US, India – two nations under law destined to be in love.
By Ravi Batra
NEW YORK: Like Tom Friedman of The New York Times, I too, am a huge fan of India and Indians. India, despite its antiquity, is a young nation winning its tryst with destiny since Pandit Nehru’s approaching “midnight hour.”
Just look at the Indian version of the Arab Spring, except that it is within the democratic process – democracy really works in India, just as in the United States. That India has issues and problems, well, welcome to the world of 193 countries – economic slowdown, enhanced environmental crisis, corruption in lieu of a proper tax structure capable of paying a living wage to public servants, and the list goes on.
The recent Devyani episode, in time, will be good for closer and more mutually respectful relationship between the United States and India. That experience has forced both nations to pay attention to details; mutuality of rights and obligations; avoid bad optics with security barrier-removal even as the security for US embassy was later enhanced while the Indian Embassy in Washington DC continues to be deprived of needed security; keep mutually respectful relations in the comity of nations by refusing to hurl an insult unless ready for war. It’s worth remembering that sovereignty, in a nation of laws context, includes a presumption against extraterritoriality – this, like the armed forces, is a ferocious watchdog of a nation’s sovereignty.
I’m troubled with attacks on Preet Bharara as I’m troubled by security barriers’ removal. Bharara remains a man of singular honor and principle, and indeed, correctly draws the line in the sand between legal and criminal.
The real issue is that US labor laws are applied discriminatorily to Foreign Diplomatic Domestics Workers (FDDW). Which minimum wage worker gets full medical coverage (such that even a $150,000 hip replacement is paid for by the employer as India does)?
A legal question arise after Devyani – can our State Department issue regulations changing US hours and wages laws when applied to FDDWs without violating the Equal Protection Clause? Federal law already permits waiters in restaurants, who earn tips, to be legally paid a mere $2.35 an hour so long as with tips, their wages equal or exceed the actual minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
The bigger question deals with soil and sovereignty and how best to make the comity of nations adopt a single law. And the answer is – follow the soil and sovereignty: since FDDWs work on soil of their home country, even when abroad, let the wages and hours laws of that home-soil rule. Result: no more Devyanis, and happy comity of nations. Otherwise, we have the troubling scenario of US diplomats paying their FDDWs even less than Devyani paid hers – not a moral high ground.
What is needed now is to get past the hiccup that was, and is, Devyani, and get back to the shared destiny that pulls United States and India – two nations under law destined to be in love, even as history bears witness from Christopher Columbus, Boston Tea Party and Lord Cornwallis causing bilateral inseparability. That said, I must add one more issue – a new issue – Frontier Gandhi.
Thanks to Ambassador Mulay, a documentary was recently premiered at the Indian Consulate in New York directed by Canadian Teri McLuhan – Frontier Gandhi, fondly known as Badshah Khan, and awarded the title of Fakhr-e Afghan by Afghanistan. After watching this amalgamated riveting piece of history, I remembered that I had a few months ago heard the name of Frontier Gandhi for the first time from a new author-friend, visiting the United States from the sub-continent, who has spent a life seeking social justice for the powerless from feudal lords.
This documentary, as all documentaries, carry the moral and editorial signature of its director-creator. But this film left me with a clear comprehension that people of good will, and who also had a desire to keep history honest, would willingly agree that much remains owed to Badshah Khan for his singular leadership in not only his independent use of non-violence to free India from colonial rule but even more importantly, attracting culturally-armed fighters to become a 100,000-strong army of unarmed “Red Shirts”: red turban, red shirt, red pants.
Red, so that even when Badshah Khan’s red shirted followers were shot and bled, the color red would cloak the injury just as non-violence cloaks the immorality and incivility of shooters, relying upon bad “positive laws,” to shoot unarmed protesters. The best example of bad positive laws are the Nuremberg Laws. Those who relied upon them to cause the holocaust, paid the price as war criminals.
That Badshah Khan was, and of, the North West Frontier, now straddling the unmanageable boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan, speaks to what no one has been able to do till present day: disarm its residents by any means, let alone voluntarily as he did and make them soldiers of non-violence.
While President Ronald Reagan’s freedom fighters used our arms to dispel the Soviet Afghan misadventure, Badshah Khan got his armed warriors to use non-violence to help cause Great Britain to leave the sub-continent.
As the US exit Afghanistan in 2014, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry need to jointly embrace Frontier Gandhi – his achievements and sacrifices, and pay down the debt of honor he is still owed by all good people across the world.
Badshah Khan also needs to be genuinely embraced as a pathway to getting the needed security agreement with Afghanistan, so as to allow peace to take hold and freedom to reign supreme for all religions – Moslem, Hindu, Sikh, Christian and inter alia, Jewish. After all, President Hamid Karzai cannot but welcome Badshah Khan being honored by all nations as a role model for all time – especially by the United States – a beacon in human history.
So, the heretofore pantheon of non-violence giants – Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela must be amended to include Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan aka Frontier Gandhi. Honest history will allow nothing less and a peaceful future for all will be achieved by respectfully paying our debts of honor.
(Ravi Batra is an attorney based in New York)
To contact the author, email to editor@americanbazaaronline.com