Welcome back Devyani and please accept my deepest apologies for the unkind and devious utterances of so many of my ‘upper caste’ brethren who have been criticising you and your father as corrupt, manipulative; as a person who got her just desserts at the hands of the US state department and Preet Bharara.
Not one of these people has the remotest idea of what a scheduled caste person has to go through to gain equality, respect, and a decent livelihood, a job in the private sector, a roof on their heads and basic elemental security in the small little villages, towns and cities in India. Not one of these people has carried night soil on their heads. Not one of these people is used to be stared at in school and college when one enters the class as a ‘scheduled caste’ kid.
These people crib that your lot is ‘stealing’ jobs, placements, engineering, medical and college seats from ‘deserving candidates’. They cannot control their anger when they see in you a successful, modern, woman standing up to the most powerful country in the world for her basic human rights, for her right to be with her Indian American husband, with her kids who are American citizens. They fall back on idle gossip and rumours to criticise you, they bring in your father as an intemperate, corrupt, foul mouthed man, because in India it’s an age old tactic to criticise the family, especially the parents to get to the person who is targeted.
What else can you expect from this lot whose one ambition in life, even today, after so much has happened, is to get a green card for their children and themselves in the United States, never mind how the US treats them. Devyani these are the same people whose sons and daughters of generation next have become rich and content and they find themselves unable to compete for placements for the best schools and colleges in India. Their parents are forced to send them to the colleges in US, Britain, Canada, Australia and Singapore – all for a price of course. So how can they ever be objective about the way the US behaves with the rest of the world?
Devyani never mind these hypocrites and two faced critics who believe that it is their god given right to corner all the benefits in society. There are still some of us left who feel the pain, the utter loneliness of a woman fighting a lone battle in an alien country, a woman forced and subjugated by a cruel system, a woman who fought all that and walked Friday night through the airport terminal in Delhi, back from the US, with her head held high.
Not one of these people has the remotest idea of what a scheduled caste person has to go through to gain equality, respect, and a decent livelihood, a job in the private sector, a roof on their heads and basic elemental security in the small little villages, towns and cities in India. Not one of these people has carried night soil on their heads. Not one of these people is used to be stared at in school and college when one enters the class as a ‘scheduled caste’ kid.
These people crib that your lot is ‘stealing’ jobs, placements, engineering, medical and college seats from ‘deserving candidates’. They cannot control their anger when they see in you a successful, modern, woman standing up to the most powerful country in the world for her basic human rights, for her right to be with her Indian American husband, with her kids who are American citizens. They fall back on idle gossip and rumours to criticise you, they bring in your father as an intemperate, corrupt, foul mouthed man, because in India it’s an age old tactic to criticise the family, especially the parents to get to the person who is targeted.
What else can you expect from this lot whose one ambition in life, even today, after so much has happened, is to get a green card for their children and themselves in the United States, never mind how the US treats them. Devyani these are the same people whose sons and daughters of generation next have become rich and content and they find themselves unable to compete for placements for the best schools and colleges in India. Their parents are forced to send them to the colleges in US, Britain, Canada, Australia and Singapore – all for a price of course. So how can they ever be objective about the way the US behaves with the rest of the world?
Devyani never mind these hypocrites and two faced critics who believe that it is their god given right to corner all the benefits in society. There are still some of us left who feel the pain, the utter loneliness of a woman fighting a lone battle in an alien country, a woman forced and subjugated by a cruel system, a woman who fought all that and walked Friday night through the airport terminal in Delhi, back from the US, with her head held high.
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