Bakhshish S Sandhu, co-founder of Sikhs for Justice. Photo: RNZ / Blessen Tom
A rift among New Zealand's Indian communities that's testing tolerance over the right to protest could blow up, and a potential trade deal could suffer in the blast.
The Prime Minister's goal of getting a free trade deal signed with India in his first term is still looking shaky, but progress is being made.
Business links in both countries are being forged, but we are still a long way from any agreement.
Our Indian High Commissioner Neeta Bhushan appeared to put the brakes on expectations at a recent event in Christchurch celebrating new ties.
Newsroom national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva says her message was revealing - and placed further doubt on the prospect of a free trade deal being done this term.
Calling Christopher Luxon's pre-election commitment on it "perhaps ill-advised", he says Bhushan was still quite positive about progress, noting that we are closer than we have been in a long time.
"But she sort of said 'look, let's take some small steps .. you can't just jump ahead' so I viewed that as an implicit reminder that you can't rush this."
But there's another potential stumbling block, one that's possibly under the radar for most Kiwis, but is not for the 300,000-strong Indian population in New Zealand.
It comes in the shape of a group labelled by India as terrorists, which is drumming up support around the world for an independent Sikh homeland.
The president of Sikhs for Justice was in New Zealand last month, rallying thousands of Kiwi Sikhs for what the group calls a "referendum" on the issue.
Auckland police have been praised for helping defuse the situation, but the Hindu community wants to know why a man known for sowing discord was allowed in, especially on the back of a ban by New Zealand immigration of outspoken, far-right American speaker Candace Owens.
RNZ Asia journalist Gaurav Sharma says the New Zealand government has to start taking this seriously, especially if Indian officials read it as New Zealand giving its blessing to Sikh separatism.
And there's a warning - if the government doesn't keep an eye on this development, we risk a diplomatic rift like the one between India and Canada... and there goes our trade deal.
Such a note of concern has already been sounded by political experts including Victoria University's David Capie from the Centre for Strategic Studies.
Listen to the podcast today to find out about the history of this movement; have a look at what went on in Canada; and to take the temperature of our potential trade deal.
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