A new class of barbarians?
The display of American brutality and barabarism?
This is an education journal. Not any political or other public affairs journal. So, we have to look at the Indo-American diplomatic rupture over a young Indian Consul-General in New York subjected to public humiliation, an official who enjoys protection under the Vienna Conventions.
The details of the humiliation are so disgusting that any civilised media report must avoid further elaboration. The most distressing feature is that an young women who takes her small child to leave at school and just then the American police comes forward and arrests her, hand-cuffed ,she is taken to a holding room and then subjected to a series of further humiliations.
In the USA it is called standard procedure, go to hell, we like to say. Since America is a big dream in India, among the growing educated middle classes and the 21 million and odd Indian families are settled in the USA as their great last hope of Nirvana, it is really a thought topic to discuss and analyse the psychology of the average American citizen.
As the newspapers in the USA had reported the incident, it is clear that not many Americans are simply bothered and there are no editorials except one or two comments briefly. Major newspapers have skipped, in fact, though major newspapers have reported “there is little evidence of sympathy for the arrest and the subsequent strip search of the Indian deputy consul general”.
So, what does that convey?
In other pages of this very same journal we have reported what the visiting Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, had said about the way the American troops in Afghanistan had done their duty. The American troops brutally went about killing children, two instances of a 4-year old child who lost his face (the Afghan President went to see this child in a hospital and he had narrated the visit in some graphic detail to the Indian journalists, then there is another child, this time it is a girl child and here too the details are gory enough to further elaborate.
The American troops go about shooting down the entire passengers in a bus if they suspect there is one Taliban there. So, Hamid Karzai said: Referring to a letter written by Barrack Obama to the Afghan President: You don’t trust us, we don’t trust you!”
Is this the way Obama diplomacy is carried on? To what end?
Already, the world has started to wonder how the second term of Obama is going to end. It might be a total wash-off! This is one side of the American leadership. The poor Americans call themselves an exceptional people!
What is exceptional about them?
It is no consolation that we in India have retaliated by removing the barricades and cancelling their IDs and other cards etc. The Americans, let us recall, have no history other than what they have in the last 250 years, right?
But then, it is imperative on the part of the Indian people that we, on the other hand, have a history that stretches into the millennia. And now, let us come to the more serious issues of history, culture and civilisation. Though on the surface, many of the skilled and gifted Indians might be settled down in the USA. Any Harvard and other leading universities we have some luminaries. But then, for what end?
Let us say some unpleasant things. We have gone there for jobs and a livelihood, right?
Let us recognise that. We Indians needn’t learn from the Americans any lessons in civilisation. The Americans have no civilisation as we have here in India. From Greek to Rome to China and India, these are some of the oldest civilisations.
What they Americans have is just material wealth and also military might. But then, it is time we in India realise that Indian culture is very different, Indian traditions, value systems are very, very different. It is time we have to take some new lessons to take pride and deep feeling for Indian values.
Americans can never come near us. It is like going back in time, to reach out to the classical worlds and get related to the great many ideas and ideals. We can now teach the American eopel certain political culture, public conduct. India is a classical country. America is a new country of migrant population.
America was built with slave labour. It is said that we treat our domestics with poor pay. What about the exploitation of the poor in the USA. And, pray, what about their schools, school system?
The gun violence (see the Essay) and the day to day issues, the materialistic society copes up with. Yes, we have to enforce our rule of law to every American citizen residing in India.
Tit for Tat?
Not necessarily. But there must be a sense of equality in these matters. Let us hope the Americans would be behaving with extra caution. Otherwise, they would go down in the long-term, as a new class of barbarians who are put to storm the civilised world. Thank you hon’ble Hamid Karzai! You brought to Indian so much goodwill. We share with you the agonies of the tragedies your children had had and our own outrage in the way the American barbarians conducted themselves.