A classical case of a clash of
cultures
Now this is a good story. Make up your own mind about how much you seek
to "homogenize" with the Indian culture.
The Case Against India’s Diplomat
There are complex
historical reasons for India’s outrage over the recent arrest of one of its
diplomats.
By Omer Aziz in the Diplomat
1344
Consider the following scenario: a diplomat in New York is found to have slaves in her home, an abject violation of U.S. laws. After investigation, U.S. authorities arrest and search the diplomat, who as a consular official has only limited diplomatic immunity. Would the diplomat’s home country be justified in vehemently castigating U.S. officials?
Replace
the word “slave” with “underpaid domestic worker,” and we have precisely the
situation confronting the U.S. and India. The diplomat in question, a consular
official named Devyani Khobragade, allegedly falsified documents and
lied on her visa application about the wages she would pay her housekeeper,
Sangeeta Richard. If providing fraudulent information were not enough,
Khobragade then surreptitiously paid Richard a paltry wage of $3.31 an hour,
breaking U.S. labor laws. For a nanny, this wage would be considered lavish by
Indian standards, but the nanny was employed in New York and thus her
employment was subject to U.S. rather than Indian laws. The affidavit filed
in the Southern District of New York clearly states that Khobragade filed the
visa application herself.
While
Khobragade has repeatedly insinuated that she was mistreated and underwent a
cavity search, the U.S. attorney has called this “misinformation.” According
to the attorney’s statement,
Khobragade was given two hours to make phone calls, was placed in a cell with
only female inmates, and was even brought coffee. Nevertheless, Indians have
taken to the streets in droves to protest U.S. action, encouraged by jingoistic
news reports that highlight the diplomat’s arrest but say nothing about the
housekeeper. With barely 900
Indian Foreign Service officers, each Indian diplomat occupies one of the most
elite positions in all of Indian society, while the millions of housekeepers in
India toil in anonymity. Indeed, according to the Global Slavery Index, India has the highest number of
slaves in the world at 14 million. Yet official India claims there is only “one victim” here.
There
is nothing to suggest that Bharara — who is originally from India and has prosecuted Wall Street Bankers,
terrorists and the Gambino crime family — was pursuing rogue justice. The
Indian government was vitriolic in its response, dismantling security barriers
protecting the U.S. embassy, stopping import clearances, and demanding the personal information of
teachers at U.S. schools in India. A former Indian External Affairs Minister demanded the
Indian government expel gay partners of U.S. diplomats. The current External
Affairs minister called for an official apology, despite admitting that
the “worst that could be said about [Khobragade] is that she did not comply
with the amounts” that Richard should have been paid. In other words: she may
have broken the law, but we want an apology.
Why the
Anti-Americanism?
All
this might normally be associated with the retaliation of one of America’s
traditional enemies. But it is hard to reconcile with India, an
English-speaking democracy led by an Oxford-educated economist. Beyond the
immediate headlines, however, India’s almost pathologically angry response is
steeped in two hundred years of history. The country’s colonial hemorrhaging
and its post-colonial policies as actualized by Jawaharlal Nehru, independent
India’s first prime minister, help explain why New Delhi responded as it did.
Leaders
of all political stripes in India have, since 1947, stood up to Western powers,
a position that evolved from the traumatizing effects of colonial plunder. In
only a few generations, India had gone from being a world leader to a British
subject, from accounting with
China for nearly half of global economic output to having a life expectancy of
just 27 years in 1931. The amputation of Indian territory in the creation of
Pakistan only reinforced its absolute insistence on sovereignty, while Mohandas
Gandhi’s non-violent protest against the white viceroys ruling India came to
inform the moralizing rhetoric and third worldism India would come to
espouse. Satyagraha or “truth force” was Gandhi’s guiding
light, and since his time, the didactic and the moral have been central to
India’s foreign relations.
To
combat the exploitation of developing nations, India’s post-independence
leaders helped inaugurate the Non-Aligned Movement as a way of maintaining
autonomy during the Cold War. In practice, however, India allied with China — a
likeminded country wronged by colonialism — in the 1950s under the banner
of Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai or “Indians and Chinese are brothers.” In
the 1970s, India tilted towards the Soviet Union, an ostensible socialist ally.
Nehru’s government voted against the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine and
was the first government outside of the Arab world to recognize the PLO,
prefiguring India’s recognition of a Palestinian state in 1988.
Only in
1991, when India’s currency reserves fell to six weeks worth of imports and the
government had to ask the IMF for a bailout, did the pro-market shift begin.
Even then, the country went ahead and tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and
somehow managed to unite the U.S., UN, China, EU, and Pakistan in their condemnation of its
bellicosity. Even after the issue was resolved and George W. Bush made India a
central priority — in effect exempting the world’s largest democracy from
international nonproliferation norms — India has maintained an uncompromising
independence in its foreign relations. For example, eight years after the
U.S.-India nuclear agreement, there has been little progress in actually
starting nuclear cooperation, because Indian leftist parties see it as a sell out which
turns India into a U.S. dependency.
Anything
remotely affecting Indian sovereignty then, from global sanctions on Iran — for
which India was granted an exemption —
to the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan — over which even banal U.S. offers of
mediation are firmly rebuffed — is a politically sensitive issue across the
country. New Delhi calls it “strategic autonomy,” which
is another way of telling Washington, Moscow, and Beijing that no external
power can tell India what to do.
Pursue
Justice, But Carefully
This
brings us back to the arrested diplomat, who was recently moved to the UN where
she has full diplomatic immunity. India
perceived the U.S. attorney’s actions as encroaching upon its sovereignty — a
sovereignty that, after decades of protest and millions of lives lost, is
considered sacrosanct. To compound the perceived slight, India saw the
treatment of its diplomat — who was strip-searched but not cavity searched as
she alleged — as humiliating. In South Asia, women are seen as the “honor” of
the family, caste and community and a strip search would be considered
unconscionable to most Indians and Pakistanis. While this attitude towards
women leads to patriarchy and misogyny in pockets of Indian society, it is a
reality U.S. law enforcement officials should have factored into their approach
before arresting Khobragade.
Even as
the U.S. expresses “regret,” its justice system must not be compromised for the
rich, even if India does feel aggrieved. In its colossal diversity and complex
relations with world powers, India must remember that moral justice was a
principle upon which it was founded and that beyond the nationalism and the
hurt feelings, there just might be an inkling of satyagraha involved
here as well.
Omer
Aziz is a writer and journalist from Toronto. He was most recently a
Commonwealth and Pitt Scholar of International Relations at Cambridge
University.
The original post can be
found at: http://thediplomat.com/2013/12/the-case-against-indias-diplomat/
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