Indian students give Canada cold shoulder as Ottawa, New Delhi butt heads

For the past several years, Manpreet Singh has been dreaming of going abroad for higher studies.

The 22-year-old Sikh, a resident of Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh state, chose Canada as his destination as that is where many of the Sikh diaspora is settled.

But the current diplomatic tension between India and Canada has put a damper on those plans, leaving him disappointed. Singh is now planning to go to Europe and complete his education.

“Canada was always on the top of my list for foreign education as several people of our community are settled there, and I would have felt at home there. I had convinced my parents to send me, but they have now refused due to the present turmoil between the two countries,” he said.

His father, Inderjeet Singh, told Al Jazeera that his son’s safety is his top priority. “We also want our child to get a good education, and I had agreed to his Canada plan. But the current situation has made me rethink, and I prefer to send him to a safer country,” he said.Several students from India, especially the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, who had been aspiring to go to Canada for higher education, have put their plans on hold due to the escalating tension between the two countries over the killing last year of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh involved with the Sikh independence movement, commonly known as the Khalistan movement, that calls for an independent Sikh state.

Nijjar was shot dead by two masked gunmen in Surrey, British Columbia, in western Canada last year in June.

Since then, Ottawa has said New Delhi staged the attack on Canadian soil and has even accused Indian Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah of being behind a campaign of violence and intimidation targeting Sikh activists.

It has also expelled several Indian diplomats, including as recently as in October in the latest round of this political face-off, resulting in similar retaliatory actions.

Students affected

Political repercussions apart, the tension between the two countries has come as a major blow to several thousand Indian students who aspire to go to Canada for undergraduate and postgraduate courses every year.

The situation has also affected education and immigration consultants, who depend on these students for their livelihood and charge anywhere between 50,000 rupees ($594) to 500,000 rupees ($5,945) depending upon the country and the university selection, and help students in the application and documentation process.

Of the more than 1.3 million Indian students studying abroad in 2024, Canada tops the position with 427,000 – which is 41 percent of total international students in Canada.

The United States has 337,000 students, the United Kingdom has 185,000 students, and Germany hosts 42,997 Indian students, as per data from the Ministry of External Affairs.

Pratibha Jain, the founder of Eduabroad, a consultancy which for the past three decades has helped students get admission into some of the top universities across the globe, told Al Jazeera that there has been about a 10 percent decline in queries for Canada and the trend has been shifting to other countries instead including the UK, Australia, Dubai and in Europe.