Too much need not be read into the fact that India is not an invitee for the G-7 Summit to be held in Alberta from June 15-17, making it the first time in six years that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not be present as an ‘invitee’ for the Summit.
This is not surprising given India’s frayed relationship with Canada, the host for the G-7 Summit, who has the prerogative of whom to invite and whom not to.
India, the world’s most populous nation, has been an ‘invitee’ to G-7 Summits mainly because of its geo-strategic significance and the economic heft of being a fast growing economy with a huge market.
The India-Canada bilateral relationship has been on a tumble ever since the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a leading proponent for creating ‘Khalistan’ or a separate independent homeland for Sikhs, with Canada pointing fingers at India of being behind the killing. On June 18, 2023, Nijjar, 45, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen outside a gurudwara in Surrey, in the suburbs of Canada’s Vancouver.
While it has been reported that America's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had met and warned several prominent Sikh separatist leaders of possible assassination attempts, it may be a good guess that it was the US that may be behind Canada’s effort to rattle India.
The questionable US role, President Trump’s pronouncements on the tariffs issue against India, and the lack of categorical US support for India during Operation Sindoor, have adversely impacted India-US ties.
However, the much bigger problem at hand now is a series of openly raised questions by both the US and Russia on India’s core diplomatic plank of ‘strategic autonomy’. The Indian position has been to maintain equidistance from major power blocs and taking positions on a case-to-case basis—decided by priorities of national interest.
On June 3, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said that India’s buying of Russian weapons and its BRICS membership, which seeks to move away from dependence on the US dollar, have “rubbed the United States the wrong way”.
“(That) is not really the way to make friends and influence people in America,” Lutnick said.
On the other hand, on May 29, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov minced no words about the military dimension of the QUAD alliance when he said that the member nations (India, US, Australia and Japan) were already coordinating military exercises.
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According to Lavrov, “when the QUAD was established, assurances were provided that it would refrain from engaging in military affairs”.
“At that juncture, we engaged in discussions with our Indian counterparts, who emphasised that their interest in joining this QUAD was confined exclusively to trade, economic, and other peaceful domains of collaboration. In practice, however, the QUAD nations are already endeavouring—and with notable persistence—to organise naval exercises, albeit not under the QUAD’s banner, yet, as the saying goes, ‘all together—the four of them’.”
“I am confident that our Indian friends perceive this provocation with perfect clarity,” the Russian foreign minister added.
Lavrov’s other significant statement was on the need to revive the RIC (Russia, India, and China) trilateral format. “The moment has arrived to revitalise RIC”.
So saying, the Russian minister would have been playing on the West’s biggest fear that India and China might join a strategic alliance some day.
In that context, two events to watch out for would be the QUAD Summit to be hosted by India this year, as well as the upcoming BRICS Summit in Brasil’s Rio de Janeiro on July 6-7.
