As Canada and India’s cold war continues, there’s been a flurry of thinkpieces on the West’s response to Canada’s allegations of a “potential link” between India and the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Editorials joined the chorus too. 

The Telegraph today said the case has “made it clear that the United States and its allies view New Delhi as a partner that needs to adhere to standards they themselves do not follow”.

“...missing in the hand-wringing visible in Western capitals is any self-reflection. Instead, the Western response to the Indo-Canadian diplomatic crisis betrays multiple layers of hypocrisy masked as a strategic dilemma,” the editorial said. 

The response isn’t “shaped by faith in international law”, since the US and its allies “have not worried about respecting the sovereignty of other nations when they have carried out targeted assassinations in those countries”.

So, The Telegraph asked, “can India trust the West?”

Indian Express’s editorial today had focused on external affairs minister S Jaishankar calling out the West’s “double standards” while addressing the UN General Assembly in New York this week. 

The newspaper asked similar questions: “Is sovereignty and territorial integrity only the province of a few countries? Do consequences for violating them only attach to some?” 

The editorial concluded: “Going ahead, as India demands its place in the world, and equity for other developing nations, the country’s diplomatic leadership will need to be both firm and realistic to build on its recent successes.”

The Times of India took a much stronger line in its editorial on September 26. Headlined “Papas, don’t preach”, it said the West was showing “deadpan duplicity”.

“Double standards are standard operating procedure in global realpolitik,” it said. “But it stands out when it’s SOP for the West since Western countries consider themselves as models of moral behaviour...The world is supposed to accept America’s definition of a terrorist, but America and its allies contest many other democracies’ definition of what’s terrorism or dangerous behaviour.”

TOI also said: “It one were to apply the Western view on Nijjar to some of the characters killed by Israeli hit squads, Israel would be under permanent sanction.”

While the Nijjar case has taken the world by storm, Canada has been probing Indian agencies for much longer – since 2018, in fact. Read all about it on Newslaundry.