20 December 2013, 03:46 PM IST
The deputy consul general Devyani Khobragade case that has led to outrage in India and evoked an unsympathetic reaction in the United States is a classic case of where most people can't see the wood for the trees. A large section of the international press and the American society has described the Indian fury in racist, sanctimonious and orientalist terms and many commentators in India have resorted to defensive logical fallacies such as the deputy consul general's unaffordability to hire domestic help on her salary in the US.
Both these analyses are flawed because the case is neither about cultural sensitivities nor bourgeois sensibilities of Indians. The Indian state would not have bothered itself to come in defense of, if instead of Ms. Khobragade, it were an Indian IT professional accused of visa fraud and human trafficking in the US.The Indian disappointment is centered around diplomacy and diplomacy alone. The entire Khobragade episode is about international relations between, in President Obama's words, two "close allies and partners" which expect diplomatic courtesies and pardons for violations and transgressions under international treaties and due to bilateral tacit understanding.
Though it is a disgrace that a representative of the Indian state abroad has brazenly violated the law of a foreign country with admissible evidence of mistreating her own domestic employee Ms. Sangeeta Richard but like it or not, Ms. Khobragade is not an ordinary Indian who could have been judged and treated like any Non-Resident Indian violator of the US laws. Yes, the Orwellian idea 'all are equal but some are more equal than others' applies to state diplomats more than any other professional or any other community in the world. And it is not necessarily a contemptuous disparity.
A lot of diplomats work in hostile and dangerous political environments of the host countries. Indian and Pakistani diplomats in each others' countries, for example, work under tremendous adversarial circumstances. They are often accused, rightly or wrongly, of breaching the native law. But what prevents their prosecution and further deterioration of international relations is the Vienna conventions on diplomatic and consular relations. In other words, Vienna conventions remain the pillars on which diplomacy is pursued across the world. To reject them is to reject diplomacy. The loss of faith in the idea of diplomacy is the loss of faith in the art and practice of mediation, negotiations, arbitration over strategic issues including conflicts between nation-states. That surely is not what any nation-state would vote for in a globalized world that is so economically interdependent and so closely connected right now.
Ms. Khobragade, deputy consul general in Indian consulate in New York represents the Indian state in the US and hence should have remained immune to the laws that are extended to ordinary citizens. She was entitled to diplomatic immunity under the 1963 Vienna Conventions of Consular Relations (VCCR) treaty at the time of and after her arrest. Not only was her immunity withdrawn but she was subjected to humiliating strip and cavity searches, DNA tests, lodged with drug addicts- a "standard" treatment given to terrorists and hard core criminals. That's not what the US does to diplomats or expects any other country to do to its diplomats. Remember Raymond Davis? When the US was protesting Raymond's arrest in Pakistan, its major argument for his release was diplomatic immunity. It is a different matter altogether that the US eventually made alternative arrangements to rescue Raymond once it was revealed that he had been a CIA contractor.
If American diplomats and I emphasize on diplomats, can get away with anything including murder under the Vienna treaties on diplomatic and consular relations, does America really have the moral and legal authority to hold accountable the diplomats of other countries? If this is an unfair question because the US domestic law supersedes the international law when it comes to violations committed by foreign diplomats in the US, then the international community might as well revoke all the diplomatic immunity across the world and scrap the Vienna conventions. That, though, is a preposterous idea because diplomats and consuls by the very nature of their job deserve immunity.
A case for diplomacy, however, is not a case for absolute diplomatic impunity. Neither American diplomats nor the rest of the world diplomats should get away with serious crimes like murder or rape. The Vienna international treaties should be reviewed by the member countries that are bound by them. Perhaps, the signatory countries should make it mandatory that they try their own diplomats for crimes committed abroad. But until the international community reviews and amends the Vienna treaties, only American diplomats cannot claim entitlement to absolute diplomatic immunity. The rest of the world's diplomats are entitled too. The Indian outrage against the US mistreatment of an Indian consular general, therefore, should be seen in this context. It is a justified indignation felt by Indians because the US went out of its usual way to insult and maltreat a symbol of the Indian state.
But Indians should not expect sympathy for their anger when they try to defend the accused with inane arguments like Ms. Khobragade could not pay her employee more than what she earned herself. An Indian's unaffordability to hire domestic staff abroad does not grant him or her the moral right to violate a foreign country's domestic laws. Violation of the US visa law and the US minimum wage law by Indians is not unusual. Such violations are in accordance with the behavior of a fringe among Indians in America. Their casual approach to the US law emanates from the native mindset of Indians who are habitual of working around and bypassing the system or are used to preferential treatment due to their power and position at home. This attitude, at times, might even lead them to mistake diplomatic immunity for absolute freedom to violate laws. But most Indians behave themselves in the US after realizing the heavy penalties one is to pay for violations in a highly law-enforcing and egalitarian country. Indian diplomats too need to remember that any act of transgression on their part is a blot both on the Indian state and society.
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