Pramila Jayapal has a problem. This Representative for Washington’s 7th congressional district in the US Congress has a problem with the present dispensation in New Delhi. And she has been making it clear from several platforms, right from the time she introduced House Resolution 745 in the US Congress last year in December 2019, urging the “Republic of India to end the restrictions on communications and mass detentions in Jammu and Kashmir as swiftly as possible and preserve religious freedom for all residents”. In response, when External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar called off a meeting with US Congress representatives, as she was part of the delegation, Jayapal went on to write an opinion piece in a mainstream US newspaper to declaim that she would always stand up for human rights and how India’s record in religious freedom had deteriorated under the present government. While her zeal as an upholder of human rights is commendable, in India’s case it appears as if she has launched her “crusade” based on a narrative peddled by the Pakistani ISI and its selected Prime Minister, Imran Khan. We do not believe that Ms Jayapal is a spokeswoman of the Pakistani propaganda machinery; but there is no denying that she has dismayed many, both in India and NRIs in US, with the fervour with which she has peddled a one-sided narrative. It’s a different matter though that many NRIs in US believe that much of this zeal has to do with what we Indians describe as “vote bank politics”. As every democratically elected politician in every part of the globe knows, vote banks are important, as well as the image of being the poster boy, or in this case the poster girl of the human rights brigade and what is known as “left-liberal” political thought—which, sadly, is more left than liberal, but that is a topic for another day. What concerns us at present is that a zealous Ms Jayapal has picked up the cause of Indian farmers now. In true Justin Trudeau-style—the gentleman whose biggest contribution to India-Canada ties was gyrating on a Delhi stage wearing a sherwani—she has urged, along with some other influential Congress representatives, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to raise the issue of farmers’ protest with the Indian government and to “reinforce the United States’ commitment to the freedom of political speech abroad”. Obviously, no one told Ms Jayapal that for over a month now farmers sitting on Delhi’s borders, surrounded by reporters and TV cameras, have been exercising their freedom of speech—and their freedom to block traffic on major thoroughfares—by scathingly attacking Government of India on every news channel possible. And that no one from the government has done anything to remove them from their protest sites; and this in spite of the major inconveniences they are causing to Delhi-NCR’s residents every day.
Apart from being a blatant interference into a sovereign nation’s internal matters, the move by the US Congress representatives makes one wonder what sort of disinformation is being spread about India in Washington that even a matter such as agricultural reform can get painted as a human rights crisis. The bigger question is what the Indian foreign policy establishment is doing to counter the blatant lies being manufactured by vested interests to defame India globally. Refusing to meet Ms Jayapal does not help matters. It is obvious that she is incensed enough to find rights violation in reforms that have been largely welcomed by farmers across the country. Instead, trying to counter the narrative and reason with “crusaders” like her may help matters to an extent. India cannot afford to sit on its laurels, saying that we are the largest democracy in the world and we don’t need to explain ourselves; even as interests arrayed against us go around hijacking the narrative. What should cause worry is westerners are buying into it—first it was the western media that fell for it and now it is the US lawmakers. This is likely to be a constant irritant and by not taking proactive measures, India will play into the hands of lobbies that do not want any India-US partnership to succeed.
As for Ms Jayapal, she should understand that by basing her actions on one-sided narratives, she is not helping India-US relations at a time when this partnership is an absolute necessity to counter China. Being woke may be in vogue, and can perhaps even be a good thing, but matters in India are too diverse and too complex for these to be fitted into tight little boxes with preconceived labels on them. Such action is best avoided.