By Sushant Singh
The revelation that Indian intelligence operatives allegedly interfered in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership race, which saw Pierre Poilievre emerge as the winner, marks more than a bilateral diplomatic spat. It can’t be dismissed as another headline-grabbing episode in the ugly kerfuffle between India and Canada but rather reveals two major shifts in the global arena: the extension of India’s neighbourhood power-brokering playbook to Western democracies like Canada and the emergence of a coordinated transnational right-wing alliance. As Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni recently said, “Conservatives are now collaborating globally.”

With Canada preparing for an April 28 federal election already besieged by foreign interference threats, these developments demand greater scrutiny.

Canada’s public inquiry into foreign interference ranks India as the second most active meddler after China. The upcoming election faces heightened risks, with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service alleging that Indian proxies funded diaspora community organizers and amplified pro-Poilievre narratives during his Conservative leadership campaign. While he won decisively, with 68 percent of points and without evidence of direct collusion, the operation mirrors India’s regional strategy: identify potentially sympathetic politicians, mobilize diaspora networks, and promote the religious fundamentalist Hindutva ideology.

New Delhi is exploiting the vulnerabilities of open societies, like Canada, for another reason. A friendlier dispensation, which owes its rule to support from Hindutva ideologues, would be willing to collaborate with the Narendra Modi government to target Sikh separatists and other Indian dissenters who have found a safe space in these countries. Such a move will let Modi’s party highlight the supposed separatist threat posed by Sikhs and minorities in general domestically, allowing it to consolidate the votes of Hindus, who comprise 80 percent of the Indian electorate.

This story was originally published in thewalrus.ca. Read the full story here.