India is never known for taking on the US on substantive policy issues, but its unusually aggressive reactions against the shabby and humiliating treatment meted out to its diplomat in New York by US officials, who arrested, strip-searched and locked her up with criminals, seemed to have sent a strong message to the Americans that they have taken their much-touted exceptionalism too far.
An otherwise fractious India spoke in one voice to denounce the indignities American officialdom heaped on Devyani Khobragade, its deputy consul general in New York. The measures that New Delhi took with unsuspecting alacrity to strip American diplomatic personnel in India of the perks and privileges it enjoyed and to cancel right away all official appointments of a visiting Congressional delegation gave enough indication of how seriously the incident has been viewed in New Delhi.
The Americans had clearly not bargained for the ferocity of the reactions of the entire political establishment, civil society and the media to this deplorable incident. American officials at the highest level called their Indian counterparts to express regret for the harsh treatment and to reassure them that the matter would be sorted out at the earliest to ensure that it does not strain bilateral ties. It’s time the US stops taking India for granted.
Why did both the US and Indian authorities stumble into a situation neither could have truly wanted through a combination of needless obduracy and pointless chest thumping? How did smiles overnight turn into snarls? The US officials have been high-handed and ridden roughshod over the protocols and norms that govern diplomatic interaction between nations when they perpetrated the offensive and unacceptable actions against Devyani on charges of making a false declaration in the visa application of her Indian domestic help.
There was no reason for the American authorities to treat her like an ordinary criminal, even if they believed she had breached US criminal laws and her actions were not covered by the immunity provisions of the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR) and Consular Relations (VCCR). But the State Department’s own 2011 guidelines on immunity note that the immunity of consular and diplomatic personnel “generally precludes handcuffing, arrest or detention in any form.” It adds just one caveat: “circumstances where public safety is in imminent danger, or it is apparent that a grave crime may otherwise be committed.”
The charge that Devyani faces stems from a facility given to diplomats to engage their own domestic staff and get visas for them. She had engaged a housekeeper who, the US alleges, had been given less-than-fair wages. Diplomats, on the other hand, maintain that the minimum wages in the US cannot be considered as a fair wage in such cases since these staff members get housing, food and medical cover with employers taking care of their air travel too.
The fact that the US government chose to disregard her diplomatic status and instead subject her to the brutal might of their criminal justice system like a commoner, says more about how India is now being perceived by the US than it does about the individual merits of Devyani’s alleged crimes. The US authorities would not have flouted protocol similarly if the accused had been Russian, Chinese or British. For that matter, what would the US reaction have been if one of its diplomats had been subjected to similar treatment abroad for alleged minor transgressions of local legislation? There are double standards at play here.
The statements made by US State Department officials make it clear that Devyani’s arrest was a considered move. It could hardly have been otherwise given that US prosecutor Preet Bharara’s announcement of visa fraud charges against her precipitated the entire affair. Such charges are not spur-of-the-moment and the entire process must have been underway for a while. And the fact that Indian Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh was not informed about the impending arrest despite being in the US immediately prior to it proves that this humiliation has been consciously inflicted.
Bharara’s office also simply ignored Indian legal proceedings already underway against Sangeeta Richard, Devyani’s domestic help, as if they had no bearing on the case. There was an arrest warrant against her, apart from an order by the Delhi High Court barring her from instituting proceedings against her employer outside India. The Indian embassy submitted both orders to the State Department but got no response. But two days before the US marshals were to swoop down and arrest Devyani, Sangeeta’s husband and two children were spirited out of New Delhi by giving them expedited visas to travel to the US.
Sections of the international press and the American society have described the Indian fury in racist, sanctimonious and orientalist terms and many commentators in India have resorted to defensive logical fallacies such as the deputy consul general’s unaffordability to hire domestic help on her salary in the US. Both these arguments are flawed because the case is neither about cultural sensitivities nor bourgeois sensibilities of Indians. The Indian state would not have bothered itself to come in defence of, if instead of Devyani it were an Indian IT professional accused of visa fraud and human trafficking in the US. The Indian disappointment is centred around diplomacy and diplomacy alone.
But, in diplomacy, there are rules and there are understandings. The unwritten code in this instance was that the declarations were essentially necessary paperwork for getting visas, which need not be taken seriously beyond that. At least, that seemed to be the understanding on the Indian side, because seeking privileges beyond the entitlement is a negotiation of quid pro quos for each other’s diplomats - a negotiation that happens almost on a daily basis between foreign offices and diplomatic missions everywhere over routine issues, like special access to the airport or increasing the limit on importing liquor.
The display of extremes by both India and the US has, however, led to an absolutely avoidable diplomatic incident - one that diplomats on both sides realise has damaged goodwill, so necessary to take their important economic and strategic relationship forward. The episode should now coax both sides to come to the negotiating table to address the issues in a spirit of greater understanding of each other’s sensitivities. But the relationship can become sustainable only when it is based on equitable terms and the US begins to treat India as a strategic partner and not as a client.