At the annual Diwali gala organised by the Canada-India Business Council (C-IBC) in Toronto in October, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: “One of the reasons we are such good friends, Canada and India, is that we are the two largest democracies in the world – one by population and one by size.”
Those words, he went on, were borrowed from a person with a facility for crafting lines – Vikas Swarup, author of the novel Q&A which became the basis for the multiple Academy Award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Swarup, of course, is also India’s high commissioner to Ottawa.
A formal announcement of Trudeau’s visit to India in February is not out yet, but Kasi Rao, president and CEO of C-IBC, said prime ministerial visits “bring a great sense of movement, both in terms of confluence and in convergence.”