India Minister Warns Of "The Return Of The Ugly American"

ZeroHedge ^ | 1/7/2014 | Shashi Tharoor

[mojito]

Nearly a month after American authorities arrested India’s deputy consul general in New York, Devyani Khobragade, outside her children’s school and charged her with paying her Indian domestic worker a salary below the minimum wage, bilateral relations remain tense. India’s government has reacted with fury to the mistreatment of an official enjoying diplomatic immunity, and public indignation has been widespread and nearly unanimous. So, has an era of steadily improving ties between the two countries come to an end?

Judging from Indian leaders’ statements, it would certainly seem so. India’s mild-mannered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared that Khobragade’s treatment was “deplorable.” National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon called her arrest “despicable” and “barbaric,” and Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid refused to take a conciliatory phone call from US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Emotions have run high in India’s Parliament and on television talk shows as well. Writing to her diplomatic colleagues after her arrest, Khobragade, who has denied the charges against her, noted that she “broke down many times,” owing to “the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping, and cavity searches, swabbing,” and to being held “with common criminals and drug addicts.” A former Indian foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha, has publicly called for retaliation against gay American diplomats in India, whose sexual orientation and domestic arrangements are now illegal after a recent Supreme Court ruling. The government has not taken him seriously, but his suggestion indicates how inflamed passions have become.

[12th_Monkey]

from mr perfect??

[okie01]

That's the guy.

I don't believe you can blame this on him. But it was his federal prosecutor that laid a petty charge on the consul and mishandled her. And it was his State Department that totally misread her status and approved the prosecutor's actions.

In that sense, he's responsible. And India should legitimately expect an apology from a high official.

Kerry's not very good at this sort of thing. While Obama has it down to an art.

[coldphoenix]

Unfortunately what you say is quite true. (Am from India myself). The educated lot who have seen more of the world are not so bad. But yea, your point is valid esp among the very orthodox.

[Mamzelle]

These Brahmins (although they don't like the word…they want to tell me all about the sub-castes and regional sub-sub-castes) quite rationally do not want to give up the perquisites of pseudo-royalty. I guess if I had been born a princess I wouldn't want to give up the tiara. But they also won't serve anyone a cup of coffee or even pass the salt. And I'm not impressed with what passes for Hindu "charity"--no one poor ever gets help. But the temple Brahmins do get to collect sacrifices. Like many things, the more you know, the less you like.

Most of the Indians you and I know are high-caste who have cast off the trappings of privilege to live a Western life. But there remain a few who never assimilate, who really despise the "foreign" untouchable while bitterly envying the white skin of many Americans. Yeah, there's a racism to the caste system which can really surprise!!