National honour, private lives

The responses of the Indian embassy in Paris told its own story. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in Delhi, which should have risen above the controversy and exercised a moral influence on its representatives in Paris, displayed only an anxiety to diffuse the situation as quickly as possible before it affected the country’s ties with France. Indeed, when it came to protecting the honour of a fellow officer, our diplomatic community demonstrated an uncanny ability to hangtogether. It lost no time in hauling the creaky machinery of “national honour” on to the centrestage. It is not just an individual’s honour, it is India’s image that is at stake, was the warcry. One Indian diplomat even snarled that if the French authorities acted difficult and insisted that the diplomat be sent back home, then someone of equivalent rank from their side should have to be declared persona non grata.

The very first reaction of the Indian embassy, when the unsavoury details of Oraon’s life and injuries surfaced in the French press last week, was to refuse to even admit the possibility that something is wrong. The allegations were “false and strongly denied”, it stated, and that was that. There was also a dark accusation in that observation it made that the “injuries Ms Oraon has suffered in the custody of French authorities are a matter of concern” — the implication being that she was alright until she fell into the hands of the French.

It further alleged that the entire episode wasbased on the false propaganda of non-governmental organisations like the Committee against Modern Day Slavery, which was handling the case. An official press release, dated September 14, is an amazing exercise in hypocrisy: “The Embassy requests the French media to cease its campaign of defamation against the diplomat from this Embassy based on mendacious statements by individuals and organisations who are themselves responsible for Ms Oraon’s actual plight”.

There may be justification for fuming against the French media’s attempts to damn a man before he is proved guilty. But the fact of the matter is that the Indian embassy and the MEA seem to have damned Lalita Oraon even before inquiring into the veracity of her complaints. She may be just a domestic worker but she is nevertheless an Indian citizen and the embassy is duty bound to look after her interests as it is of any other Indian who had happened to get into trouble abroad. If she had been, for argument’s sake, employed by a French family, wouldthe embassy not have pulled all stops to champion her cause?

But because one of their own kind was involved, this principle was conveniently brushed aside. So anxious were they to protect their lad, so angry were they at the French police for refusing to allow them access to Oraon in “clear violation of all diplomatic norms”, they didn’t spare a thought for the girl herself and the great tragedy that had befallen her. Despite not having spoken with her, they let it be publicly known that she had fabricated the whole sordid story in order to stay back in France when she heard that she was to be sent back to India. They also let it be known that she did not do her job as a nursemaid to the diplomat’s children properly.

There is a certain mindset at work here, a mindset that has victimised women time and again. It presumes that “people like us do not do such things”. Indeed, it is an attitude that recalls that famous observation of a lower court in Rajasthan which had acquitted Bhanwari Devi’s rapistsin the early 1990s all because the honourable judge was confident that “upper caste men don’t rape lower-caste women”.

There is, besides this, the despicable attitude to domestic workers that the more privileged among us often have. The French may be shocked, but we do not find anything very objectionable about a 17-year-old being forced to work in someone’s home from six in the morning to midnight, seven days a week, month after month. We would expect her to sleep on a carpet, eat leftovers, submit to being locked up when master and family go out and put up with the occasional slap on the face. This is the reality in so many homes on the subcontinent, so what’s the big deal anyway? In fact, we would expect a “servant” to be grateful for the chance we gave her to visit a foreign country and earn a handsome income of 50 dollars a month, since she would anyway only have been scratching the earth for a living back home.

There is a clash of civilisational norms here. It is not that the French are morallysuperior beings, it is just that we, as a nation, have not sufficiently imbibed the values embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which this country, as our diplomats in Paris should know, is a signatory.

The preamble of this declaration recognises the “inherent dignity” and the “equal and inalienable rights” of all members of the human family. Article 4 declares that “no one shall be held in slavery and servitude”, Article 5 says that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and Article 7 states that “all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law”.

These are values enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, as well, which clearly recognises the right to personal liberty and that includes, within its ambit, the right to live with dignity.

On Friday the MEA claimed that Lalita Oraon’s employer had been exonerated. It was another desperate attempt to putthe lid firmly on a tragic incident that revealed, in a microcosm, all the hypocrisies, prejudices and inequalities of Indian society at large.