Age of innocence in engaging with Indian diaspora is over

In January 2003, India’s capital had a festive look as it prepared to receive thousands of delegates for the first Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas. A family of Indians from around the world, coming home to the mother country. It was our job to welcome them. The smile on Atalji’s face said it all. Indians are Indians. Anywhere in the world that there is an Indian, there is an India. Passports come and passports go, but being Indian is forever.

Oh, how naive we were.

Even PM Modi, in his speeches to Indians around the world, had assured them : if you are an Indian and you are in trouble, hum passport ka rang nahin dekhenge (we will not look at the color of your passport). You are always welcome in our country. Your ancient nation is always there for you.

Oh how naive we were.

In the last few days, the Modi government has come out with a significant notification on the rights of OCIs, about the permits they need to travel freely within India, participate in journalistic or missionary activities and so on. We can quibble over whether these are new regulations or “clarification” of existing regulation. But the messaging is clear.

For decades, Indians have traveled the world in search of opportunity. In the early 2000s, Atalji saw this global family. He noticed its immense potential and also the bureaucratic walls that had come up between its members. So, is Modi building back the walls that Atalji had decided to knock down?

With a heavy heart, yes. The walls are going back up. Because, when it comes to Indian diaspora, the age of innocence is over.

We did not know that there would be a day when “Indians” in Canada would tear off the Indian tricolor from people’s cars and stomp on it. With their feet! Would you stomp on your mother’s face with your feet? When Atalji began the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas, did he ever dream that this day would come?

But this day has come. Some day we had to realize that millions of Indians around the world no longer see India as their mother. No, no…this is not a knock on every Indian who lives abroad. This is just an acknowledgement of reality. Some Indians abroad are deeply connected to India. Some are not. And some of them just despise India.

Going forward, we will have to seek out our friends among the Indian diaspora. And we will have to watch out for our enemies.

I remember that until around 2010, our media would celebrate every little achievement of every “Indian” on foreign shores. Even Indian kids winning the spelling bee was supposed to be news. An Indian becoming a top level executive or winning elected office was an amazing feeling. An Indian giving orders to people overseas? It was like a dream.

On the one hand, we had the inferiority complex of being a third world country. On the other, we had a deep conviction that Indians are a people destined for greatness. So if the motherland is still backward, so what? These people abroad are our ambassadors.

In retrospect, all this appears so innocent. We forgot that these people were not Indians at all, but held foreign citizenship.

The break was inevitable. First of all, many Indian families had been abroad for generations. How could we expect them to be “Indians” like us? Their kids and their grandkids grew up in Abrahamic societies, where pagan Hindus are viewed with contempt anyway. For that matter, why would the child of say an Indian father and a Canadian mother love India like their own? It really makes no sense.

A number of these “Indians” now read the New York Times to form their views about India. They attend universities where Hinduphobes like Audrey Truschke are on the faculty. Why would these people want a special relationship with India? And now that the global media is spewing anti-India venom in one voice, we have to watch out. No wonder the walls are going back up.

The two notions of nationhood are colliding. The old is giving way to the new. The old civilization state is giving way to the modern nation state. The color of the passport matters. The civilization less so.

On Monday, the British Parliament will have a debate on farm laws in India. The debate will be led by people with names that sound like they could belong to our relatives and neighbors. Even now, when we hear these names, we might wince. But we have to accept the new reality. Yes, a man with a name like Tamanjeet Singh Dhesi could be an enemy of India.

We have to be strong. We can’t be fooled by emotion. There is no difference between Tamanjeet Dhesi and Reginald Dyer. If we allow ourselves to become emotional about his name, Tamanjeet Dhesi will use this to cause more harm to India. He hates us. We cannot afford to get emotional about him.

It’s not all bad. Today our enemy might be named Tamanjeet, but we could also have friends named Jack or John. The other day, there was an article in The American Conservative about how global NGO terrorists are trying to overthrow our elected government. See? An American whose ancestors traveled out of Germany or Poland could be our friend. Someone whose ancestors traveled out of India could be an enemy. There are people right now in America’s rural heartland who are mocked and ridiculed by the New York Times as much as it ridicules Uttar Pradesh. The NYT calls them a basket of deplorables. Those people could be our friends. The world is changing.

Last year, foreign direct investment in India rose by 13%, the highest among all major economies. While the NYT berated and cursed India, the world bet their money on us. These people could be our new friends. Meanwhile, the NYT swept under the carpet thousands of elderly New Yorkers who had been sent to die in nursing homes by the liberal governor Andrew Cuomo. Those bereaved families could be our new friends.

As the world changes, our sense of solidarity has to keep up. The Indian diaspora is now divided. The folks who turned out at Howdy Modi are our friends. The folks in Canada who stomped on the Indian flag are our enemies. Going forward, we have to keep emotions in check and only our interests at heart. The age of innocence ends here.