The “India exception”: An echo of the “China human rights exception” in the 1970s–1980s

Abstract

Recent Canadian allegations of a link between Indian agents and the murder of a Sikh Canadian leader have sunk the Canada-India relationship. Diplomatically speaking, the US is balancing between supporting its traditional ally Canada and its newfound strategic partner India in its struggle against Chinese hegemony. India's seemingly exceptional treatment at present reminds us of the “China human rights exception” in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the US government chose not to call out China's problems with human rights, even as America was itself adopting a foreign policy centring on human rights. Despite the many differences between China and India, the China exception and its related historical process helps us understand the evolving “India exception,” which indeed exists and likely represents the beginning of the end of the honeymoon period between India and the West, although it may take at least two decades for that process to culminate.