In a rather belated recognition, America’s most influential daily now reckons that the US authorities could have handled the Devyani Khobragade case better, given that federal prosecutors have “wide discretion” and the State Department could have taken up the matter with India well in time.
“The United States cannot ignore laws that mandate how workers should be paid and that they be treated fairly,” The New York Times commented on Wednesday, even while stressing: “But federal prosecutors have wide discretion, and the State Department, before the criminal investigation, could have urged India to reassign Ms Khobragade to New Delhi and required her to make restitution.”
The Times’ latest editorial comment is much different from its earlier assertion soon after Khobragade’s arrest on December 12 and the retaliatory steps New Delhi launched in its wake. Deriding the measures as “India’s misplaced outrage”, the paper had gone on to say that India’s “overwrought reaction” to the arrest was “unworthy of a democratic Government”.
The NYT now believes that the damage that the Devyani affair has caused to India-US relations is unlikely to “dissipate soon”, even though the diplomat is back in India.
In its editorial, titled “India-American Relations on Edge”, the paper notes that while tensions have eased with the diplomat’s return home, her case and the issues it raised have not yet been resolved.
“This unfortunate episode is a reminder that while both nations are democracies, neither can avoid the hard work necessary to make the relationship work,” it says, while still holding on to the American view that India’s passions on the Khobragade issue have been “fanned by election-year politics”. It also criticises Indians for being “overwhelmingly sympathetic” to the diplomat, but “shockingly indifferent” to her maid Sangeeta Richard.
Noting that the Devyani case has “exposed differences between the two countries over such basic concepts as fairness and equality”, the paper speaks of “a troubling level of Indian animosity toward the United States”, adding: “The two Governments are trying to turn the page by resuming high-level meetings. But it will take more than that to achieve the “global strategic partnership” with India that President Obama has boasted about.”