Trudeau plays down talk of India government ‘snub’

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has downplayed talk of a snub by the Indian government during his first state visit to the country this week, despite not having met a senior member of the government halfway through his eight-day trip.

A junior minister was sent to meet Trudeau and his family on arrival, and Canadian newspapers have suggested the visit appeared more like a vacation than a diplomatic tour.

Has Trudeau been snubbed?

The trip got off to an awkward start when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who often greets his counterparts on their arrival, sent a junior minister from the agriculture department to meet Trudeau at the airport.

By contrast, Modi himself was on the tarmac to greet and bear-hug Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited last month.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family disembark from an airplane upon their arrival at Air Force Station Palam in New Delhi, India, February 17, 2018. /Reuters Photo

"The optics don't look good," Vivek Dehejia, a senior fellow at think tank IDFC Institute, told CNN.

"All you can see are the Lonely Planet-style pictures of his family at the Taj Mahal and in Gujarat, but he's not had a single official event."

Trudeau dismissed a question from a reporter on Monday suggesting that he had been snubbed by Modi, saying: "I have met with the prime minister in various places around the world and looking forward to sitting down with him on Friday."

Several media reports have noted that Donald Trump Jr., also on a visit to India, has received a far more enthusiastic welcome.

Indian workers prepare to collect bricks as they work on building the road to the under-construction Trump Tower in Kolkata, India, February 20, 2018. /VCG Photo

The US president’s son is in India to promote a Trump Tower development, but is also slated to give a foreign policy speech alongside Modi on Friday.

Why the lukewarm reception?

Trudeau's lukewarm reception, according to media reports, was due to India's concerns about Trudeau's perceived soft approach to Sikh extremist groups in his country, and those that sympathize with them.

A small number of Canada’s 468,000 Sikhs support the idea of Khalistan, a separate state for Indian Sikhs.

In comments to the media on Monday however, Trudeau strongly rejected suggestions that Canada was encouraging Sikh extremism, saying Canada's position of supporting "one united India" had not changed.

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau and his family write on the visitor book during their visit to the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, February 18, 2018. /VCG Photo

On Wednesday, he will meet the chief minister of the northern Indian state of Punjab who has in the past said he was concerned about Sikh groups in Canada trying to revive an independent state.

The Indian government, which put down an armed Sikh separatist revolt in the 1980s, is sensitive to any attempts to revive the Sikh secessionist movement.

Trudeau will be visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest of Sikh shrines, and state chief minister Amarinder Singh said he looked forward to meeting him there.

"I'm hopeful that this meeting will help strengthen the close Indo-Canadian business ties as well as the deep-rooted people-to-people relations between our two countries," Singh said in a Twitter post.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) speaks during a business summit in Mumbai, India, February 20, 2018. /VCG Photo

The Canadian prime minister has cast his trip as being focused on building business and cultural ties and not just political ones.

"We are here in such large number and for so many days for a very simple reason. India matters to Canada," Trudeau told a gathering in Mumbai on Tuesday, where he said his delegation had just inked significant investments in Canada.

(With input from agencies)