Canada Forgot 1985. India Didn’t.

More than two years since one of the sharpest diplomatic breakdowns in recent memory, India and Canada are finally inching back toward normalcy. Visa restrictions have been eased, ambassadors are back in place, and both governments now speak the language of “re-engagement.” It’s a cautious thaw, built on necessity as much as goodwill. Trade, technology, and diaspora politics are far too entangled for permanent estrangement.

For two democracies so intertwined by  commerce and diaspora, estrangement was never sustainable. But the way back from the crisis has been long and slow, and the shadow of Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s neutralization in 2023 still hangs over it.

The rupture began when former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Indian-affiliated agents of involvement in the neutralization of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a major operative in the overseas Khalistan network, a separatist movement internationally condemned for its extremist and violent agenda in order to achieve a Sikh state. Nijjar was eliminated outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia. Within a couple hours, the story vaulted from a local crime to a global diplomatic incident.

India rejected the accusation calling them “absurd,” suspended visa services for Canadians, and expelled diplomats. Canada recalled envoys and halted trade talks. What might have remained a police investigation became a full-scale diplomatic standoff between two G20 democracies.

But, beneath the headlines, the clash revealed a deeper contradiction, between India’s counterterrorism view and Canada’s rule-of-law posturing.

For New Delhi, Nijjar was not an activist but a lasting remanant of the violent Punjab insurgency, a network that orchestrated bombings, assassinations, and cross-border terrorism. For Ottawa, he was a Canadian citizen entitled to legal protection. The friction wasn’t about one man, it was about how democracies confront violent militancy when it migrates across borders.

Canada’s dilemma was very different. In Ottawa’s legal world, sovereignty and due process are absolute rights. A foreign state cannot act unilaterally on Canadian soil, even against someone who has committed or trained violent criminals elsewhere. To allow that would set a standard that no democracy could allow.

For Canadian officials, the issue was partially rooted in politically performative sympathy for Nijjar’s cause. But more largely for the protection of Canadian jurisdiction. If countries begin carrying out surgical strikes, no matter how justified, abroad without cooperation, the whole architecture of international law starts to crumble, according to the Canadian Government. Ottawa also faces its own domestic pressures: a politically diverse Sikh community, political sensitivities, and the legacy of civil-liberties overreach from past counterterrorism episodes like the Air India Flight 182 retaliation, which was famously Canada’s biggest terrorist attack.

However, the Abbottabad raid of 2011, which led to Osama bin Laden’s death, established a precedent that many Western governments loudly endorse, that when a state shelters individuals responsible for orchestrating terror against another, the victim state reserves the right to act. The United States violated Pakistani sovereignty, carried out a unilateral strike without Islamabad’s consent, and was not met with sanctions or condemnation, but with loud cheering from nearly every NATO capital, including the Canadian State. Ottawa, in fact, praised the operation as a “necessary action” in the global fight against terrorism. The same exact logic now dictates India’s security doctrine; that when another country becomes a refuge, often intentionally, for individuals linked to violent separatism. Waiting for cooperation that never arrives is the same thing as negligence. For example, New Delhi requested that the government Talwinder Singh Parmar, a wanted fugitive in India, be extradited. Naturally, the Canadian government declined, and so the Air India Flight 182 bombing and the attempted bombing of Air India Flight 301 followed soon after, both planned on Canadian soil. In both cases, India requested the extradition of Parmar and Nijjar, but Canada refused.

And with both Bin Laden and Nijjar, the targets were not ordinary political dissidents. Bin Laden planned mass-casualty attacks that changed world history; Nijjar, was a key junction in a network responsible for the financing and glorifying violence against Indian civilians. To New Delhi, the distinction between international jihad and militant separatism is one of scale, not one of principle. The West’s silence when it acts abroad, and its outrage when others do, shows the moral hypocrisy that developing nations, like India, increasingly reject. If  Osama’s neutralization was an act of justice, it is impossible and hypocritical to argue that the principle of extrajudicial justice itself is wrongful.

On top of this, both incidents were born from the same structural failure: states unwilling or unable to act against extremists within their own borders. Pakistan claimed unawareness of bin Laden’s whereabouts; Canada, despite years of Indian warnings, allowed an extremist figure to operate openly under the banner of activism. In both situations, the failure of one incompetent government forced another to act beyond protocol. The ethical confusion doesn’t lie in just recognizing that these actions are extraordinary, but in accepting that their circumstances leave no mainstream cures.

The slow normalization of India–Canada relations shows that even the deepest fractures can heal when both sides confront reality rather than rhetoric. Ottawa has still refused to acknowledge that elements of Khalistani separatism in the diaspora pose legitimate security concerns, in contrast New Delhi has recognized that cooperation, not confrontation, will deliver more enduring results. Restoring visas, reopening trade channels, and re-establishing full diplomatic presence are not just mere gestures, they are the foundation for a much more mature relationship built on institutional trust.

Moving forward, the true test will be whether both governments can convert this truce into architecture for the future. Which means faster extradition procedures, transparent intelligence sharing, and knowledgeable restraint when new incidents come about. Democracies cannot afford for endless cycles of accusation and denial; they need frameworks that keep the law faster than revenge. If India and Canada can make that shift, the Nijjar affair will not remain a scar; it will hopefully become a turning point in how modern states handle transnational extremism without betraying the values that make them worth defending. But, only if Ottawa is willing to do that.