PM Modi receives Invitation from Canada

Since independence, India's foreign policy has been mutual cooperation, coexistence and peace between the two countries. The present Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi's government has also been following the same policy for the last 11 years, but it does not mean weakness at all, but the strength of its side, as we have seen in the attitude of the Modi government in the context of Pakistan. India, a party of world peace, has always been saying that only by adopting this path, various countries of the world can develop, but for this, big and prosperous and developed countries will have to keep their hearts big. In this context, if we look at the group of G-7 (Great Seven) countries, it is an organization of countries like America, Britain, Germany, France, Canada and Italy. All these countries have people-oriented open democracies and are economically developed countries. These include Japan, which is the only country in Asia. Earlier, till 2014, Russia was also involved in it and the group was called G-8, but in 2014, when Russia absorbed the Crimea province occupied by Ukraine, it was expelled from the group and the G-8 was called G-7.

The G-7 summit takes place every year. India has been a 'guest country' since 2005. This happened because India's growing economy could not be ignored by the rich countries. For this reason, he was the Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014. Dr. Manmohan Singh was invited to its annual meetings five times. This tradition continued during Shri Narendra Modi's tenure and he was invited as a guest of honour every year since 2019. This year's G7 meeting is taking place in Canada from June 15 to 17. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was invited by the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Mark Carney, yesterday through telephone. Earlier, Mr. Modi's critics in India were saying that Mr. Modi is not being invited to the G-7 this time because of Indo-Canadian relations, but Mr. Carney's call has silenced all the critics and proved that India's policy on Canada is not wrong. During the tenure of the previous Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Justin Trudeau, India's relations were a little sluggish. The reason for this was the attitude of Trudeau towards India.

In 2024, he accused India of having a hand in the killing of a pro-Khalistan citizen of his country in 2023. India strongly opposed this. After which the mutual relations between the two countries had cooled down a bit and both had reduced the number of employees in each other's high commissions. Earlier, India-Canada relations have been very warm. These relations are considered to be very strong at the civic level because the role of Indians, especially Punjabis, has been very important in the development of Canada. For the last ten years, there has been a citizen of Indian origin living in the Cabinet of this country. The current External Affairs Minister is Ms. Anita Anand. After assuming office, he had a telephonic conversation with the External Affairs Minister of India, Shri S. Jaishankar in the month of May. Speculation was rife that some hints have been left about Mr. Modi's visit to Canada. But now yesterday Mr. Modi got a call from the Prime Minister of Canada. Therefore, Mr. Modi will go to attend the G-7 Summit. One wonders if Canada could afford Mr. Modi's absence at the event when it has a sizeable number of Indian origin citizens and a major stake in Canada's economy. Mr. Modi became the Prime Minister for the first time in 2014. But in 2019, when the G-7 conference was held in France, the President of that country invited Mr. Modi to the guest country and after that, in 2020, when the conference of this group was going to be held in America, Mr. Modi was also invited there but this conference could not be held due to the Corona epidemic. Although US President Donald Trump had openly advocated that the structure of the G-7 should be changed and it should be called G-10 or G-11 by including countries like India, South Korea, Australia and Russia, but that was the last year of Trump's previous term.

There was an outbreak of Corona in 2021 as well and Shri Modi took part in its meeting through video conferencing. In 2022, the group met in Germany and Mr. Modi went to attend it. Mr. Modi was also invited to the conferences in Japan in 2023 and Italy in 2024, but due to Canada's invitation to Australia and South Korea as a guest country long ago, Modi's critics in India became active and started criticizing its foreign policy. Now that the invitation has come from the Prime Minister of Canada himself, critics are looking for excuses and asking why the invitation has come only 10 days before the summit. This approach is totally unfair in the matter of foreign policy.