India, Canada and vote banks

Once-strong relationship between New Delhi and Ottawa continues to be on shaky ground after Indian intelligence officials allegedly orchestrated the assassination of a Sikh independence activist on Canadian soil last year. Despite normalisation efforts over the past six months, Canada’s failure to show its evidence against India, and India’s denials — even after a similar case, in the US, has exposed the workings of RAW’s assassins — mean India still gets to make noise over trivial matters. Most recently, they protested to the Canadian high commissioner about pro-Khalistan chants at a Sikh event where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was also present. Trudeau’s presence and “vote bank politics”, they said, “encourage a climate of violence”.

It truly was a case of the thief crying thief, because while India claims it had no role in the assassinations and attempts, PM Modi either hasn’t gotten the memo, or he just doesn’t care. While his recent rant against Muslims has taken over headlines in India and abroad, less than a month ago, Modi gave a public speech more befitting a gangster than a prime minister. “Today,” he said, “even India’s enemies know: this is Modi, this is the New India. This New India comes into your home to kill you.” It is a massive fall from the previous BJP PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who once said, “Guns can solve no problem; brotherhood can.”

However, it is also worth noting that Vajpayee could probably have saved India from Modi if he had put country over party in 2002. The late Indian rights activist BG Verghese, who was on a panel that probed the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, noted that Vajpayee knew Modi was to blame for the violence, but he feared losing the support of the fanatical far right. In this, Vajpayee “placed the diktat of the mob above his oath of office... the emperor has no clothes, stripped of the last shred of moral authority.” Also like the emperor from the fairy tale, even after his own words left him exposed before the world, Modi’s ego remains unhurt. But unlike the fairy tale, the world has chosen to continue ignoring the obvious truth about Modi.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st, 2024.

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