Prime Minister Mark Carney and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands during the G7 Leaders' Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta in June.Amber Bracken/Reuters

Vina Nadjibulla is vice-president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada

Last Thanksgiving, Ottawa was expelling Indian diplomats; this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is in New Delhi. The contrast captures how far relations have come – and how fragile the progress remains. Ms. Anand’s visit, Canada’s first ministerial-level trip to India in two years, also signals that the diplomatic reset launched by prime ministers Mark Carney and Narendra Modi in June is gathering momentum and that Ottawa and New Delhi have moved from crisis management to step-by-step re-engagement.

Canadians seem to support this, at least in principle. New polling by the Angus Reid Institute and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada finds that more than half of Canadians believe rapprochement with India was the right decision, while just one in five disagrees – a notable shift from the negativism of recent years. At the same time, a majority of Canadians also urge caution, and only about one-third say they know “at least something” about India – well below their self-reported knowledge of the........

© The Globe and Mail