At the time I write this I don’t know if friend of Indian PM Modi, Donald Trump will be President or half-Indian, Kamala will be Vice President.
Whoever is in the White House, there is major issue still unresolved.
Doing the early morning BBC TV newspaper review allowed me a few years ago to vent some anger which has been boiling up for 20 years. The story I was asked to comment on was the fury of Obama at BP for the oil spill. Now I can imagine the President, pacing in the Oval office, the most powerful man in the world, with the largest nuclear arsenal, heading a country which has since its creation in 1776 never known a decade without war outside its borders, yet unable to put a boot on the throat of BP.
Now I don’t have a problem with the President’s anger, and indeed welcome it on issues of the environment. But I only wish the Americans could have given half a damn when it came to 3,000 dead Indians in Bhopal due to an American company and a chemical spill.
You see with BP – no one has died. Okay some Louisiana fisherman are suicidal, but with Bhopal mothers witnessed their children die. Dead. 3000. But it doesn’t count. Doesn’t count because poor Indians do not count. The lovely Louisiana coastline and the livelihood of one bloated American living in the world’s richest country counts more than 3,000 dead poor Indians.
Anyway why should America care about Bhopal when the Indian Government itself didn’t want to put a boot, or sandal, on the throat of Union Carbide? Your citizens are worth what your Government is willing to do for them. I guess prices of citizens is based on supply and demand and India has an oversupply of people.
So when Indians celebrate the Indo-Phile Trump or Kamala’s roots, I hope they remind the President that the US should reciprocate when it comes to moral indignation – because the thing about moral indignation is that it should be moral.
Annoyingly the Louisiana Governor at the time was Indian – Bobby Jindal. Oh, he converted from his Indian religion in the US to be sure – but I bet he won’t stand up for the country of his ancestors either – how soon they forget. So don’t expect any such favours, only sweet words, from the White House.
I remember once being at the British High Commission in Delhi and the bantering with the High Commissioner he pointed out I was British. And I told him – he is right I am. But the blood coursing through these veins is that of my ancestors. I am a British Indian. Sadly Kamala I suspect is all American – she’s drunk the coolade as they say.
It should be said of Indians you can take the Indian out of India but not India out of the Indian – wish it was true. How I wish the Kamala had not converted.
Alpesh Patel
