have remained strong and healthy. Western nations like Canada and the Scandinavian block have never faced similar existential threats to their democracy. A homogeneous people living under the gentle embrace of Pax Americana. I'd argue that India is a much stronger democracy than any nation barring US/UK & France.
India is not western, yet. I agree and I rejoice. The Indic civilization has undergone 1000 years of erosion at the hands of Turkic people, Brits and some of our very own Coconuts. But, we've preserved some religion agnostic ideas which have shaped the very foundation of life in this subcontinent. Indians haven't fully westernized yet, and there remains some hope to recover ideas that aren't inherent Abrahmic. Not sure where that will take us, but most immediately, that little bit of resistance might be the one thing that lets India maintain a 2.0 fertility rate, unlike the rest of the world undergoing population collapse.
I'm inclined to believe the very concept of a "civilization-state", whether espoused by Hindu nationalists or Chinese communists, is simply historical revisionism - one big cope, since it allows motivated ideologues to pretend in the existence of a timeless core identity, unchanged throughout history, and most importantly unsullied by the presence of pesky minority groups, whether they be Muslims or Manchu or anyone else. For most of this "civilization-state"''s history, there was no such thing as "India", there was just a contiguous landmass occupied by different kingdoms and the occasional empire.
It also seems strange to me that Indian democracy should be considered stronger than most Western states when in living memory, an Indian prime minister suspended the constitution, canceled elections, jailed her opposition and ruled by fiat. And just three years after she was removed from office, she was reelected by the Indian public in a landslide. Is it supposed to be a knock against Canada that nothing of the sort ever happened in Ottawa?
The Hindu fertility rate in India has already declined below 2.0. Among religious groups, only the Muslims have a fertility rate above replacement in India.
I don't think the divide is as big as you think it is. Three years ago the UK Prime Minister loopholed the unwritten constitution into irrelevancy, cancelled elections, jailed opposition, imprisoned the entire population and ruled by fiat under the fraudulent guise of an emergency. It was called lockdowns.I believe some of these also apply to the Trudeau regime but I wouldn't be confident on the specifics. Regardless neither India, the UK or Canada have robust claims to being liberal democracies.
This is a facetious comparison. Indira Gandhi jailed tens of thousands of her political opponents indefinitely and without a trial, and went so far as to forcibly dissolve lawfully elected state governments opposed to her rule and impose direct control of those states by the national government. There's no contemporary Western parallel to such practices outside of actual war conditions, a la Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, or Zelensky banning opposition parties after the Russian invasion. And Indira Gandhi didn't even have the excuse of an ongoing war, she just didn't think anyone had the right to take power away from her.
The UK imprisoned tens of millions of people indefinitely and without trial through 2020-2021. The UK does not have state governments because it's not a federation. However, the executive was granted power to pass laws without the approval of MPs, which was rule by fiat, and could have been used to overrule or forcibly dissolve any sub-national elected positions. It just wasn't used because there was no meaningful elected opposition at the time, and there couldn't be any because elections which could have brought such people in were cancelled.
Indira Gandhi was a tyrant. But so are current Western leaders, so I don't know how western democracy could be regarded as stronger than India's. They're both weak.
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