India has reportedly halted trade negotiations with Britain in response to a perceived lack of action from Rishi Sunak’s government following protests at India’s embassy in London last month.
The Indian government was said to have “disengaged” from talks on a post-Brexit free trade agreement, which are at an advanced stage, until the British government issues a public condemnation of the Sikh separatist movement whose members vandalised the High Commission of India on Aldwych.
An unnamed UK government source was quoted by The Times as saying India “[have] said they don’t want to speak about trade, they don’t want to do trade negotiations because they think it’s part of a wider problem of us not taking the attack against the Indian high commission and the wider Sikh separatist movement seriously”.
Supporters of the Khalistan movement, which calls for the creation of a separate homeland for the Sikh community carved out of India’s Punjab state, pulled down the Indian flag and smashed windows during the protests earlier in March.
“[The] Indians don’t want to talk about trade until they get a very public demonstration of condemnation of Khalistan extremism in the UK,” the source told The Times.
India has denied stalling the talks, with a government source telling The Independent that the report was “baseless”.
Similar protests to the one in London have taken place outside India’s embassies in the US and Canada in recent weeks.
They come as the Indian authorities have launched a huge manhunt to arrest the separatist leader Amritpal Singh in Punjab. New Delhi has summoned senior diplomats from the US, Britain, and Canada to complain and demand improved security at the Indian missions in their countries.
Following the London incident, the security barricades were removed from outside the British High Commission in Delhi and the high commissioner’s residence, in what was widely seen as tit-for-tat action.
Indian officials said at that time that "barricades placed on the pathway towards the commission that created hurdles for commutation have been removed".
A trade department spokesperson told The Times that the recent acts of violence were condemned and the authorities were working with the Metropolitan Police to “review security and make changes to ensure the safety of its staff”.
The British government had committed – first under Boris Johnson and then under Liz Truss – to reaching a trade deal with India by Diwali 2022, but negotiations were derailed by comments made by Suella Braverman about Indians overstaying their UK visas.
Since then a further setback for UK-India relations has come in the form of a critical BBC documentary that delved into prime minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. India’s tax authorities later raided the BBC’s offices in Delhi and Mumbai.
However, India’s commerce minister Piyush Goyal on 30 March insisted the trade talks were "going on very well" and that the issue of trade “stands on its own legs”.
According to UK government statistics, the UK-India bilateral trading relationship was worth £34bn in 2022 – growing by £10bn year-on-year.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the country’s leading industry body, estimates an India-UK free trade deal could boost trade by a further £28bn a year by 2035 and increase wages across the UK by £3bn.
