Why I can't join in the hype and hurrahs for Obama's speech
Many Indians were troubled and discomfited by the surfeit of images and sound bites of a megalomaniac PM Narendra Modi being given the stamp of approval by the POTUS, right in the middle of a hard-fought Delhi election. Some of those Indians have breathed a sigh of relief at US President Barrack Obama's eloquent speech at Siri Fort, because his remarks on India's Constitution and the rights of minorities and women in India seemed to be a chastisement for Narendra Modi and a warning to his government to behave itself. Congress party leaders have been prompt to give bites to this effect - while prominent commentators have said that Obama's speech "pushed all the right buttons".
Sorry, I can't join in the hype and the hurrahs. Instead, let me play spoiler and raise some uncomfortable questions.
What did the POTUS say about his plans to ensure US companies Union Carbide-Dow pay their outstanding bills for 30 years of the Bhopal disaster, to its Indian victims?
Instead, he has sold us the myth that "nuclear energy" will bring us clean electricity for Indian citizens. The truth is that neither he nor Modi have told Indian citizens what exactly is in the deal he's sealed with Modi on civil nuclear liability. In the Indian epic Mahabharata, the Pandavas gift away to the enemy what was not theirs to gift away - the person of Draupadi. On the eve of Republic Day, what Modi has gifted away to Obama - without so much as telling, let alone asking Indian citizens - is the right of Indian victims of future nuclear Bhopals, to sue the US and other MNC suppliers of reactors. And he has, without telling or asking us, used our taxpayers' money, our Jan Dhan, to subsidise these MNC suppliers in case of such accidents. Do I hear anyone saying, "Oh but there won't be disasters, nuclear energy is safe and clean"? If nuclear energy is so clean and safe, why are US companies to shy of accepting liability in case of accidents that they assure us will not happen?
As for the lectures on secularism and dignity for minorities - they sure sound great. But can we forget that in the US today, "Black Lives Matter" protests are erupting in anger against the impunity enjoyed by white cops shooting black boys and men. That the US establishment has - and continues to - profile and torture Muslim men in the name of "war against terror"?
That the US is exporting Islamophobia globally, with Obama following in Bush's steps with drone attacks and the war on Syria? Can the people of Syria, or Iraq or Palestine "free of persecution", free to live without fear of being killed because of their national, ethnic and religious identity? Obama lectures against human trafficking and slave labour - but doesn't the US profit from the bonded labour of immigrants - Mexican women and men - from across the border, whom their government treats as criminals?
None but Indians themselves can give Modi a lesson in the constitutional rights of minorities. The president of a country with a past and present stained with the blood of racism, genocide, war, and occupation cannot do that for us.