The Inner Voices of a Contemporary Indian – Part I

(originally published at http://www.masterpeace.org/blogs/post/the_inner_voices_of_a_contemporary_indian__part_i)

(This is the first among a series of blogs on contemporary India – a subjective commentary on its psycho-social and political scenario.)

I write as a disturbed Indian. A member of our foreign services, Devyani Khobragade, posted in New York was charged with under-paying one of her domestic staff a few weeks ago. All legal evidence and regulations indicate clearly that she forged the visa papers and was paying her maid, Sangeeta Richard, one-third of the wages prescribed for New York City. While this seems to be apparently a common practice among expat Indians, what disturbs me most is the drama created by our government trying to fend for the diplomat and making a hue and cry over regular investigation and search procedures followed by the American authorities. The maid’s rights have certainly been violated in this case, but our government does not seem interested in righting the wrong done to her. Instead, we have measures as juvenile as taking off security barriers from outside the American embassy in New Delhi as a retaliation by the Indian government against the US.

Here’s a diplomat who seems to have a history of misusing the influence of her civil servant father, Uttam Khobragade, in the past. Apparently, when she was still being trained for the foreign services, she used her father’s influence to be chosen to study a foreign language of her choice, even as there were better qualified candidates, who were deliberately overlooked to accommodate her whims. And then she was involved in the infamous Adarsh housing scandal.

The Indian government’s response to this serial offender is to protect her by promptly transferring her to India’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York, so that she can avail of diplomatic immunity. While I understand the government’s concern to protect the dignity of the Indian diplomacy in general, I do believe the offence in question had nothing to do with Khobragade’s duties as a diplomat. It is a domestic issue and the government has no reason to try to protect her, where she is clearly in the wrong.

An entire government rallying to protect an offender is a disturbing proposition for a country that is already reeling under the effects of corruption. The authorities don’t seem to be bothered about the maid, who is also an Indian citizen and whose rights have been violated. It is one thing to take cognisance of the cultural factor of high power distance in this country, but quite another to see that factor being blatantly misused by the powerful.

I wonder what message are we sending the world: Are we a society willing to actively protect and promote offenders so long as they are powerful? Are we saying that we will actively aid corruption since the common citizen does nothing much beyond lip-service to complain against it? As a country going to the polls this year, I wonder what we should look forward to. What are we willing to create? A part of me is sad that we seem happy to be active victims who want to do nothing beyond complaining against the powerful, but at the same time, using their power when it is available and convenient to use, for selfish motives. The other part is desperately hopeful, that the handful who are willing and able to touch their own power, will use it well, accept and overcome our ethical lacunae.

At this juncture, I would be dishonest to say the truth shall win. That is difficult when we see truth being traded for convenience every day. My only hope comes from a space where I go beyond my identity as an Indian and touch my core as a human with my own power struggles. I have lived through phases in life as a victim who needed and created oppressors unconsciously to protect my fallacious sense of identity. It is only when I acknowledged myself as an oppressed, that I freed myself of the oppressor consciousness within me. If the microcosm reflects the macrocosm, I hope that the shift within an Indian also ripples into a shift within India – one day.