The Khobragade Affair
On 12 December 2013, Mrs. Devyani Khobragade, the Deputy Indian Consul in New York, was arrested when she went to a school to pick up her children. She was handcuffed and taken to a police station where she was strip-searched, including manual probes of her anus and vagina, had swabs taken for DNA testing, and was then locked in a cell with ordinary criminals till she was allowed bail. The charge sheet was, in summary, “making a false statement on a US government document at the US embassy in New Delhi and under-paying her housemaid in New York in violation of a contract and US minimum wage laws”. It was another outrageous example of misconduct and abuse of authority by a US police department, so totally uncalled for, to humiliate an Indian diplomat when a court summons to answer the charges would have sufficed. No one can believe that such a violation of a person would have ever taken place if it was a European diplomat who was on a similar charge. In 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a Frenchman, the head of the IMF, was involved in a rape in a New York hotel and was arrested. Would he have been strip-searched and cavity probed? Never! He was a European and White.
The current Indian government must take some responsibility for this very public humiliation of an Indian official. Highly placed Indian officials have been humiliated by US authorities on numerous occasions to muted protests by the Indian government while India dared not take similar reciprocal action against US officials in India. In 2009, the distinguished Indian nuclear scientist and former President of India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, was singled out for frisking by US Continental Airlines officers at New Delhi airport before he boarded a plane to New York. In 2011 President Kalam had already been through security at New YorkJFKAirport and boarded an Air India plane preparing for take off when US security officers forcibly entered the plane and removed his coat and shoes for examination for explosives. In December 2010, Indian Ambassador to the US, Mrs. Meera Shankar, on her way to speak at MississippiStateUniversity, was singled out for a body “pat down” at Mississippi airport despite the information that she was the highest ranking Indian diplomat in the country. Leading Indian actor, Shah Rukh Khan, has been detained at US airports for hours for questioning every time he arrives in the USA that he jokes about it. These are only a few of the indignities suffered by prominent Indians in the USA.
After every such episode a US official would issue a simple apology while insisting it is within their right to search anyone at airports. Can you imagine such treatment being meted out to comparable European leaders like ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair or ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy? Such treatment, Indians and other non-Europeans must understand, is reserved for them.
Sri Lanka, which endured three decades of terror unimaginable in Western society, never imposed such humiliating measures at airports or elsewhere on foreign diplomats or any other foreigners. In fact, it allowed foreign diplomats to visit terrorist strongholds and have sympathetic meetings with terrorist leaders. Norwegian peace brokers even smuggled sensitive military material like telecommunications to the terrorists while the supine Sri Lanka government of the time raised no objection.
The two main charges against Indian diplomat Mrs. Khobragade, in summary, are that (1) she made a false visa application declaration at the US embassy in India that the wages to be paid to her maid, Sangeeta Richard, would be $9.75 per hour with an 8 hour work day and two days off per week, plus medical benefits and paid sick leave, and (2) that she paid her only $575 a month (Indian Rs.30,000) while she had no 8 hour work day and no off days
Making a false declaration to the US government is an offense that could result in punishment, depending on the gravity of the circumstances and the stature of the person. People are punished but not always. In March 2012, General Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, repeatedly lied on oath at a US Congressional hearing denying that the NSA was tapping into US citizens’ phone calls and e-mails, despite the fact that whistleblower Snowden had exposed the scandal and provided incontrovertible proof of it. Government officials regularly lie to deny malfeasance. Again the next year, he officially denied NSA searching through Google and Yahoo communications by the public when it was patently untrue. US officials at the highest level kept denying that the government widely tortured prisoners in secret prisons despite ample proof and official documents to the contrary. No one is punished for these grave offenses. People should be punished for deliberately making false statements to the government or the public but then the rule must be applied with an even hand to all.
Enforcement of the minimum wage is another area where the rules are often bent. Millions of undocumented illegal immigrants from South America are employed in farms and factories in the Southern US states in inhuman conditions and paid a fraction of the official minimum wage. Since these faceless people are essential for farming, it is rarely that state officials launch prosecutions. There are also exemptions to the minimum wage as restaurant and other service workers could be paid $4 or a little more per hour while they must strive to earn more by way of service tips from customers.
That the Indian diplomat underpaid her maid is true but there are some extenuating circumstances. The minimum wage in New York is $8, not $9.75. Even if the maid was paid at the rate of $9.75 per hour for an 8 hour work day with the week-ends off, she would have received around $1560 per month. New York City is the most expensive place in the USA and her board, lodging and transport to the workplace would be at least a minimum of $2,000 a month, even to survive under the meanest conditions. Instead, she was lodged and fed in the diplomat’s comfortable house and her occasional financial needs, and presumably medical needs, were met. Additionally, $575 was sent monthly to her family in India, a large sum of money for any ordinary Indian family. What a clever US employer would have done in the circumstances would be to sign a separate contract with the maid to lodge and feed her for a sum of $1,500 which would be deducted from her salary!
The Indian government was outraged because there was evidence that this was a planned sting operation by the US authorities. The maid’s husband worked for the US embassy in India as a motor vehicle driver. Before Mrs. Khobragade was arrested and humiliated, the maid’s husband and children were given special visas and flown to the USA by the embassy at US expense and are also probably maintained there at US expense. It was then that the maid disappeared from her employer’s house. Further evidence was disclosed by Mrs. Khobragade’s sister in India who had a letter sent earlier by the maid to her family stating that she was being treated very kindly by Mrs. Khobragafe and that she was very happy.
Whatever the merits of the US legal system and the US postures on human rights, the Indian public has realized that the world’s sole super power reserves the right to humble any non-European nation, even if it as large and as important as India. Will the Indian government in turn realize that it is more important to have good relations with its Asian neighbours than seek the favour of a distant super-power through subservience?
Thepanis Alwis
Baddegama, Sri Lanka.
12 January 2014.