MY INDIA, MY CANADA

Drawing from his decades of experiences as a reporter, Haroon Siddiqui warns against pitfalls of modern democracies.

Though both Canada and India are products of the British Empire, they represent two very different paths that nations today can follow . Along with the United States, Europe and Australia, India suffers the effects of growing populism, tribalism, and Islamophobia, which threaten stability and human rights for its citizens.
Through his memoirs, Haroon Siddiqui recounts the highs and lows he has experienced in relation to his native and adopted lands, and the lessons learned from what can go wrong and what can be made right. From his early years as the child of a Sufi family in India who endured the horrors of the 1947 Partition, to his move to Canada twenty years later. From watching his adopted country grow more multicultural and welcoming, to the contradiction of those inclusive ideals after September 11, 2001. Any country, no matter its place in the world, can descend into racist, anti-democratic tendencies. Canada has been an exception, but how will the forces of the world change that?
In My India, My Canada , Siddiqui uses his two countries as metaphors to examine the risks of liberal democracy today and the fault lines of the age which threaten to tear us apart He tells these stories as a reminder of both the glories of humanity and the depths to which we can fall.

HAROON SIDDIQUI has been a reporter for Toronto Star for over twenty years, and currently is their editorial page editor emeritus. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and a Senior Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto.