Indian Hypocrisy At Its Worst!

Oh Goddess. Well, I've had my own experiences at the hands of Indian males here in the United States where they come in droves to be educated and to make money, and none of them has been pleasant.  So, I view this story through the lenses of my own personal experiences and their "cultural norms."  Hypocrites!


Found at Yahoo News, but reported at AP:

Indian official: Diplomat's arrest in NYC barbaric

By NIRMALA GEORGE 58 minutes ago 

 

NEW DELHI (AP) — The arrest and alleged strip search of an Indian diplomat in New York City escalated into a major diplomatic furor Tuesday as India's national security adviser called the woman's treatment "despicable and barbaric."

 

Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York, is accused of submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for her Manhattan housekeeper. Indian officials said she was arrested and handcuffed Thursday as she dropped off her daughter at school, and was kept in a cell with drug addicts before posting $250,000 bail.

 

A senior Indian official confirmed reports that she also was strip-searched, which has been portrayed in India as the most offensive and troubling part of the arrest. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Her U.S. attorney said he didn't know if she was strip-searched. Federal authorities said they were looking into the arrest.

 

"We understand that this is a sensitive issue for many in India," said Marie Harf, State Department deputy spokeswoman. "Accordingly, we are looking into the intake procedures surrounding this arrest to ensure that all appropriate procedures were followed and every opportunity for courtesy was extended."

Harf said that federal authorities would work on the issue with India "in the spirit of partnership and cooperation that marks our broad bilateral relationship."

India was ready to retaliate against American diplomats in India by threatening to downgrade privileges and demanding information about how much they pay their Indian household staff, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

Police also removed the traffic barricades near the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, a demand by the Indian government in retaliation for Khobragade's treatment, PTI reported. The barriers were a safety measure.

"We got orders to remove the concrete barriers," said Amardeep Sehgal, station house officer of the Chanakyapuri police station, the one nearest the embassy. "They were obstructing traffic on the road." He refused to say who had given the orders.

Calls to the U.S. Embassy were not immediately returned Tuesday.

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon slammed Khobragade's treatment in New York.

"It is despicable and barbaric," he said.

Prosecutors in New York say Khobragade, 39, claimed she paid her Indian maid $4,500 per month but actually paid her less than the U.S. minimum wage. In order for diplomats and consular officers to get a visa for their personal employees, known as an A-3 visa, they must show proof that the applicant will receive a fair wage, comparable to employment in the U.S., U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement last week.

[So, not only is this "ambassador" a cheapskate, she is a liar, too, in addition to breaking U.S. laws.]

Federal prosecutors say Khobragade told the housekeeper she would be paid 30,000 rupees per month — about $573, or $3.31 per hour. The woman worked for the family from about November 2012 through June 2013, and said she worked far more than 40 hours per week and was paid even less than 30,000 rupees, prosecutors said.

Khobragade has pleaded not guilty and plans to challenge the arrest on grounds of diplomatic immunity, her lawyer said last week.

If convicted, Khobragade faces a maximum sentence of 10 years for visa fraud and five years for making a false declaration. She was arrested outside of her daughter's Manhattan school.

"We are distressed at the treatment that Dr. Khobragade has received at the hands of U.S. authorities," said her lawyer, Daniel Arshack, he said she should have diplomatic immunity.

Her case quickly became a major story in India, with politicians urging diplomatic retaliation and TV news channels showing the woman in a series of smiling family photos. [Interesting how this allegedly innocent woman is being used by oppressive forces in her home country.  Ha!]

That reaction may look outsized in the United States, but the case touches on a string of issues that strike deeply in India, where the fear of public humiliation resonates strongly and heavy-handed treatment by the police is normally reserved for the poor. [So why should we in the USA curb OUR official behavior to satisfy INDIA's cultural sensitivities?  We're sick enough here as it is, why should we get even sicker by granting immediate special treatment to people who APPEAR to be of a certain class or caste?  And just how would we know a poor Indian from a rich Indian, anyway?]  For an educated, middle-class woman to face public arrest and a strip search is almost unimaginable, except in the most brutal crimes. [So, according to Indian protocols this woman is supposed to receive SPECIAL TREATMENT?  Are Americans not subject to the laws of the countries they visit or reside in without citizenship?  Yes!  But now this woman is going to worm her way out of her alleged crimes by claiming diplomatic immunity.  And I wonder what will happen to the poor nanny -- will she end up conveniently dead at some future date?  Do you feel like vomiting?  I sure do.]

Far less serious protocol complaints have become big issues in the past. Standard security checks in the U.S. regularly are front-page news here when they involve visiting Indian dignitaries, who are largely exempt from friskings while at home.

India's former speaker of Parliament, Somnath Chatterjee, once refused to attend an international meeting in Australia when he wasn't given a guarantee that he would not have to pass through security. Chatterjee said even the possibility of a security screening was "an affront to India."

The treatment and pay of household staff, meanwhile, is largely seen as a family issue, off-limits to the law. [Disgusting!  The "household staff" is not even given the dignity and legal protection of kept pets!]

The fallout from the arrest was growing. On Tuesday, Indian political leaders from both the ruling party and the opposition refused to meet with the U.S. congressional delegation in New Delhi. The Indian government said it was "shocked and appalled at the manner in which the diplomat had been humiliated" in the U.S.

Indian Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh summoned U.S. Ambassador Nancy Powell to register a complaint.

In Washington, U.S. State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said Tuesday that the department's diplomatic security team followed standard procedures during the arrest. After her arrest, Khobragade was handed over to U.S. marshals for intake and processing, she said.

Harf also noted that there is diplomatic immunity and consular immunity. Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the Indian deputy consul general enjoys immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts only with respect to acts performed in the exercise of consular functions, she said.

Khobragade's father, Uttam Khobragade, told the TimesNow TV news channel on Tuesday that his daughter's treatment was "absolutely obnoxious." [What is obnoxious is how INDIA treats its female rape victims.]

"As a father I feel hurt, our entire family is traumatized," he said. [Yeah, right, I'll bet you feel "traumatized," Dude.]

Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said there were "larger issues" involved in the case, but did not elaborate.

"We will deal with them in good time," he said.

Indian Culture to Convicted Rapist's Wife and Son: Go Die Already, We Don't Want to Feed You Anymore

From The Wall Street Journal Online

INDIA NEWS

September 23, 2013, 10:31 p.m. ET

In India, Rapist’s Wife Faces Harsh Judge: Tradition
In Conservative Hinterland, Women Without Husbands Face Destitution
By Krishna Pokharel and Aditi Malhotra

Akshay Kumar Singh and three other men were convicted this month of a crime that focused the world's attention on violence against women in India: the gang rape and killing of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in December.

For the parents of the woman who died, the sentencing brought a measure of closure. For Ms. Devi, who is in her 20s, and her 2-year-old son, her husband's crime and punishment have opened up a chapter of profound uncertainty.

Ms. Devi expects to be cast out by her in-laws and face ostracism and destitution here in India's conservative hinterland—not because she is married to a convicted murderer, but because she is a woman without a husband. "As a widow, my honor will be lost forever," she says.

Her husband's relatives say they can't afford to feed her. Her parents say they are too poor to take her back. The customs of purdah practiced in the region make it almost impossible for her to work outside the home.

"I am not educated. Our traditions are such that I cannot even step out of the house," Ms. Devi said. "Who will earn money to feed me and my son?"

In the village where Ms. Devi lives in eastern Bihar state with her husband's family, women are kept veiled and largely secluded. They can't leave home without a male relative. Ms. Devi must wait until dark simply to go into the field behind her house to defecate.

"A woman going out for work is not in our tradition," says Vinay Singh, Mr. Singh's older brother. Ms. Devi's mother-in-law, Malati Devi, is blunter. "In our family, women die at home. They never venture outside," she says.

Such attitudes may seem out of character in a country that had its first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in the 1960s, and that today boasts high-profile women politicians and executives. But India's countryside, home to nearly 70% of its 1.2 billion people, can be a stifling place, where women live highly circumscribed lives and lack freedoms their urban, middle-class counterparts are starting to enjoy.

It can also be a hostile place. In villages crimes against women often aren't reported to police, and cases are settled by elders enforcing custom rather than law.

Ms. Devi's misfortune to be married to a notorious convict makes her situation seem extraordinary. But in fact, the basic difficulties she now faces are a reality of life in the Indian countryside. For the poorest, a single setback—loss of a breadwinner, lackluster crop, illness—can propel a family into crisis. For rural women, it can be especially dire.

Ms. Devi grew up in a small village about 80 miles from Karmalahang. Her family farms a one-acre plot in a perennially drought-stricken district of Jharkhand state. Ms. Devi says she is 21 years old, although school records in her home village give her age as 24.

She has three older sisters and a younger brother. She was pulled out of school after the sixth grade by her parents so she could cook and clean after her mother became ill. Her sisters all had either left home or were about to, and her parents decided it was more important for their son to be educated than a daughter.

Across India, literacy among women lags behind that of men. In rural areas, less than 60% of women can read, according to Indian census data, compared with 80% of men.

Ms. Devi says she can write her name and a few Hindi words, and read a bit. She knew from an early age, she says, what was expected of a woman: to raise children and take care of household tasks.

"I learned how I had to behave when I got married and went to my in-laws' house just by watching my mother," says Ms. Devi.

Her mother, Lilavati Devi, says she was a child when she was married to her husband, Raj Mohan Singh, who was a few years older. Now 60, Lilavati Devi has spent most of her adult life within the confines of her small, mud-walled home.

Many women in this part of India use Devi as their last name. The word means "goddess" in Hindi. But it isn't a sign of the relative status of women. "To us, husbands are our gods," says Sudha Devi, a government health worker in Karmalahang and no relation to Punita Devi. "We can't think of being equal."

Ms. Devi's parents arranged her marriage to Mr. Singh in 2010. The connection was made through a woman from a neighboring village who was married to one of Mr. Singh's older brothers.

"I wasn't forced into it, but it was a decision taken by my parents. This is how it works here in the countryside," Ms. Devi says. "In a woman's life, marriage and her husband are everything."

Both families belong to the relatively high-ranking Rajput caste and are farmers. "It was a fine match," says Lilavati Devi. In May 2010 she sent her daughter off with a simple dowry: a wooden bed and some kitchen utensils.

"I told her to live well and peacefully with her family—her new family," Lilavati Devi says.

The first two years of marriage went smoothly. Her husband Mr. Singh, 28, is the youngest of three brothers. So Ms. Devi settled into a household that included not just her parents-in-law, but also Mr. Singh's siblings and their wives and children.

Her new village, Karmalahang, is about 18 miles from the Grand Trunk Road, a commercial route since ancient times that connects Kolkata in eastern India to the Afghan capital of Kabul, and sits at the foot of the Kaimur Hills.

The mountains block water-laden air and create what is known as a rain shadow over Karmalahang, making farming for the 1,500 people here a precarious existence. That, combined with a lack of industry, drives many young men from the area to head to cities for jobs.

Mr. Singh and his brothers, none of whom finished high school, were no exception. From their earnings, each would send about $30 to $45 a month to support the extended family.

"I never asked him where he was or what he was doing," says Ms. Devi. "I knew he went to earn money."

In June 2011, Ms. Devi gave birth to a son. The child was prone to lung infections, but Mr. Singh's earnings were enough to pay for monthly doctor's visits and medicine.

During a visit home in August 2012, Mr. Singh brought his wife a mobile phone so they could speak while he was away. He said he had been working at a liquor store in the Jharkhand city of Dhanbad.

Before he headed out again—this time to Delhi—he gave her $20, which she used to buy a shirt for their son as well as fruit from the local market for the child, among other things.

Ms. Devi didn't see her husband again until December. The date is a matter of dispute. In an interview in early August, Ms. Devi and her father-in-law said Mr. Singh returned home on Dec. 21, a day after police had come looking for him in connection with the Dec. 16 gang rape in Delhi.

The crime was already making headlines across India. But Karmalahang has no electricity to power televisions, and newspapers aren't available here. When Mr. Singh came home, he "didn't look noticeably worried or tense," Ms. Devi says, though he had grown a beard.

Since then Ms. Devi and Mr. Singh's other family members have changed their account of his homecoming. They testified in court later in August that he actually returned to the village on Dec. 15, before the Delhi attack occurred. Mr. Singh's lawyer, A.P. Singh, no relation, made that the cornerstone of his defense.

The trial judge, Yogesh Khanna, rejected the alibi. In his judgment, he cited inconsistencies in the family's testimony, a contradictory version of events from the police and witnesses and physical evidence linking Mr. Singh to the crime scene—a bus on which he served as a helper.

Since Mr. Singh's December arrest, his family has been thrown into upheaval. His brothers, Vinay and Abhay, who had also been working around Delhi, left their jobs for three months to help out at home, straining household finances. The family's reputation has been damaged.

"They treat us as untouchables," says Abhay Singh, who works in a paint factory in a Delhi suburb.

"We have gone back from where we were, and from now on it will be an endless slide backwards," says Vinay Singh, who works in a textile-dying plant.

In April, Ms. Devi took an overnight train trip to New Delhi, her first visit to the capital, to see her husband in jail. When she caught her first glimpse of him through the glass partition in the visitors' area, she says, she started to cry.

"Keep yourself and the child well," Mr. Singh told her, according to Ms. Devi. She says he told her: "I will come home. I am innocent."

But without her husband's wages, Ms. Devi says, she hasn't been able to get medical treatment for her son. The child's diet is also suffering, as mother and child subsist on handouts from Mr. Singh's brothers and their wives.

"I feel weak," says Ms. Devi. "Nobody thinks well of a woman whose husband isn't with her for support."

Some people blame the December gang rape and similar attacks in part on a collision of traditional social expectations—commonplace in rural areas—and the modernity of India's cities, where rural migrant workers encounter the values of urbanites living by a different set of rules. During the brutal Delhi assault, for instance, the attackers accosted the woman and the young man she was with, asking why they were out together in the evening, the young man told the court.

Speaking about the events of that night, Ms. Devi says she doesn't understand how a woman could be out for the evening with a man who wasn't her husband.

That night, the two victims had been to a movie at an upscale shopping mall. They were attacked after they boarded a bus. The woman was raped and sexually assaulted with a metal bar, resulting in numerous injuries to her internal organs. The two were dumped, naked and bleeding, by the roadside. The young woman ultimately died of her injuries.

It is too simple to say, however, that there is an urban-rural values split. Mr. Singh's lawyer in New Delhi, A.P. Singh, said after Friday's sentencing that if his daughter insisted on having premarital sex, he would "burn her to death." When asked about the comments, he said "any Indian household in the right frame of mind" would feel the same about premarital sex.

A.P. Singh said he would appeal the guilty verdict against Ms. Devi's husband. That process could take years.

In a written statement from the convict, Mr. Singh, provided by his lawyer, he said of his wife: "She should be strong and fight. She should seek employment. I want her to live. I want her to educate our son and make him a good man. When he grows up, I want him to know the truth about me, that I am innocent."

But Ms. Devi herself worries that time is running out. Her in-laws, Sarju Singh and Malati Devi, say they don't have enough savings to continue supporting Ms. Devi and her son. Mr. Singh's brothers say their earnings are barely enough to support their own wives and children.

Using the cellphone her husband gave her last year, Ms. Devi calls her mother. "What can I do?" she asks, according to Lilavati Devi. Her mother, in tears, says she has no answer to give her.

"Had she been educated, she would have earned for herself," she says, sitting near a picture of her daughter, dressed in a green sari. In the photo, she is standing before a garden backdrop, wearing a half smile.

Ms. Devi's father, Raj Mohan Singh, says his daughter can't return to the home he and his wife share with their son's family. "We won't be able to look after her," he says. "Her brother can't support her, either. He isn't able to look after himself. How can he look after Punita?"

Ms. Devi doesn't know where to turn. "Is there anyone who is thinking of me?" she asked, crying after learning of the death sentence. "I am alive and I have a small child who is still breathing."
—Preetika Rana and Tripti Lahiri contributed to this article.

********************************************************



There were so many horrific things in this article, I hardly know where to begin.  I feel so outraged about the treatment of this woman and her son at the hands of her own family - her own fricking family!  And they all are just shrugging and saying "oh well, too bad, so sad, go away somewhere and die quickly, please."  And you know what's going to happen to this woman if she doesn't "disappear", and maybe her son, too, she's going to die in an "accidental" kitchen fire, burnt to a crisp.  There are thousands of such "accidents" that occur in India every year.  None ever result in a conviction for murder.  Everyone will just shrug and say "oh well, too bad, so sad." 

Is Lakshmi a Goddess in Name Only?

Is Goddess Lakshmi only figurative? Posted By: Poonam Srivastava/Atika Singh at NDTV Good Times
(November 11, 2012)

The festive season is a buzz with excitement, happiness all round, the city lit up, the sweet shops bustling, people rejoicing in the festive spirit. For a lot of us this festive season also becomes path to connect with the divine and pray to Goddess Lakshmi, who for us represents the epitome of bringing wealth and prosperity.

There is obviously notable furor of activities in the temples as people actively pray and ask for blessings. I was crossing once such temple and that’s when I observed something very disturbing right in the heart of all the festivities. There was this group of men, who had just come out of the temple and probably finished praying to Goddess Lakshmi for wealth and prosperity, and to my horror; start eve teasing two girls barely 25 feet away from Goddess Lakshmi’s abode!!!

I was left astounded with the stark irony where, in a country like ours on one side all of us including men pray to Goddesses like Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, Saraswati and bow their heads in respect. And yet the living feminine form is treated so badly. Every day in the news we hear of rape, honour killing, dowry deaths; in fact we don’t even have to look outside, in our very own homes men and women are not treated at par. While times have changes and there is considerable liberalization especially in the upper strata of society.

Today’s working woman is not only supposed earn but also look after the home and the family irrespective of whether the man helps her or not in the household. A woman is expected to play the roles of a mother, wife, daughter-in-law, sister, daughter to perfection! Does a man have the same pressure of expectations?

I recently watched the movie ‘English Vinglish’ I’m sure some of you would have seen it as well. It was a beautiful interpretation of a middle class family and especially how woman of the house is expected to only give and if she makes the mistake of expecting something in return she is sure to be disappointed. What touched me most was the scene where the protagonist, says that she is not even seeking love from her husband and children but all that she wants is a little respect.

Is that also too much to ask for considering we are living in the 21st century and claim to be modern and free thinking? So while we rejoice, pray and seek blessings from our Goddesses’ lets also spare a little thought for the Goddesses’ in our family and bring in a little light into their lives this festive season!

(Poonam Srivastava is a Delhi based writer who has published books and articles on subjects of social innovation and practical spirituality. She also actively volunteers her time to promote causes related to these spheres.)

(Atika Singh is a post graduate in Counseling Psychology from Amity Institute of Behavioral & Allied Sciences and graduate in History from Delhi University. She has been actively involved in the emotional counseling space; and is passionate about empowering individuals to deal with their personal and professional issues, and achieve greater success. She is a certified Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner.)