India’s culture of tolerance tarnished
China and India now have a global footprint that imperial Europe never had in its heyday. In size, it even exceeds the impressions that Americans make on planet earth.
I am referring not to naval bases, air power, or GDP, only to the pairs of Indian or Chinese feet that stride daily on the world’s walkways. Never did the world encounter a John Bull or an Uncle Sam in numbers remotely close to the Singhs, Patels, Wangs, and Lis, that it regularly runs into.
As for the US, where I presently live, every second health expert who reports on the Covid virus seems to possess an Indian or Chinese face. Someone like me can only be proud of the tireless role that people of Indian origin are playing in this country’s continuing war against Covid-19.
On the other hand, daily reports from India about so-called “migrants” forced to walk from their flimsy homes in towns (where they barely survived on daily wages) to their distant rural homes produce a deep hurt. Inseparable from this shame is the equally shocking freedom with which some politicians and their excited cheerleaders on TV have scapegoated India’s Muslims for the spread of the virus.
Even more appalling is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to rebuke the scapegoaters. Modi may believe that Hindu-Muslim polarisation yields electoral profit, but the world’s good opinion may also matter.
As may sentiment in lands adjacent to India. What about the people of Afghanistan and Bangladesh, whose friendship India needs for multiple reasons? People in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East, where millions of hard-working Indians save precious hard currency for their native land?
At a time when the whole world applauds the heroism of health workers and, in the same breath, celebrates their racial/religious diversity, a few creative Indian voices have insinuated a link between being a Muslim and bringing a virus!
The disharmony between Indians’ expanding global footprint and the current pattern of India’s governance is a tragedy. The troubling pattern includes the incarceration without trial of numerous activists and intellectuals. Polarisations and nationalisms are now a reality almost everywhere, but we may assume that deeper lessons are quietly being absorbed.