Forgive the exaggeration, but in the end, it has taken an Indian maid in Manhattan to spoil the party, and unravel all that grand rhetoric about “the defining partnership of the 21st century.” In a trenchant reversal of fortunes, what could easily have been a year when the drifting India-US relations showed signs of new green shoots — with a spate of two-way high-profile visits, culminating in Manmohan Singh’s summit meeting with President Obama — is sadly ending with a whimper and whine. In the days reminiscent of Cold War paranoia, anti-American sentiments have peaked in India over Washington’s attitude towards scandalous humiliation of an Indian diplomat in New York.
Belying its soft image, India has shown an atypical muscular assertiveness by piling on pressure on the US by withdrawing a host of unilateral privileges to American diplomats. The motif of exceptionalism, which was deployed by Washington, to get India inside the global nuclear tent now seems a distant echo; reciprocity is the new rallying cry.
The Plot Thickens..
In the meantime, the plot has become curiouser and curiouser – the manner in which the maid’s family was sneaked out of New Delhi with support of overzealous US officials, despite a Delhi high court injunction, is a mystery that is thickening by the day.
The $4,500 salary apparently promised to the maid, the figure which was tossed in early media reports casually without fact-check, is now proving to be a costly misreading. It’s also a mystery that it has taken a few weeks to figure out that $4,500 shown in the visa form was the diplomat’s salary, and not the maid’s! That vigilante prosecutor Preet Bharara mistook the figure to be the maid’s salary is also stretching the limits of credulity, and is making it look like a full-blown farce. Besides, the figure simply does not add up: even going by around $10 per hour wage (as per the US law) at the rate of 8 hours a day works out to around $2400 a month. Weeks after the controversy erupted, it now emerges that Devyani Khobragade was not just a consular official, but an accredited advisor to the UN at the time of her arrest, and, therefore, was entitled to full diplomatic immunity from arrest and prosecution.
What has added insult to injury in New Delhi is that despite these plain facts, the diplomat was not only arrested on a street in Manhattan, but was subjected to strip-search and locked up with hardened drug addicts and criminals. To compound the humiliation, it was all blandly justified by Washington as standard operating procedures.
If one adds up all the details, it increasingly looks like that the arrest and subsequent treatment of Ms Khobragade was staged and orchestrated not just to humiliate her, but to send a pointed message to India. And that message was: forget about exceptionalism, first learn to pay your maids well, there is nothing special about you.
Reciprocity, the new mantra
India’s diplomatic establishment seems to have got that message, and is now upping the ante by insisting on strict reciprocity. Given New Delhi’s mounting rage and relentless pressure, Washington will perhaps find a way to say sorry, and if better sense prevails, all the charges against Ms Khobragade will eventually be dropped.
When that happens, there will surely be a sense of vindication in New Delhi, but it will not be a cause for much cheer. The transformation of the once estranged democracies into engaged democracies, after all, has been touted as the defining diplomatic tour de force of the last decade. Looking ahead, the well-structured machinery of the India-US relations, with over 30 dialogues spanning a year, will continue to whirr, but it will nonetheless look more and more like a machine, with that quintessential personal touch missing.
Anyone for India Dream?
The maid, who has cunningly hustled her way into the bright glare of Manhattan, has probably given a new twist to the new cliché of the “new normal” in India-US relations. But by default, she has also brought home some home truths about the India-US relations — despite the chant of reciprocity and equity, it remains a fundamentally asymmetrical relationship.
The US economy is eight times bigger than India’s, and its military machine many more times mightier. The American power may be declining, but the American century is not fading any time soon. China is rising, and its rise seems unstoppable. The US and India will continue to need each other, but for varying strategic imperatives and national interests. Creating a genuinely equal and reciprocal India-US relationship will, therefore, remain a fraught work in progress. These hard facts, however, should not awe or intimidate India, but should provoke its leaders and policy-makers to create an economically empowered egalitarian country with a distinct voice of its own in the global arena, and raise the bar for the India Dream.
If we don’t have any India Dream, how will ‘America the Beautiful’ saying simply sorry help? And how can you stop the maid from chasing her American dream?
Author Profile
- Manish Chand is Founder-CEO and Editor-in-Chief of India Writes Network (www.indiawrites.org) and India and World, a pioneering magazine focused on international affairs. He is CEO/Director of TGII Media Private Limited, an India-based media, publishing, research and consultancy company.
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