A little more than a year after the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, accused Indian agents of orchestrating the assassination of the Sikh separatist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the already tense ties between New Delhi and Ottawa hit rock bottom this week. India and Canada expelled six diplomats belonging to each other’s high commissions, with Canada directly accusing India’s high commissioner in Ottawa of masterminding an operation to gather intelligence on members of the Sikh diaspora which was then shared with a criminal gang to carry out the killings. Mr Trudeau accused the Indian government of refusing to cooperate with Canada’s investigation into Mr Nijjar’s murder and insisted that his administration was acting in order to defend the safety and the security of Canadian citizens. India, on the other hand, has rejected outright the allegations against its diplomats and security agencies, accused Mr Trudeau of pandering to Sikh extremist elements in Canada in the search for the community’s votes, and has bluntly called the Canadian government an enabler of terrorism. As some analysts have pointed out, India’s relations with Canada today appear to be worse than those with Pakistan where the external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, is on a visit for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation conclave.

India has promised to take additional retaliatory steps while insisting that Canada has not shared any meaningful evidence with it. New Delhi’s posture will undoubtedly work well politically at home but there are growing signs that suggest that this approach is not quite working internationally. Over the past year, India has frozen trade talks with Canada, repeatedly accused Mr Trudeau of being soft on terrorists, and had temporarily stopped issuing visas to Canadian natio­nals. Canada’s latest allegations suggest that Ottawa re­mains undeterred by India’s moves. Worryingly, the state department of the United States of America on Tuesday endorsed the Cana­dian alle­gation that New Delhi is not cooperating with Ottawa. US prosecutors are also separately investigating New Delhi’s alleged role in a failed plot to kill another Sikh separatist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. It is time for New Del­hi to back its tough words with behind-the-scenes diplomacy to convince allies such as the US and the United Kingdom that Canada is wrong. If there is any tru­th in Canada’s allegations, India must find a new strategy to resolve the spat. India will best demonstrate its strength by being able to fix this dispute.