A debate is raging. News channels, podcasts, YouTube videos, Facebook, Twitter (X), you name it and people are exchanging heated words. “So what’s new?” you ask. Okay, okay. I know. It doesn’t take much to get the pugnacious best out in us, but this time the topic is something which has generated extreme outrage from one group of people and utter disdain, if not indifference bordering on nonchalance, from another.
And that topic is the way the American administration treated a group of Indian deportees who were packed home on an airplane, handcuffed and feet chained. For those of you who don’t know what’s going on or are just coming out of hibernation or are generally oblivious to the world around you (which is not such a terrible thing given the horror that is seemingly playing out all over the news on a regular basis, making ignorance more blissful than ever before): here is what happened.
As soon as Donald Trump returned to power, he decided to crackdown on illegal immigrants. Not just errant Indians, but “trespassers” from a host of other countries spanning every continent. As part of this “let’s clean-up America” drive so to speak, a first batch of 104 Indians who had allegedly crossed the borders into the United States without legal papers or documents over a period of time, were put on an airplane on February 6 and sent back home. Fair enough. There are, reportedly, an estimated 18,000 illegal immigrants from India. But it is the manner in which they were treated while being deported which has incensed a large number of Indians and others. The deportees were handcuffed and chained together by the feet. The shackles were apparently not even removed when they were on the plane but remained in place for the entire duration of the forty-hour flight. An official video of the deportees dragging themselves up the ramp to board the airplane did the rounds in India and around the globe, generating outrage.
Shockingly, however, some people did not find anything wrong with the way they were treated. A talk show panelist argued that they were common criminals anyway, having illegally crossed into a country without passport of visa so they deserved what they got. At a tea stall in Calcutta a commenter said, “It is because of such people Indians get a bad name. Shame on them. This is just dessert. Serves them right.”
Fortunately, however, the deluge of rebuttals to such asinine arguments is coming in thick and fast. The debate is tilted in the latter’s favour.
There is no excuse for flagrant violations of human rights or dignity.