Pride and shame

I’ve said it before and will say it again: 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 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, apart from the fact that China remains in the news as the country where the virus originated, and which has questions to answer. 

America being what it is, Americans do not say “India”, “China”, or whatever, when a face pops up on TV or on a street. Racism may be alive and well in the US, but for a great many here, to be American is to belong to a space, not to an ethnicity. 

However, 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 shocking, though hardly surprising, is Prime Minister Modi’s refusal to rebuke the scapegoaters. Mr. Modi may believe that Hindu-Muslim polarization yields electoral profit, but the world’s good opinion may also matter. 

As may sentiment in lands adjacent to India. Even if, wisely or not, Pakistan is to be regarded as hostile, what about the people of Afghanistan and Bangladesh, whose friendship India needs for multiple reasons? And 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. 

In these ranks is the brilliant Dalit thinker/executive Dr. Anand Teltumbde, put away under the draconian UAPA, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. A pioneer in data analytics and a persistent fighter against all forms of oppression, Professor Teltumbde is married to the granddaughter of Babasaheb Ambedkar. 

Despite the tragedy of governance in India, some will dare to believe that things can change. Dare to believe that Covid 19 will not be allowed to destroy the rights, lives and livelihoods of India’s weak and vulnerable. And that friendship and trust between separated sections of the Indian people will one day be restored. 

More than 70 years ago, despite a carnage that newly-free India and Pakistan had just witnessed, Gandhi had the courage to believe that if she decided to “recover her soul”, India would assist an “aching, storm-tossed and hungry world”. (Jan 12, 1948; Collected Works 90: 409.)

As for China, its pattern of governance is perhaps even more troubling than India’s, even if its economy, despite recent blows, is much stronger than India’s. 

Perhaps the widening Sino-Indian footprint on the world will eventually produce learnings for everyone, including for the millions facing hardships in today’s China and today’s India. 

Polarizations and nationalisms are now a reality almost everywhere, but we may assume that deeper lessons are quietly being absorbed. Such as the one Gandhi articulated on June 9, 1947: 

“I love all mankind as I love my own countrymen because my God dwells in the heart of every human being.” (Collected Works 88: 116.)