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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

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...

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.

Warriors of Night

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

We name our daughters Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati; we worship the divine feminine power in the temples but oppress, repress and even attack the feminine power amidst us. That is the irony in the way India sees its women.

After the safety of the daylight fades, women are seen as easy prey by the predators of the night.

We mark the nine nights of Navratri, the festival of the goddess, by celebrating the dedication and valour of nine real-life women who brave the challenges of the night to pursue their dreams.


Part - 4


Never felt unsafe

The singer says there has been a generational change over the last two decades

Never felt unsafe

Work has no timings for Aisha Sayed. Sometimes, she begins her studio recording at 12 AM and finishes by 5 AM; at other times, concerts and live shows start at 9 AM and she’s done by midnight. In her field of work as a performer and singer, Sayed is used to not getting a night’s sleep and often returning home when most of the city is set to wake up. “I have been travelling at night but I have never, ever, felt unsafe in Mumbai,” says the singer-performer who began her career at the age of 13 years. Her father spotted her talent for music and took her to meet a sound engineer who was their neighbour in Bandra. The family helped her get opportunities and from there, her career began.

Being among the top contenders in Indian Idol, season 3, in 2007 catapulted her to fame and it opened up a world of new performance opportunities across the country. “I was just 20 years then and I was travelling the world, performing at the most lavish weddings, staying at the most luxurious hotels and performing at big corporate gigs,” she says. Safety, while on work, is has never been an issue for her for the organizers arrange a security detail for the performers. “They escort us until we reach the room. And since we travel with our team in a big group, there is always safety in numbers,” says Sayed, who sings in 10 languages. Her peers have faced instances of audience members being rowdy. “Once in Delhi, a group of drunk men followed my colleague to her room and kept banging on her door late into the night. But I have been fortunate,” she says.

Work assignments have taken to varied places, from the most luxurious international destinations to far-off venues in the hinterland of India where she’s travelled through dark, dense forested areas. “I have driven through areas where the only light is that of your car’s headlights. Turn around and you see pitch darkness,” says Sayed. She’s always got a little prayer on her lips when travelling through these remote areas for miles together. She recalls a show in Chattisgarh where she had to travel for nine hours at a stretch through remote and forested areas. “No place in our country is as safe as Mumbai,” she stresses. She would know, considering her extensive travels. She advises women to travel in groups while in places that are unfamiliar or unknown and never to venture out at night alone. “Keep your family informed of your whereabouts,” she says.

While her agreements state that proper security at all times, Sayed says that she drives her own car if she’s out at night for parties or personal work but insists that the people of Mumbai are largely helpful and cooperative. A rickshaw driver who once drove to home in the wee hours of the night, after a recording, waited at her gate until the watchman let her in. Friends and colleagues have dropped her home several times.

Mumbai, she feels, has changed—and it’s for the better, in the past two decades. “Earlier, on buses and trains, men would use the crowd as an excuse to touch women inappropriately. That has gone down. There is a generational change that I see,” says Sayed. She used to take the BEST buses and trains to her training classes and for recordings in the early days of her career.

Her timings are inconsistent and her shows take her to various cities and towns. But the Mumbai-bred girl emphasizes that her city is very safe for women, despite the various incidents of violence. “Mumbai is the only place where a woman can wear what she wants, wear bright red lipstick, leave her hair open and look glamorous and still be safe.”

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