[Ms.
Khobragade’s return seemingly brought to a climax a monthlong diplomatic spat
between the United States and India that at times threatened to open a breach
in the countries’ relations. While American prosecutors stood firm, India
removed security barriers at the United States Embassy in New Delhi, canceled
the embassy’s food and alcohol import privileges, and issued new identity cards
to American consular employees and their families specifying that they could be
arrested for serious offenses.]
By Ellen Barry and Benjamin Weiserjan
 |
|
Devyani Khobragade, an Indian diplomat,
and her father, Uttam Khobragade, left,
were escorted on Friday at a state
guesthouse in New Delhi. Reuters
|
Few
passengers in recent memory could match the celebrity of Devyani Khobragade,
thediplomat who was arrested on
charges of visa fraud and making false statements in New York in connection with
her treatment of a domestic worker. When Ms. Khobragade’s father appeared — she
had been spirited away through another door — he beamed at the cameras, and
told them, “I am impressed by your love and affection.”
Ms.
Khobragade’s return seemingly brought to a climax a monthlong diplomatic spat
between the United States and India that at times threatened to open a breach
in the countries’ relations. While American prosecutors stood firm, India
removed security barriers at the United States Embassy in New Delhi, canceled
the embassy’s food and alcohol import privileges, and issued new identity cards
to American consular employees and their families specifying that they could be
arrested for serious offenses.
Only
on Friday, with the reluctant agreement from the State Department to expel a
diplomat of equal rank from its embassy in New Delhi, was the matter seemingly
resolved.
Yet
the incident has uncovered a gaping cultural disconnect between the world’s two
largest democracies. While Americans reflexively came to the defense of a maid
who the authorities said was subjected to abuse, Indians reflexively
sympathized with the diplomat.
This
is partly because middle- and upper-class Indians typically have their own
servants, who often work long hours for far less than the $573 a month that Ms.
Khobragade had promised to pay. But the bigger reason, especially compelling in
an election year, is national pride. In the month that has passed since Ms.
Khobragade’s arrest, she has been transformed into a symbol of India’s
sovereignty, pushed around and humiliated by an arrogant superpower.
“There
is always this sense, since the end of the Soviet Union, that America is too
big for its britches,” said Sandip Roy, senior editor at Firstpost, a news
website. “What happened to Devyani is seen in a larger, cosmic sense as that
kind of unilateral thing, like, ‘I will go and invade Afghanistan, and I don’t
care what anyone thinks.' ”
The
dispute was brought to a rapid finish in the last 72 hours, in what appeared to
be an effort by American officials to relax tensions.
Daniel
N. Arshack, Ms. Khobragade’s lawyer in New York, agreed that once negotiations
with prosecutors broke down last weekend, “this week turned into a focus on
diplomatic solutions.” Mr. Arshack said that his client’s husband, a college
professor, and two young daughters, ages 4 and 7, who are all American
citizens, had remained in New York.
The
domestic worker, Sangeeta Richard, told prosecutors that she was forced to work
94 to 109 hours a week, with limited breaks for calls and meals, according to
an indictment handed up on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Last summer, it said, Ms. Richard told Ms. Khobragade that she was unhappy with
the work conditions and wanted to return home, but her employer refused the
request and would not return her passport.
Ms.
Khobragade was arrested Dec. 12 when she was dropping off her daughters at
school, and charged with misrepresenting Ms. Richard’s pay to obtain a work
visa for a housekeeper. Indian newspapers reported that she was strip-searched,
something Indians found especially offensive, and then kept in a police holding
pen with drug addicts before being released on bond. India responded with a
raft of retaliatory steps, including the removal of security barriers around
the embassy in New Delhi, and the case was the lead story in the Indian news
media for weeks.
On
Wednesday, India granted Ms. Khobragade the full immunity and privileges of a
diplomat, a set of rights not accorded those posted in consulates, as she was
at the time of the arrest. Though the United States appealed to India to waive
that immunity, India refused, and transferred her to a new position at the
Foreign Ministry in Delhi. The State Department then told her to leave the
United States, which she did Thursday night.
Ms.
Khobragade’s father, Uttam Khobragade, said his daughter was under strict
orders not to give interviews, but told an anecdote suggesting that she left
with bitter feelings — toward Ms. Richard, Ms. Richard’s husband and the United
States government.
“Devyani
was seen off at the airport by an official of the State Department,” he told
reporters Friday morning. “He told Devyani that, ‘Madam, I am sorry, and it was
wrong.’ She told the official, ‘You have lost a good friend. It is unfortunate.
In return, you got a maid and a drunken driver. They are in, and we are out.' ”
Mr.
Khobragade, a retired bureaucrat who has led small protests in recent days at
the American Consulate in Mumbai, said his daughter is seen so positively in
India that political parties have approached both her and him to run in
parliamentary elections, and that he was inclined to do so.
“At
this moment, through the agony my family has gone through in the past month,
you people stood with me like a rock,” he said at the airport. “One thing is
clear from this: If this country, with 1.2 billion people, if they come
together for a cause, justice is inevitable.”
Ms.
Richard, in a statement issued through Safe Horizon, a victim services agency
that has been representing her in New York, said that she was disappointed to
learn that Ms. Khobragade had left the United States. “I stood up for my rights
as a worker and I only wish that Defendant Khobragade would stand up in court
and address the charges against her,” Ms. Richard said.
One
thing that has baffled American observers — in particular Preet Bharara, the
United States attorney in Manhattan — is why there is so little outrage about
the treatment of Ms. Richard. In fact, Indian newspapers routinely carry
articles about abuse of domestic workers, and many people interviewed said the
sympathy would have been with the accuser had the case occurred in India.
But
because it emerged in the United States, and Ms. Khobragade represented India,
many people interviewed saw her treatment as a humiliation for the country.
“You
have to take Devyani out of this, the support is for her position,” said
Subhajit Sengupta, one of the journalists who camped outside Terminal 3. “What
she has done is wrong. What the U.S. has done is also wrong. Since what the
U.S. has done is against a country, it will be taken as a matter of prestige.”
Maneesha
Puri, 53, said the pay given to domestic help is “our concern.” And she
expressed sputtering indignation that a woman of Ms. Khobragade’s social
position would be strip-searched.
“What
kind of checking are they doing, strip-checking?” she said. “She is a
diplomatic person and you strip her and check her because the maid says she was
ill-treated? It’s ridiculous. It’s not that she had employed an American
servant. This was an Indian servant.”
Whether
the case now fades off the national agenda depends in part on whether Ms.
Khobragade speaks publicly about it.
Shweta
Bajaj, one of the journalists who spent Friday night staking the diplomat out,
said she had been shocked and a little mystified by the intensity of the
attention given to the Khobragade case this winter. She said it was the first
time in her career as a journalist that she had seen India “make such a stand
against America.”
“It’s
not even Pakistan,” she said.
Ellen
Barry reported from New Delhi, and Benjamin Weiser from New York. Hari Kumar
contributed reporting from New Delhi.
