The
Ugly Americans
Twayne: “Who needs charm when you’ve got ‘em by the
short hairs”- Ugly Americans- 2010.
For gratuitous insults you can’t beat the Americans.
There was a famous novel (The Ugly
American-1958), and movie of the same name starring Marlon Brando (1963),
about the boorish behavior of Americans abroad. It was set in South East Asia,
probably a fictionalised Vietnam.
It is a side of themselves that the
Americans can’t seem to help or control. It does trouble some amongst them,
this total lack of consideration for other people’s feelings. JFK, a Democratic Party President like the
current Black one, a beneficiary of Kennedy’s Civil Rights Movement, sent The Ugly American to all the then US
Senators for them to read and sensitise themselves. And in 2010, reflecting the same problem of
obtuseness largely unchanged, you have a TV serial called The Ugly Americans; in plural. It is along the same lines, but less
literary, and less geographically pointed.
And now in the Khobragade Affair in New
York and other ham-handed handling and jailing of a school- girl earlier, body-
searching of our former President, politicians, ambassador, actors etc.; we must
adjust to the idea that Americans are willing and able to be provocatively
crude and crass at home as well.
They
think nothing of behaving in this inexplicable manner on shoddy homework and
trumped up charges with people from an admiring and friendly nation. They
insist on brazening it out instead, justifying their behavior, cheeseparing
with expressions of ‘regret’, but staunchly refusing to apologise, or retreat
from their confused quasi-judicial stance.
Perhaps we need to learn from others who
have been systematically outraged by the Americans. It appears that the only
remedy lies in treating Americans in India likewise, and handling any US rage
and retaliation in a similar calibrated and desensitised manner. Some elements
of the Indian media think this is a ‘conspiracy’ and deliberate act of pressure
being applied on India. Why this is, if it is motivated and not just clumsy, we
shall no doubt soon find out.
The British who ran a global Empire
straddling nations, cultures and races for over 200 years targeted their
insolence, and knew exactly what they expected to achieve from it. At least
they did, until they went into terminal decline, and gradually sank to becoming
America’s ‘poodle’. So those elements of the Indian media may be proved right
yet. But if this is ‘business-as-usual’, as the US suggests, then there is
something very wrong in their sense of appropriate behavior.
But America manages to routinely insult and
annoy people without apparently trying. The thing has become an Ugly American Syndrome.
And America tries to justify it in terms of their beloved process. American
management theory, a largely private sector phenomenon, is largely based on
technology and process directed towards the over- arching objective of profits.
In statecraft, strategic goals might well substitute profits, but only in terms
of priority.
And yet, American business and industry is,
and has been, failing. As has its diplomacy and administrative ability. It is
only their technological ability to invent, that tremendous American R&D
ingenuity, combined with massive military superiority, that is keeping it head
and shoulders ahead of the rest. America doesn’t seem to care about angering
people, because they feel certain they can win!
Indeed, after the cosy, chummy and somewhat
collegiate ‘box-wallah’ culture of the British Raj and its aftermath, the
American way, for those who remember the former style, is definitely jarring.
Human beings are just another input required in the mix for American style
businesses, rather than the main item. One can almost visualize people being
squeezed like toothpaste or oranges, till they have nothing left in them to
give. While they are retained, personnel are expected to perform against pre-set
yardsticks from tight cycles of week to week, month to month and quarter to
quarter, or face the music.
The whole world has become significantly
Americanised to a high degree, with national characteristics subordinated to
its ‘better’ profit –making ways. The Americans know best, is the prevailing
thinking, given the level of success and achievement put together by
essentially an immigrant culture in just 200 odd years.
After all, the US, even in decline, and
with China threatening to catch up with it, is still the richest and most
powerful country in the world. By way of contrast, India is probably perceived
as one of the weakest and poorest, given that every country, from Mauritius and
Nepal to the US, can feel free to insult and bully us at any time.
India was being flatteringly bracketed with
various others for quite some time when the ‘India Story’ was in vogue; in
BRICS and the G-20, but we have not kept pace. We have been losing stature
throughout the last 10 years or so of UPA rule.
Besides, India has probably failed to play
the American satellite with sufficient enthusiasm, despite our current prime
minister’s inordinate fondness for the US. We didn’t for example give it the
large 136 fighter deal despite its intense lobbying. We are not buying its
nuclear plants fast enough and laying too many indemnity conditions in case of
accident. And we still have the temerity to bring up the then Union Carbide
Bhopal Gas Disaster from time to time.
We have been at the receiving end of
double-agent David Headley’s dastardliness in 26/11, without receiving much
access to the CIA man in US custody, and very limited information- sharing to
boot. Many bilateral issues receive scant reciprocity from the US. We are
denied much high-technology access despite professions of a ‘special’
partnership. The old bracketing of India with Pakistan makes an occasional comeback
whenever it suits the US despite the near terrorist state activity of the
latter.
And
now, the American State Department has chosen to favour the maid Sangeeta
Richard and her family, taking up for
her salary issues, granting her family all
visas and spiriting them away to the US, to presumably give them resident
status and sanctuary. And this, some three days before mounting the insulting attack on the young woman Deputy
Consul General of India in New York.
And the whole thing has been conducted
through one Preet Bharara, an ethnic Indian-American official with alleged
political ambitions. Bharara, sometimes called ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’,
has been demonstrating a malicious zeal for targeting Indians and South Asians,
including ex McKinsey boss Rajat Gupta. Bharara
has made bold to cast ‘hand in glove’ aspersions on both the Indian Police and
Judiciary, without substantiating his remarks, suggesting they have been victimizing
the maid and her family. Is this ethnic Indian Bharara being used as cat’s paw
by higher ups in the US Government, or covering up for his own high-handedness?
Our IT industry, pro-America business
houses, dependent on US business and visas, to grow, may not be very happy with
this spat, but might like to remember that no business is conducted with a
spirit of charity. We are hired or collaborated with because of a perceived value
and need.
Still, it is true that Infosys, amongst our
biggest and best, is paying out millions of dollars in US visa- fraud fines. So, even
if we cannot do without the US, let us try to retain this new found principle
of reciprocity in future, long after this Khobragade Affair passes over.
(1,228
words)
December
19th, 2013
Gautam
Mukherjee
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