India-bashing as a global pastime

In the environment conference in Kyoto, meanwhile, India and China were simultaneously demonised as the “worst polluters” by none other than the the US and Western Europe — who together account for one-third of the total killer emissions worldwide.

It’s a favourite habit of the old-new world : if you have a stick, beat India with it. And since we’ve mostly adopted the karma yogi position, sitting in our urban Himalayan cocoons, self-levitating to a higher let-the-world-go-to-hell morality, the world spits at us and rubs it hands in glee.

It knows that India, tumultuous within and passive without, can rarely draw itself together to put the fear of god in the aggressor. Not that New Delhi needs to demean itself by spitting back. It would be enough, for example, to expose the utter hypocrisy of those who pronounce their charges upon us with such unfailing regularity. Democrat, dictator or demagogue — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or the US — could be pleasantly reminded about the complete absence of fundamental rights that are either the rule in some of those territories, or, like in parts of the US, are so utterly violated that they seem scripted for the Dark Ages.

Saudi Arabia doesn’t even pretend to live by the rule of law. Rip open the purdah that hides the oil-rich kingdom’s extravagant standard of living and a messy story comes tumbling out : death by execution, public lashings, women who sometimes live duplicitous lives because they’re denied basic rights. As many as 1.3 million Indians work in Saudi Arabia — and that may be part of the reason why India keeps its mouth shut in the face of public abuse — but there wouldn’t even be a handful of them, illiterate or intellectual, who would want to make it their home.

Pakistan, existing in a fragile glasshouse, fares only slightly better. Violations in the other part of Kashmir and elsewhere are rampant, but few victims are brought to justice. Minorities and women carry second-class tickets from birth to death, living in perpetual fear of the mob, the police, the extortionist, the feudal ganglord.

And what of Turkey, that modern, democratic nation, whose Army moved out of its barracks and drove around the cities this summer to wag a warning finger at the then ruling Islamist party? What of its systematic denial of human rights to its persecuted Kurdish population?

What of Iran, who, if truth be told, tried to initially keep the anti-Kashmir resolutions out of the OIC agenda? It may not be good enough for New Delhi to be told that there was too much pressure upon it to allow for their inclusion later. Teheran and New Delhi have cooperated well in recent years, not only on Central Asian strategies but also on Afghanistan.

India has shied away from passing judgment on Iran’s treatment of large parts of its population. It now may be time to ask which way the dominoes here will in future fall, to help New Delhi decide whether it should back the Central Asian oil/gas pipeline through Iran or not.

Then there’s the US, where in recent months, corporate advertising on television has focussed on India being amongst the world’s “worst polluters.” Clinton, largely unaware of South Asia anyway, according to the New York Times seems to only connect when the `K’ word (read Kashmir) is mentioned. Maybe, as someone said elsewhere, India should deny him a visa when he decides to make the first presidential trip in 20 years to the subcontinent early next year.