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By:

Commodore S.L. Deshmukh

31 October 2024 at 3:00:19 am

A Diplomatic Detour

The Japanese Prime Minister’s decision to skip Assam is a setback for the Northeast, but not for the larger India-Japan partnership. India and Japan share one of Asia’s most understated yet enduring partnerships. Long before the relationship acquired strategic significance, it rested on the quiet foundations of culture and civilisation. Buddhism travelled from the Indian subcontinent to Japan over many centuries, leaving an imprint that still shapes Japanese society. In the modern era, that...

A Diplomatic Detour

The Japanese Prime Minister’s decision to skip Assam is a setback for the Northeast, but not for the larger India-Japan partnership. India and Japan share one of Asia’s most understated yet enduring partnerships. Long before the relationship acquired strategic significance, it rested on the quiet foundations of culture and civilisation. Buddhism travelled from the Indian subcontinent to Japan over many centuries, leaving an imprint that still shapes Japanese society. In the modern era, that cultural affinity has been reinforced by expanding economic ties, institutional cooperation and an increasingly convergent strategic outlook. Strong Bonds The architecture of this relationship is extensive. Organisations such as the Indo-Japanese Association have nurtured cultural and intellectual exchanges since the 1950s, while the Indo-Japanese Economic Cooperation Council has promoted investment, technology transfer and commercial collaboration. Diplomatic forums on both sides have steadily deepened mutual trust, reflecting a shared commitment to peace, stability and prosperity across the Indo-Pacific. Security cooperation has become an equally important pillar. A turning point came in 2008, when India and Japan signed their Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Tokyo. Since then, bilateral ties have expanded to include regular “2+2” ministerial dialogues, defence exchanges, coast guard cooperation and joint military exercises. The Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, which entered into force in 2021, has further strengthened operational cooperation between the Indian armed forces and Japan’s Self-Defence Forces. Together with their collaboration through the Quad, these initiatives underscore how the two democracies increasingly view each other as indispensable strategic partners. The diplomatic warmth between the two countries, however, predates the present geopolitical moment. One of the earliest symbols of goodwill came in 1949, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru gifted an Indian elephant to Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo. At a time when Japan was struggling to recover from the devastation of the Second World War, the gesture carried emotional significance far beyond diplomacy. Three years later, India signed one of the first post-war peace treaties with Japan, formally establishing diplomatic relations on April 28, 1952. India’s exports of iron ore contributed to Japan's post-war industrial recovery, while Japan gradually emerged as one of India's most dependable development partners. Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi’s visit to India in 1957 marked another milestone, paving the way for decades of Japanese official development assistance. Today, that legacy is visible in projects ranging from metro rail systems to the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor, one of the largest Japanese-backed infrastructure investments overseas. Against this backdrop, the decision by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to cancel the Guwahati leg of her July 2026 India visit has understandably generated disappointment, particularly in Assam. The annual India-Japan summit will now be held entirely in New Delhi. Official explanations have cited parliamentary commitments in Tokyo and scheduling constraints. Diplomacy often leaves little room for certainty, and itinerary changes are not uncommon. Yet symbolism matters in international relations, especially when a region is striving to position itself as a gateway to Southeast Asia. Past Incidents This is not without precedent. In 2019, then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was forced to cancel his visit to Assam amid protests over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. That cancellation deprived the Northeast of an opportunity to showcase its growing strategic relevance within Japan’s vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific. It also served as a reminder that domestic political turbulence can sometimes carry unintended diplomatic costs. The latest cancellation comes at an equally delicate moment. Assam has spent years projecting itself as an emerging investment destination. Improved law and order, expanding infrastructure and greater connectivity have encouraged the state government to court foreign investors with unusual vigour. Preparations for the Japanese delegation reflected those ambitions. Guwahati witnessed beautification drives, road improvements and hospitality planning. Japanese officials reportedly spent weeks assessing the local ecosystem, infrastructure and investment climate ahead of the proposed visit. The economic stakes were hardly insignificant. Prime Minister Takaichi was expected to be accompanied by executives from more than 50 Japanese companies and organisations, including Suzuki Motor. Discussions were expected to cover industrial investment, energy resilience initiatives and financing mechanisms that could support infrastructure development in India and Southeast Asia. For Assam, hosting such a delegation would have provided a valuable opportunity to present itself not merely as a peripheral state but as a strategic hub connecting India to East and Southeast Asia. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has understandably expressed disappointment while indicating that the state would seek greater clarity from the Ministry of External Affairs. Such restraint is prudent. More importantly, one cancelled visit should not be mistaken for a weakening of Japanese interest in the Northeast. Indeed, there are indications that a high-level Japanese business delegation may still visit Assam separately. If that materialises, much of the economic momentum generated by the preparations could yet be preserved. The larger trajectory of India-Japan relations remains firmly positive, driven by strategic necessity as much as by historical goodwill. Both countries seek resilient supply chains, diversified manufacturing, secure maritime routes and greater stability across the Indo-Pacific. These interests transcend the calendar of summit diplomacy. For India, however, the episode offers a useful lesson. The Northeast has acquired unprecedented geopolitical significance as New Delhi's gateway to ASEAN and as an integral component of the Act East policy. Maximising that potential requires not only infrastructure and connectivity but also careful diplomatic management and political stability. Foreign investment is ultimately attracted by predictability as much as by opportunity. While a cancelled visit may disappoint, but it need not derail a partnership built patiently over seven decades. If both New Delhi and Dispur draw the right lessons, the next Japanese delegation may arrive not merely as honoured guests but as long-term partners in the economic transformation of India’s Northeast. (The author is a retired naval aviation officer and a defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)

The New Face of Female Criminality

The Siya Goyal case challenges familiar assumptions about gender, violence and the changing nature of crime in India.

Crime anywhere in the world, across time, culture and geography, has two clearly defined segments - the perpetrator and the victim. When women are ‘visible’ in media content, the manner of their representation reflects the biases and assumptions of those who define the public - and, therefore, the media agenda.

 

More than fifty years after the international community formally began to recognise the scale of gender inequality in every aspect of life, and despite the adoption of numerous measures to redress gender imbalances, the power to define public and media agendas remains largely a male privilege.

 

Bending Assumptions

However, the recent murder of Ketan Agarwal, by his fiancée Siya Goyal and her boyfriend, Chetan Chowdhary, by pushing him off a 400-foot cliff at Lohagad Fort in Maharashtra, appears to challenge the belief that men are more crime-oriented than women. Siya’s and Ketan’s families had arranged an extravagant wedding, with lavish venues, private planes and millions of rupees invested. Siya was already in a relationship with Chetan, whom she had met at a cricket match.

 

Investigators revealed that Siya allegedly confessed to choosing murder because she feared a family backlash and wanted to buy about three years for Chetan to establish his career. In their paper, Female Criminality in India: Prevalence, Causes and Preventive Measures, P.M.K. Mili and Neethu Susan Cherian state that, alongside the increase in the overall crime rate, crimes committed by women have also risen. In 2020, India saw a 10 per cent rise in women's arrests compared with 2015, while their convictions fell by 50.5 per cent over the five-year period, according to Fact Checker’s analysis of data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and Prison Statistics India (PSI). By contrast, between 2015 and 2020, the number of men arrested declined by 21 per cent.

 

As part of a 16-day Media Monitoring Project in the Eastern Region, this participant had the opportunity to study, in detail, stories relating to gender in general and gender violence in particular in the Hindustan Times (English), Calcutta, during the Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. The study was carried out in two phases to compare the visibility of gender issues in the print media before and during the fortnight.

 

One unique characteristic that emerged from the study in both phases was a visible rise in the reporting of crimes committed by women, particularly those in which men were reportedly the victims. This, however, does not mean that the increase in women committing acts of violence, individually or collectively, has in any way lessened either the incidence or the severity of violence against women.

 

Such crimes ranged from the alleged baby-lifting by Sangita Prasad in Siliguri to the Nagpur incident in which a rape survivor reportedly led a mob against her alleged rapists, and to a case in which a woman allegedly threw acid on a man, causing him grievous injuries, “after being fed up with the lessons in morality he was preaching to her every day.”

 

This slight but visible shift in the character of news against, rather than for, women raises several questions that require further exploration and analysis. Some of these questions are: (a) Are women really becoming more aggressive in expressing their anger, protest and violence? Or (b) do crimes committed by women simply attract greater news value and media coverage than they did previously?

 

Is this a reflection of a legal and judicial system that fails to mete out justice to women when they are victims of violence? Or is it a natural outburst stemming from decades of suppression and conditioning to accept violence as a part of life? Is this kind of news published primarily for its sensational value? Or is it a true indicator of a shift in the gender-linked pattern of violence, in which men have traditionally been the principal perpetrators?

 

Women in crime may be classified under three broad categories: women as victims of crime; women as perpetrators of crime, either as individuals or collectively in resistance to crimes committed against women; and women as participants in exposing crime and assisting in the arrest of offenders.

 

Social Discrimination

According to psychologist Anchal Bhagat, many female offenders have lost faith in the social and legal system. Women’s fate, she argues, is often one of deprivation rather than the enjoyment of constitutional rights and privileges. Discrimination within society exists from birth to death in many parts of India. In her work, Bhagat cites the well-known example of Phoolan Devi, a victim-turned-victimiser. Her transformation began when the law failed to deliver justice. Denied justice, Phoolan Devi became the notorious Bandit Queen before later entering politics. However, despite leaving behind her life of crime, she was eventually murdered by enemies she had made during that turbulent period. Bhagat concludes that compelling factors such as the lack of economic independence, social recognition and a respectable position in society probably force women like Phoolan Devi to take the law into their own hands. She emphasises that courts, while deciding such cases, must consider the circumstances and compelling reasons that led a woman to commit a particular crime.

 

Many cases in India show that women have been labelled “criminals” not because they possessed criminal tendencies but because male members of their families had been similarly labelled. This suggests that many thefts committed by women are not the result of psychological or social aberrations but of family and economic compulsions. In many crimes for which women are arrested, they play secondary or supportive roles. The Siya Goyal-Chetan Chowdhary case, however, appears to involve a diabolically planned murder, and it is certainly not an isolated example. Let us look at a few more.

 

The Ankit Jha case in Delhi, the Neeraj Sharma murder case spanning Delhi and Haryana, and the Priti Singh case in Uttar Pradesh all point towards a similar pattern. In each, investigators alleged that women, unwilling to accept arranged marriages, conspired with lovers to eliminate their fiancé or husband. The circumstances differed, but the underlying motif was strikingly similar: relationships formed before marriage allegedly culminated in carefully planned killings rather than broken engagements or divorce.

 

There is a need to understand the changing pattern of female criminality. Previously, women were often driven into crime as a means of self-preservation or as a form of revenge. Now, some recent cases appear to involve allegations of pre-planned, diabolical murders for reasons that could arguably have been avoided. Earlier, there were relatively few recorded instances of women being involved in heinous crimes.

 

Over time, however, the number of women arrested for more serious and sophisticated crimes appears to have risen. There is, therefore, a need to understand and address the changing pattern of female criminality before analysing appropriate correctional and remedial measures. What they certainly underscore is the need for deeper interdisciplinary research into female criminality, moving beyond stereotypes that portray women exclusively as victims or, conversely, sensationalise them as aberrant offenders. Only a more nuanced understanding can help shape informed public discourse and more effective legal and correctional responses. The print media, too, has a responsibility to report such cases with objectivity and honesty rather than dramatizing them as though they were film scripts.

 

(The author is a noted film scholar who writes extensively on social issues. Views personal.)

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