Late Reckoning

As Canada seeks to reset a badly frayed relationship with India, Ottawa has initiated proceedings to revoke the citizenship of Tahawwur Rana, the Pakistan-born businessman accused of playing a key role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that killed 166 people. Coming just ahead of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to India, the decision reads less like an attempt to undo some of the diplomatic and moral damage accumulated during the Justin Trudeau years.

The twist, here, is that Canada is not acting against Rana for terrorism. It is acting because he lied on a form a quarter-century ago. Canadian immigration authorities allege that Rana misrepresented his residency when applying for citizenship in 2000, claiming near-continuous residence in Ottawa and Toronto. Investigators later concluded that he had in fact spent much of that time in Chicago, running businesses and owning property. The case has been referred to the Federal Court, where government lawyers have also sought to withhold sensitive national-security material.

That such a consequential figure is being pursued on technical grounds rather than on the substance of his alleged crimes is telling. Rana, a close associate of David Coleman Headley, is accused by Indian investigators of helping enable the Mumbai attacks. He was convicted in the United States for plotting to attack a Danish newspaper, extradited to India in April last year and arrested by the National Investigation Agency upon arrival in New Delhi. Yet for years before that, Canada remained a reluctant actor, a passive host rather than an active partner in accountability.

This reluctance was not an isolated failing but part of a broader pattern. Under Trudeau, Canada has acquired an unsavoury reputation as a permissive jurisdiction for India’s most vicious enemies. The relationship between the two countries collapsed in 2023, when Ottawa accused Indian agents of killing a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil - an allegation India angrily rejected - triggering reciprocal expulsions of diplomats and the suspension of trade talks. Well before this, Khalistani extremists have always operated with remarkable ease in Canada, getting room to organise, raise funds and glorify violence under the banner of free expression there.

The Rana affair crystallised that mistrust. India’s repeated requests for cooperation were met with legal caution and political hesitancy. India has come to see Canada as a permissive space for its most virulent adversaries. Acting in the Rana case at this late date in order to strike successful deals with India on trade, energy, technology and defence, seems opportunistic.

Whether this amounts to a genuine reset remains to be seen. The larger test, however, is political. Will Ottawa under Carney draw a firmer line between dissent and extremism, and match its liberal rhetoric with enforcement? If not, today’s procedural resolve will look like a diplomatic courtesy call. If yes, Canada may yet discover that moral posturing cannot mask the geopolitical

costs of tolerating extremism, or recover trust once it has been spent.