Tag Archives: racism

Never Again (As Long As It Is Convenient)

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

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A Tunisian court has just banned Israeli taekwondokas from participating in the World Taekwondo Junior Championships being held presently in Hammamet. The decision came as a local group, The National Commission for Supporting Arab Resistance and Opposing Normalization and Zionism, sued the Tunisian Taekwondo Federation for violating the government’s commitment “to denouncing and refusing Zionist occupation and colonization, as well as boycotting and not dealing with the Zionist entity (…) in any way.” The world governing body of the sport, World Taekwondo has issued a tepid letter of regret and promised to discuss the situation with the Tunisian authorities as well as the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Such behaviour is routine among Muslim countries. The hosts, Tunisia, have a track record of refusing to play Israel – in 2013, the country’s tennis federation forbade their player from going up against an Israeli opponent. In the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, an Egyptian judoka refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent. In November 2017, an Iranian wrestler threw his match against a Russian opponent so that he would not advance to face an Israeli challenger; in August 2016 at the World Youth Championships in Hungary, another Iranian wrestler was ordered to feign an injury to avoid going up against the Israeli competitor. Although Israeli athletes were allowed to participate in the October 2017 Grand Slam judo tournament in Abu Dhabi, they were not allowed to display any symbol that might identify them as Israelis and the hosts refused to play the Israeli national anthem when one of them won a medal.

Such churlishness is not just poor sportsmanship but it goes against the very principles of international sport. Discrimination based on nationality, as Muslim states have long been practicing against Israel, goes against the charter of the IOC which aims to promote not just various physical competitions but also the proper ethics that accompany such activities. Under ‘Fundamental Principles of Olympism,’ the charter reads, “The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Olympic Charter shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Furthermore, it is the IOC’s role “to act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement.”

If the plaintiffs are indeed correct about Israeli athletes creating a legal crisis for the Tunisian government, it can be argued that the country – and all who support it – should be expelled from the IOC, for member states must take an oath that promises, among other things, “to keep myself free from any political or commercial influence and from any racial or religious consideration; to fight against all other forms of discrimination.” In fact, it is the duty of the National Olympic Committees to “ensure that no one has been excluded for racial, religious or political reasons or by reason of other forms of discrimination.”

Regular discrimination against Israeli athletes has unfortunately not yet pricked the conscience of the West or other major powers. Confrontation over principles is not convenient in geopolitics and Israel just does not have the economic or strategic footprint to force the moral issue. The indignation, however, is not difficult to imagine if, say, the United States were to cut all sporting contacts with Middle Eastern states.

The commonly repeated argument in support of the Muslim boycott of Israel is that it is not racist or anti-Semitic but a response to specific “Zionist, imperialist” policies of the State of Israel. The international sporting community does not accept political justifications for discrimination but even if the argument were allowed to stand for a moment, the Muslim states’ general political position towards the existence of the Jewish state betrays their rancour to be primarily religious in nature and contrary to the spirit of the United Nations Charter and several human rights statutes.

In the mid-1960s, the world began to turn its back on apartheid South Africa. Most sporting associations expelled the white-minority ruled country from its ranks and those who did not were shamed into doing so by massive boycotts such as the 21st Olympic Games in Montreal by 25 African states and the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh which was boycotted by 32 of 59 member states. The same outrage is sadly not present for anti-Semitism and Israel must bear the brunt of international hypocrisy – as it long has. If Muslim states genuinely believed that a boycott of Israeli athletes served as an ethical cudgel to Jerusalem, they could perhaps start within their own ranks – Pakistan for its persecution of the Baloch, Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women, minority Islamic sects, and homosexuals, and Iran for human rights excesses.

The irony of the situation is that many of the states that piously condemn Israel in public have security relations with it in private. The harsh condemnations and meaningless boycotts are empty virtue signalling to the street that has been stoked for decades on propaganda; the international community, ever fearful of the Islamophobia tag, seems to be doing the same as well but with its own domestic minority audience in mind. In the process, the moral persuasive power of their own democratic principles is weakened.

Although the geopolitical consequences of a sports boycott are not particularly significant, it does have some economic fallout. More importantly, it wreaks havoc on the careers of individual athletes. The international governing bodies of various sports must step up to not just condemn the boycott of Israeli athletes but take punitive action against the states that continue to discriminate against athletes at international events. Such states should not be allowed to host events and must run the risk of being disbarred from international competition themselves. The risk of a boomerang effect of a boycott might dissuade states from a display of poor ethics and sportsmanship. If not, it will at least prevent the disruption of events and careers at the whims of state officials.

It is the casual acceptance of discrimination against Israel that brings out how difficult it still is to be Jewish in this world. The last century and a half saw the tide turn against slavery and racism; perhaps, with the economic rise of Asia and states not of the Abrahamic religious order, the vigour behind anti-Semitism might also ebb – ironically so, given that Judaism is the fount of all Abrahamic faiths.

This article was written for The Indic Collective Trust.

Not Our War

13 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in Book Review

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Karnad, Raghu. Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War (London: William Collins, 2016). 320 pp.

Khan, Yasmin. The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War (Gurgaon: Vintage Books, 2015). 448 pp.

Raghavan, Srinath. India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939-1945 (New Delhi: Allen Lane, 2016). 550 pp.

The history of World War II is the most popular college course in the United States. Each year, thousands of undergraduates pour into classrooms to learn about, in that cloying phrase coined by Studs Terkel, the last good war. Young Americans learn how their grandfathers – perhaps great grandfathers – fought and won on the distant battlefields of Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. The narrative is, not surprisingly, centred around the American war effort; most history, at least at the introductory levels, still focus on forging citizens rather than cosmopolitan elites. No wonder, then, that similar courses in Britain would drill the island’s lone and courageous resistance to the Germans, and in Moscow, take credit for the greatest Nazi casualties despite immense losses and suffering.

Yet another view can be had from India. Then a part of the British empire, the colony – which then comprised of modern-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh – was dragged into the war by its imperial overlords without as much as a by-your-leave to the elected Indian representatives in the administration or to the leaders of the independence movement. This is perhaps one reason why Indians never saw the war as quite their own; another reason could be that the Indian republic has never celebrated the profession of arms, save for the annual Republic Day parade. In India, the military is not particularly visible in mainstream public life as it is in other countries such as the United States. There are few national memorials for those who fell in in its wars; what chance would the memories of a conflict not its own have?

The centenary celebrations in Europe of the Great War and the diamond anniversary celebrations of the Second World War have turned the attention of some, especially in this era of our globalised community, to India’s role in the conflagration the previous century. In these archival excavations, a fuller story of the war emerges – not necessarily surprising but damning in many ways – that apportions credit for Allied victories more fairly.

Farthest FieldRaghu Karnad’s Farthest Feld: An Indian Story of the Second World War is not as much a historical work as it is a quasi-biographical novel. Nonetheless, the tale he recounts offers a glimpse into a certain segment of middle class India of the late 1930s. This is a far cry from the overwhelming majority of Indian conscripts, to be sure, yet there emerge a few threads common to the pan-Indian experience. These are held together by the broader historical and political events that shaped Indian views on the European war.

The war came to India first by way of rising prices, followed by the tugs of ideology and opportunism. These were not necessarily aligned and it showed in how South Asia’s myriad communities responded differently to the war. The Communists boycotted it until the Soviet Union was invaded in June 1941; the Congress, burned by the poor returns despite their enthusiasm during the previous war, opposed it unless London was willing to guarantee political concessions; the nobility, completely dependent on the Raj for their very existence, worked tirelessly to provide the British with materiel; some communities, such as the Parsis, embraced the economic windfall that war meant for merchants; and a very few felt a familial loyalty towards the Crown and enlisted.

In the upper middle class setting of Karnad’s quasi-novel, the war was initially seen as a grand adventure. However, as the fighting crept closer to India from Dunkirk and Manchuria, as scarcity and inflation set in, the rosy tint evaporated. In the Pacific theatre, the widely spread Indian diaspora were overrun by the rapidly expanding Japanese co-prosperity sphere towards the end of 1941 and into 1942. As England, France, and the Netherlands lost their possessions, over half a million Indian labourers employed in British work camps began stream west to the relative safety of their homeland.

The Raj at WarThough Farthest Field gives a general feel of wartime India, it still telescopes a very thin socio-economic slice of the Indian populace as any quasi-biography is wont to do. Still, it raises several troubling hypocrisies in the British war propaganda that others like Yasmin Khan have explored further in The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War.

True to its subtitle, Khan offers a thorough exposition of the home front during the turbulent years of World War II. Khan’s work, an academic tome, makes extensive use of not just personal diaries and memoirs some soldiers may have left behind but also government and military archives around the world. The Raj at War does not delve into the politics as much as one might expect but analyses the national experience and social disruptions World War II brought India.

In the early days of the war, the British could afford to be choosy about whom they recruited into the imperial army and they maintained their theory of martial races despite it having been proven wrong in the great European war just a quarter century earlier. However, as time passed and Axis gains became overwhelming, London was forced to expand its selection pool to all of Indian society. From the Indian side, the reasons for enlisting were varied and not usually patriotic. Some young men signed up because they hailed from a martial tradition that had sent at least one son into the army for generations – which political authority that army served seemed not to matter. Others joined up to escape marriage proposals, debt collectors, or law enforcement; yet others were lured by pecuniary enticements offered them or their families by the maharajas who sought to curry favour with the Crown in anticipation of the difficult post-war years. Many saw the military as an employer or even an educator who would provide skills that would prove useful after the war. It is not clear if any of these volunteers ever saw a contradiction in fighting for a country that had colonised and oppressed their own; did nationalism not exist in the Indian heart even as late a 1939 or were these decisions simply about daal-chawal? Khan does not venture into the Indian soldier’s mind.

With more and more scholarship in recent years exposing Western hypocrisy about freedom in the first half of the 20th century, it would not come as a surprise to readers to discover that racism was rampant in the British military. Not only were Indian soldiers paid only about a quarter of what their British counterparts received, soldiers of colour were also not entitled to the same perks as white men in uniform. This included not just rations of tobacco and other war-time luxuries but extended even to the war front where Indian soldiers were assigned separate messes, hospitals, and even brothels! It is difficult to imagine what motivated Indians to remain in uniform despite suffering such indignities. Even more puzzling are some of the letters exchanged between home and front in which the men or their fathers expressed their prayers and good wishes towards the King of England. While the pre-enlistment sense of service and duty or pecuniary expectations might be explained away by utilitarian reasoning, differential treatment under fire is harder to fathom.

Khan also discusses the impact of the war on Indian industry. Although, normally, wars spur industrial growth, World War II had a mild effect on Indian businesses. Despite shortage of materiel in the Asian and African theatres, there was severe opposition from London to setting up advanced armaments plants, shipyards, and ammunition factories in India for the war effort, no doubt with a partial eye to the post-war colonial order. The more immediate concern was that if industry grew, wages would rise too and this would hurt recruitment. After all, why would anyone volunteer for a foreign army to fight on distant shores when there were opportunities to be had right at home? Even with the modest growth in Indian industry in the 1940s, this was exactly what happened.

It is interesting to note how Indians reacted to Japan’s early victories in Southeast Asia. Here was an uncolonised Asian power that was shellacking the Europeans out of the region. The mixture of awe and distaste – awe for the accomplishments and distaste for the inhumanity shown to the conquered fellow Asians – filled Indian leaders and people alike. While Khan does not explicitly talk about this, Japanese successes must have surely inspired confidence in the possibility of a technologically advanced, independent, and prosperous Asia in the near future. Until the fall of Singapore, it was just a plausible theory but since, it was a virtual certainty.

Khan’s The Raj at War is a splendid analysis of the impact of World War II on India – how the European war changed the Indian economy, society, and politics. Some of these changes would last – the skills Indian officers and soldiers picked up in Africa, Italy, and Burma, for example, would serve the new republic well in its own conflicts with the equally new and irksome western neighbour, Pakistan. It is beyond the scope of the book, however, to consider how many of these changes stuck – despite the nudge towards industrialisation and Jawaharlal Nehru’s scientific temper post independence, India steadily fell back in the community of nations in industrial production and scientific achievement. How much of this was due to stifling government policies and how much was simply because India was a largely illiterate country that was not yet ready for an industrial revolution?

indias-warTwo aspects Khan does not cover in her otherwise marvelous survey of India at war are the global and military dimensions. Khan’s focus was clearly on the domestic front, but over two and a half million Indian men were shipped abroad to fight England’s enemies around the globe. This lacuna is addressed by Srinath Raghavan in his India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939-1945.

Perhaps erroneously titled and sporting a slightly grandiloquent subtitle, Raghavan’s work is nonetheless a fantastic and much needed contribution to Indian military history. By this, I do not mean a dry recounting of battles and casualty figures interspersed by the occasional map, but a rich weaving of economics, politics, and war as any good military history ought to be. India’s War begins by explaining at length the various positions taken by the dramatis personae – London, the British government of India, the Congress party, the Hindu Mahasabha, and the Muslim League just to name the most prominent. At times, these positions would prove to be dynamic, depending upon the reactions of other parties. This may explain the near-bipolar Congress response to how the British dragged India into the war.

Raghavan’s analysis of the politics is not restricted to India and Indians just because his is a subcontinental story. In fact, India is shown as a more autonomous limb of the British Empire and a decision maker in its own right; it is also shown as a strategic region with a direct bearing on geopolitics in Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East. New to many readers will be the disagreements between London and its servants in Delhi on military strategy – for example, General Claude Auchinleck was convinced that an unsettled Iraq threatened Iran and Afghanistan and therefore India, while General Archibald Wavell did not want to be distracted from more important missions around the Mediterranean.

Of course, one might ask of what significance this is – a difference of opinion between London and its representatives in Delhi hardly makes it an Indian story. At best, Raghavan has shown that each command had its own priorities in the war in much the same way the Army, Navy, and Air Force compete with each other for strategic significance and hence the budget. In favour of the author, one can argue that this sort of autonomy was seen nowhere else in the British Empire – after World War I, the British mandate of Mesopotamia had technically fallen to India, not England. And towards the end of the war, India nationalists’ interests fascinatingly coincided with imperial interests in retaining Indian pre-eminence in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Still, even if not satisfactorily Indian for some, that (white) Delhi’s views on arms production and military strategy clashed with the High Command in London is an interesting facet of the history of World War II.

The sinews of war receive their share of Raghavan’s attention, too. India contributed not just men but also materiel to the war effort. Although modern industries such as armaments, heavy machinery, and vehicles was actively discouraged by London, Whitehall retained India in its traditional role as an exploited colony. The subcontinent provided ores, agricultural products, and other raw materials which were then fashioned into supplies. In monetary terms, these outflows were enormous. Since Britain insisted on administering India with local revenues alone – with fees and fines added for imperial upkeep, such as compensation to the British families affected by the 1857 mutiny or the Anglo-Afghan Wars, for example – the Raj had been in debt to Britain at the beginning of hostilities in Europe in 1939. By the end of the war, Britain owed India £1.3 billion.

This is not to say that these resources were spent on the defence of the subcontinent or even in training and equipping units raised from India. In fact, Indian units were frequently ill-equipped and insufficiently trained even when fighting far away from South Asia, in the Middle East or Europe. While the administration in India begged London for fighter planes, radios, artillery, and other equipment, these were luxuries for Indian troops even at the front.

An interesting nugget in India’s War is the revelation of the importance placed by Winston Churchill on American views. From the start, each major policy decision that involved India was additionally examined in the light of what effect it would have on American public and political opinion. Washington’s sympathies towards Indian independence are well known, and with wartime Britain’s desperate need for American aid, it seems only natural that these factors would come together. However, as the United States itself joined the war, one would have expected such considerations to take a back seat to the strategic imperative. Whether this was so in American minds or not, Raghavan explains that Whitehall was certainly not taking any chances.

Perhaps one of the most useful contributions Raghavan makes is his coverage of Indian troops under fire. Although the trend has so far been to depict World War II battles as a colossal clash between two Western (and white) sides, the fact is that millions of colonial troops – black, brown, and others – participated in the war in the British, French and other armies. India’s War lives up to its title at least in this regard, in volume of Indian blood spilled in the pursuit of European goals. Indian soldiers were deployed everywhere from Hong Kong to England and everywhere in between – France, Italy, Crete, Greece, Cyprus, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somaliland, Yemen, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, Malaya – and fought with such bravery that even Churchill had to accept the “unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers.” After the war, they found themselves staying on to restore colonial regimes all across Southeast Asia.

Farthest Field, The Raj at War, and India’s War all portray a different history of World War II, a refreshing narrative that is not Manichean. The same Allies who fought in the name of holy liberty also enslaved half the world in the shackles of imperialism. As the Japanese advanced into Burma, the Raj preferred to use the few available lorries to evacuate their lawn furniture back to India over the tens of thousands of Indian men, women, and children caught up in the turmoil; many perished in the jungles during their long march. For all of India’s importance to the war effort – in terms of men, resources, strategic geography, money – Indians remained casual objects in the imperial scheme of things, ones that may be useful and cherished at times but ultimately not in the same hierarchy. The Second World War was not India’s war, though millions of Indians bled and fought in it.

This article first appeared in the February 2017 print edition of Swarajya.

Fleet Street’s Foreign Policy

15 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in India, South Asia

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This week saw the third major fiasco India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was led into by the Indian media during the United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) second term alone (give or take a couple of months). The first blunder was regarding the allegedly racist attacks on Indians down under in 2009, the second ignominy was the Norwegian child custody case, and the third pie-in-the-face moment is the ongoing row over Shahrukh Khan’s detention (he was similarly detained in 2009) at a New York airport in White Plains. In each case, the Indian media generated hype and public fervour over trivial quotidian issues without even bothering to ascertain all the facts first. As a result, the UPA government, who is desperate for some positive press lest they go down in history as India’s greatest kleptocracy ever, set their political machinery in motion to win some cheap publicity at home.

Allowing the media (or anyone else) decide the country’s foreign policy priorities is, quite simply, a bad idea. It should have been common sense, but certainly a lesson South Block should have learned a long time ago. At least, the UPA should have observed the consequences of opening their collective mouths based on Indian media reports after the Australian embarrassment. A quick walk (of shame) down memory lane will illustrate the point better.

Racism Down Under

In 2009, the Indian media picked up reports of attacks upon Indian students in Australia. During a rally by over 4,000 Indian students in Melbourne in May that year, the students was alleged that the recent attacks on Indians had been racially motivated. The murder of two Indians later that year increased bitterness among Indians even more. Duly reported and sensationalised back in India, the Shiv Sena organised a demonstration in front of the Australian High Commission and burned effigies of then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Manohar Joshi, a Shiv Sena MP, warned that Australians in India could face similar attacks. Not to be outdone, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad threatened to call for a boycott of Australian goods if Canberra did not do more to protect Indians in Australia. Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India (CPI(M)) even tried to connect the alleged racism to Nazi Germany and the Great Depression(!). SM Krishna, not to be outdone in hyperbole, claimed that the situation in Australia was a ”heinous crime against humanity” that would have a bearing on bilateral relations. Students’ unions in India came out on the streets, urging the Indian government to take action to ensure the safety of Indians in Australia. New Delhi, under so much public pressure, made representations to Canberra through various channels, from the High Commissioner on up to even the Prime Minister.

Indian media outlets, from Outlook magazine to NDTV ratcheted up the pressure through their woefully ill-informed journalism. As the picture became clearer, it turned out that some of the murders were committed by Indians themselves, and some of the attacks on Indian students were by Lebanese, Afghan, and other (non-White) nationals. Undoubtedly, some assaults were indeed racist, and every country has a racist element in it. However, as per an Overseas Indian Affairs Ministry report tabled in the Lok Sabha in February 2010, only 23 of the 152 attacks the previous year had any racial undertones. Indian community leaders also accused the Indian press of blowing the whole situation out of proportion. Despite the new evidence, India’s fourth estate held on stubbornly to their initial claims that Australia was a racist country. The New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research explained the events as a function of changing demographics: “What has happened over the last few years is that a number of Indian students, attracted by fairly cheap accommodation, have come into the area, the target – always the soft targets – moved from elderly people walking on the street to Indian students with laptops.” Despite the hype by Indian tabloids, in 2011, the Australian Institute of Criminology released a study that found that over the period 2005-2009, Indian students experienced an average assault rate in some jurisdictions, but overall they actually experienced lower assault rates than the Australian average.

Ultimately, as Shashi Tharoor put it so eloquently,

For an Indian mother to hear that her son has been assaulted in Australia, it little matters to her whether he was assaulted because of his race, or because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because he was the wrong colour or the wrong height, or was carrying an iPod. She doesn’t want her son to be assaulted.

But that does not exonerate MEA officials for their incompetence or their weakness for cheap popularity.

War with Norway’s Child Services

In mid-January this year, the Indian media displayed its amateur status yet again in a report on a child custody case in Norway. The first stories broke out on NDTV and the Hindu but was very quickly picked up by other media outlets, and an indignant nation woke up to a report about the Norwegian Child Welfare Services taking away a three-year old and a one-year old from their Bengali parents. Ostensibly, this was because the one-year old, Aishwarya, was fed by hand by her mother, and the three-year old, Abhigyan, slept in the same bed as his parents. Understandably, Indians were furious at Norway’s failure to understand cultural norms in the non-White world.

The Indian government made strong demarches to the Norwegian embassy in New Delhi as well as its foreign ministry in Oslo, declaring that the separation of children from their parents was entirely unjustified. Politely but firmly, the Norwegian government replied that it would look into the case and keep the Indian government informed. Following Norwegian laws, however, the Child Protective Service refused to speak to the media. Had it stopped there, the MEA might have saved itself some embarrassment. But Indian media haranguing and public outrage at the plight of two small children in foster care for no apparent reason pushed South Block and Parliament into getting yolk on their collective faces. The Leader of the Opposition, BJP MP Sushma Swaraj, and the CPI(M) supremo Brinda Karat joined in demonstrations led by the grandparents in New Delhi, and BJP MP Tarun Vijay, to score points for tackiness no doubt, sent a teddy and chocolates to Norway for them. Even the President, Prathiba Patil, joined SM Krishna as he met with the grandparents to assure them that India was doing her best to secure the release of the children. As in the Australian case, contacts were made with Oslo’s officials at many levels, each stating the need to release the children and resolve the matter quickly. In fact, the Indian Express later reported that between December 24 and February 22, the MEA issued six official statements to the Norwegian government. This was more than the number of statements India issued on China, Pakistan, or the US.

The issue was resolved, i.e., the Indian media (and the government) beat a hasty retreat, when information leaked out that there was marital discord between the seemingly perfect Indian couple. The wife, Sagarika Bhattacharya, accused the husband, Anurup Bhattacharya, of torture, while the husband counter-accused his wife of having psychological ailments. There were even allegations of physical violence – by the mother towards the father – after which Anurup had filed for divorce. Amusingly, the Indian media, which had done so much to stoke outrage over the case, rounded on the government, accusing it of failing to do its homework. It wrote,

The main concern should have been the welfare of the children rather than scoring a diplomatic victory over Norway….At no point did Indian officials produce any concrete evidence of racial bias, yet the charge was freely bandied about and lapped up by the public….The media is often accused of being shoddy on facts and with some justification, but when official actions are based on unsubstantiated information, the result is the sort of embarrassment India is facing now.

Not quite exonerating the media but putting it in a more honourable light, NDTV admitted that the Indian foreign ministry had been misled by the media. They do, however, make the point that the MEA should have investigated the case more thoroughly and that it was motivated purely by populism – after all, what kind of foreign service gets its information from news channels?

The MEA then would only respond when parents would cry foul on TV, instead of pre-empting things and responding with more firmness. Surely before taking a stand that they would intervene, the MEA has done a thorough investigation, or at least relied on the information from credible sources?

Good question indeed.

VIP Detention: A Cultural Misunderstanding?

A few days ago, on his way to Yale University, Shahrukh Khan was detained for 90 minutes at the airport by US Customs. His detention has been the cause of great consternation to New Delhi and SM Krishna has, as usual, summoned the US Deputy Chief of Mission in New Delhi to explain to him that America’s habit of “detention and apology” will not do any more (the US embassy and Border Control have already apologised to the film star). In the one-upmanship battle prevalent in all sycophantic bureaucracies, Minister of State for External Affairs, Preneet kaur, said, “More than an apology will have to take place.” What that “more” is remains unclear. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Shukla too deplored the detention of SRK, calling it inappropriate. India’s ambassador to the US, Nirupama Rao, also took up the situation with the US State Department (their MEA), saying that the situation “need not have happened.”

As far as I know, SRK does not travel on a diplomatic passport, nor does he hold any position with the Government of India that would make him eligible to bypass security and customs. Furthermore, unlike India, obsequiousness is not part of the job requirements of US security officials, particularly to foreign stars. In India, people might take it for granted that public figures can get through security and other restricted zones without due process, but that is not the case in the West. “Janthe ho main kaun hoon?” simply does not have that oomph Indians think it does. The MEA’s chutzpah that US officials should even know who SRK was is also quite amusing. Conversely, if, say, Tom Hanks were detained at the Bombay airport, there are exceedingly slim chances that the US media would cover the episode with as much zeal as the Indian media seems to cover SRK. Or, to take another hypothetical case, if a famous German or Russian film star came through an Indian airport, would the customs official on duty be able to recognise them? And if recognised, is the Indian government advocating that they be let through without process?

An uncomfortable topic to openly discuss is the hushed allegations of racial profiling. Some commentators have seen the repeated detention of SRK as a sign of US discrimination against Muslims. While US authorities have been at pains to declare that this is certainly not the case, the National Counterterrorism Center reported in 2010 that Sunni Muslims were responsible for over 60% of all terrorist attacks worldwide and responsible for over 70% of terrorism-related deaths. Whether it is racial profiling or statistical probability, the fact remains that SRK shares an infamous name. South Block should get around to reading their internal memos, informing them that the alert on Shahrukh Khan’s name was in fact issued by India’s own Intelligence Bureau, who had discovered that Riyaz Bhatkal, founder of the terrorist outfit Indian Mujahideen was travelling under the pseudonym. More importantly, is the MEA telling the world that Indian Muslims should get a free pass through checkposts unless foreign governments wish to be accused of racial profiling?

The Affliction of Populism

There is little doubt that the UPA involved itself in these three issues because it thought they were easy cases through which they could win some cheap popularity. A confident demeanour abroad behooves a rising power, and New Delhi is also trying to send the message that its time in the spotlight has come. Unfortunately, surrendering one’s senses to play to the public’s ugly sense of national chauvinism has a high cost, and the Indian government has been made to look the fool twice and burn up valuable political capital in all three cases. A politician’s thirst for popularity and the media’s urge to sensationalise are an explosive combination anywhere, but especially so in India where there is an intellectual vacuum at the highest political levels. In all cases, the UPA let itself be led by the nose into an indefensible position by a fourth estate known for its questionable integrity. Behind closed doors, South Block has become the laughing stock because of its buffoonery, a price not just the UPA but India will have to pay. This is why we do not let Fleet Street decide our foreign policy.

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I apologise to the (far superior) establishments on Fleet Street for using their name, but India has no equivalent that I am aware of. Plus, at a formative point during the writing of this post, I was held captive by a line from Yes, Prime Minister!

This post was originally written for the CRI and has been reproduced with permission.