As with US, so with India: Deportation images and political silence

Relations between the United States and India have been a subject of fevered domestic politics in the past. American criticism of India’s non-alignment as “immoral and shortsighted” (1956) united Parliament behind Jawaharlal Nehru. Indira Gandhi’s signing of the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1971, definitively tilting India to the USSR even as the US was tilting towards Pakistan, was in part, a strategic riposte to the leadership challenge the lady faced in the Congress after the split of 1969. She fanned and developed the theme of animus to the US as “the foreign hand”, which became part of the domestic politics lexicon in the elections that followed. The Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement (2008) nearly brought down the Manmohan Singh government after the Left parties withdrew support because it “undermined the sovereignty of India’s foreign policy”.

 

Then why is it that the images of Indians deported from the US, shackled and chained, defeated and humiliated, are not having the same disruptive effect on Indian politics?

 

Nitin Patel is not an unknown in Gujarat politics, even if his fortunes are currently in eclipse. A former Gujarat BJP deputy chief minister (2016 to 2017 and again from 2017 to 2021), he has been a six-time member of the Legislative Assembly, and has handled various portfolios, including finance and revenue, in the last 20 years. He opted out of the Assembly elections in 2022 and, after staking claim to the Mehsana Lok Sabha seat, pulled out of the race last year without giving any reason.

 

It was with some interest, therefore, that people listened to him when he held a press conference, asking the state government to take more care of those deported from the US and brought back in shackles and chains. Gujaratis are among the largest number of deportees and a large complement among them comes from his area of influence, Mehsana. “I urge the state government to see to it that they are not harassed,” Patel told local reporters in oblique criticism of his own government and a possible bid to resuscitate his political career. The state government responded by rounding up “illegal” Bangladeshi immigrants and sequestering them in camps, preparatory to sending them home.

 

The reaction of the political class to deportation is interesting. There are many, including in Gujarat, who have no sympathy with the deportees and feel they deserve what is coming to them. For instance, Anil Vij, the stormy petrel of Haryana politics who is seven-term Bharatiya Janata Party MLA and minister and who has since been served a show-cause notice for criticising Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, had this to say: “Every country has the right to deport illegal immigrants and US President Donald Trump was within his rights to do so as well.” Interestingly, his views were echoed by former Haryana chief minister and now Union minister M L Khattar, who said those who entered a country illegally were “criminals”.

 

In neighbouring Punjab, Minister for Non-Resident Indian Affairs Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, who belongs to the Aam Aadmi Party, met the first lot of deportees at the airport. But airport visits by him and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann have since ceased. Instead, Mr Mann is asking testily why only Punjab airports are being chosen to dump deportees. “Why did you choose Amritsar and not the national capital? You did this to defame Punjab and Punjabis,” Mann said, asking why, if they are innocent victims and not criminals, the Haryana government is using police vans to transport them onwards.

 

The Opposition in Gujarat was a bit slow in responding. Last week, after three rounds of deportees had already returned home, Congress MLAs, dressed in black and chained to each other outside the Assembly, reminded (largely) unsympathetic crowds how the government had betrayed the interests of those who had voted for them. Congress workers in Telangana congregated outside the party office in Hyderabad, some in handcuffs, carrying placards that said “humans, not criminals”. After many rounds of deportation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asked why Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not leveraging his friendship with the US President to ensure the deportees were afforded a measure of dignity. Sanjay Raut of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena favoured direct action. “The US plane (carrying the shackled deportees) should not have been allowed to take off and go back,” he said.

 

Parliament has seen its share of disruption over the issue, including a statement by Minister for External Affairs S Jaishankar.

 

The fact is, deportation, which should have been like a cracker thrown in the midst of routine, slightly tired politics, has not compelled people to take to the streets. Instead, it is being used either as an issue by politicians to get even with the leadership of their own party or by Opposition leaders as a tool to criticise the government’s handling. The underlying theme of popular discussion is: The deportees rejected the opportunities India offers and lowered the country’s image abroad. On this issue, the government has managed to retain the political initiative which could spur it on to move swiftly on doing to illegal immigrants in India what the US has done to illegal Indian immigrants in the US.