India-US relations: cooling and warming up (merged thread)

[Madhu]

Omar:

Maidgate is the desi Bonfire of the Vanities:

Wolfe deliberately set out to make The Bonfire of the Vanities capture the essence of New York City in the 1980s. Wall Street in the 1980s was newly resurgent after almost the whole of the 1970s had been bad for stocks. The excesses of Wall Street were at the forefront of the popular imagination, captured in films like Oliver Stone's Wall Street and in non-fiction books like Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Barbarians at the Gate.
Beneath Wall Street's success, the city was a hot-bed of racial and cultural tension. Homelessness and crime in the city were growing. Several high-profile racial incidents polarized the city, particularly two black men who were murdered in white neighborhoods: Willie Turks, who was murdered in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn in 1982 and Michael Griffith in Howard Beach, Queens, in 1986. In another episode that became a subject of much media attention, Bernhard Goetz became something of a folk-hero in the city for shooting a group of black men who tried to rob him in the subway.
Burton B. Roberts, a Bronx judge known for his no-nonsense imperious handling of cases in his courtroom, became the model for the character of Myron Kovitsky in the book.[1]

1. Class (not caste, non-desis, get this straight for a change).
2. Diplomatic ineptitude, Indian and American.
3. Corruption (A desi fiddling with visa paperwork? Say it ain't so).
4. Cops treating an upper or middle class person like they treat the poor or minorities? Hey, the upper and middle class only care about police behavior when it affects them, okay? Everyone else is going to get treated like cattle, that's the Homeland Security-ization of America!
5. Election season in India.
6. Indian politicians thinking, "hey, this might get the unhappy electorate off our backs for a change. Don't look at us, look at them!"
7. Desi thin-skinnedness: "we will give them such a slap on their faces, they will never know what stings!"
8. Cable news screws up everything everywhere, you know?

And so on. I will know that the American Desi community has reached full maturity when it can satirize its own faults as well as others. And there are plenty of faults on both sides. Oh, wait, we are so beyond that. You know someone like Anna John will have a field day with this....

Maybe I should try and write the novel....haha, like I could stick to anything for that long with my ADHD....

Journalists read this site sometimes, amiright? Please use my Bonfire of the Vanities line. Please....

[Ray]

If by 'maidgate' it means he case of Devyani Khobargade the Indian Deputy Consul, then in so far as the case of the Deputy Counsel in NY is concerned , it is not so much for breaking of law, as it is for the 'handling' of the case, where the lady diplomat was p[ublicly handcuffed, strip searched and jailed with common criminals.

On the issue of breaking US law, there are US diplomats in India who have same sex 'companions' and that is against the Indian law.

Should India arrest them?

What would the US reaction be?

The US is notorious for 'saving' US citizens on foreign land who have broken local laws.

Take the case of Raymond Davis, the former United States Army soldier, private security firm employee, and contractor with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who killed two Pakistanis. The US asserted that Davis was protected under the principle of diplomatic immunity due to his role as an "administrative and technical official" attached to the Lahore consulate.The U.S. government claimed that Davis was protected under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and demanded he be released from custody immediately. President Barack Obama asked Pakistan not to prosecute Davis and recognize him as a diplomat, stating, "There's a broader principle at stake that I think we have to uphold."

In the case of Devyani, she was a genuine consular diplomat.

Consular staff have lower diplomatic immunity, but are to be treated with dignity as per the Vienna Convention on Consular Staff.

May see:
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/13121...a-returns-kind

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/i...w/27488890.cms

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...a-83c921795618

[Madhu]

You are correct Ray, US policing has ugly aspects to it that the poor and less connected are very aware of but others don't see.

Same too with the treatment of poorer migrant Indians abroad at the hands of well-to-do Indians which sometimes raises the ire of locals back home in India but often doesn't.

What you may not realize from a distance is that there is a certain amount of corruption among the Indian community living in the US that goes down very badly with long term Indian Americans. We are aware of this behavior and it is not pleasant to watch. It very much hurts some people living abroad, just as much as the bad treatment of Indians in, say, the Gulf. Some people justify anything. Perhaps this is overly coloring our perception.

But you are correct that this was handled badly and India has a complaint. But Indians are not the only people arrested for this, Saudi diplomats and others have been arrested too for abusing domestic help stateside but their cases did not get as much attention.

I just don't see how two wrongs make a right or how ###-for-tat diplomacy makes the situation any better. There are other ways to show displeasure and mete out punishment for ignoring diplomatic protocol. Others are watching both the US and India and likely making a negative judgement.

[omarali50]

There are many aspects of maid-gate. Obviously she doesnt have any "right" to keep a maid while breaking local laws...in this case the law specifying what wages a maid should be paid. But the outrage seems more about:
1. The public arrest, strip search and imprisonment. Hardly standard practice for middle-class and above in India and not for Mafia chieftains, friends of Dick Cheney or senior bankers in the US either, so why was that done to her? My initial guess was that it was just standard NY Marshals douchebaggery, not India-specific. The police culture in the US being what it is (which is, in MANY ways, far superior to police culture in Pakistan or India, but that distinction may not be the first thought in the mind of an educated Indian, since our police douchebaggery is very class conscious and no diplomat would be treated like this in INdia or Pakistan unless express orders were given to the police to behave in this way)
2. Which brings us to the second cause of the outrage: the widespread belief that "this couldnt happen unless the state department wanted it to happen"..i.e. it is a deliberate insult.

I have no idea if it was deliberate or not. My guess would be "probably not"..at least not meant to be specially insulting. The State department may have felt the need to have her arrested because their quiet complaint (apparently sent in September to India) had not had any effect. Another cross-cultural misunderstanding perhaps? In this case the state department may have forgotten how fast things are processed in India?
But the dominant feeling among Indians on my timelines seems to be that "this was deliberate and meant to be insulting". Even if they are wrong, that is not a perception that will be very helpful to the US image in India.
The most interesting aspect could be what a friend from Mumbai has raised. He believes MANY diplomats from third world countries have maids (or semi-slaves) kept on lower wages in the same manner. And this may cause many of them to lose their maids. Oh the humanity!
I personally think the diplomat should have been charged once quiet messaging had not worked. But the public arrest and especially the strip search, were gratuitously insulting and unnecessary. And if they are standard part of american police culture, then that culture too needs to be looked at again...

[carl]

Maid-gate:

I don't know much about this case. There doesn't seem to be much in the American press. So these comments will be general. Also I don't know any NYPD guys or whoever arrested her.

As far as publicly arresting somebody, that isn't unusual. You pick them where it is most convenient and if they don't like it, tough. As far as a strip search goes, that would depend mostly upon the procedures in place at the facility she was booked into. I would hope such a facility wouldn't make an exception because of somebody's status. Then of course perhaps they had discretion and chose to exercise it because she ticked them off. Also I've read that diplomats in NY severely abuse their privileges so there might be a bit of payback involved when one does a crime they can get hooked up for.

Judging by the bail, this isn't a little crime. They are taking this seriously. Lastly, it seems to me that Americans get ticked off when somebody enslaves somebody else, especially when the enslaver is a guest in the country.

If that makes American cops d--------s, so be it.

[Ray]

[Ray]

The above gives the gist of the case.

The interesting issue is that while the maid was paid an appalling salary by US standards, then how is it that she will support her husband and two children the the US.

The US vets visa applications very stringently.

How come this passed muster wherein the family will surely not be able to sustain itself and will be a burden on the US?

*****************

The diplomat was subjected to also 'cavity' search.

Is wage dispute a 'grave' crime in the US?

Do those, who are not even diplomats, but are US citizens who employ the illegal Mexicans down south, subjected to these indignities?