Was expelled US official a bleeding heart or an ugly American?
The US official who was expelled in a tit-for-tat diplomatic
battle over Devyani Khobragade was nearing the end of his posting in India,
scheduled to leave New Delhi in February. The official and his family left
India on Sunday. But in their three years in India, Wayne May, who headed the
US embassy's security team in New Delhi, and his wife Alicia Muller May, who
worked as the embassy's community liaison officer, revealed conflicting
impulses and contradictory outlook towards the people and country they served
in.
On the one hand, it was evidently their bleeding heart
concern for housekeeper Sangeeta Richard, whose in-laws worked with them and a
succession of US embassy officials, that led them to "rescue" the
nanny's husband and children from the strong-arm tactics of the Indian judicial
and police system that the diplomat Devyani Khobragade unleashed on them after
Sangeeta fell out with her. On the other hand, their facetious comments about a
stereotypical India abounding in chaos and filth, which some might see as
offensive, shows them as the archetypal "ugly Americans."
They laid out their opinions and views quite guilelessly on
social media through photographs and comments that were quickly seized on and
distributed by bloggers and trolls ever sensitive to any perceived insult of
India. Although the comments are often flippant, the kind many people make on
social media without fear of consequence, they sound extremely offensive now
given the fraught context of the diplomatic spat. Their profiles, pictures and
comments were removed and their social media presence sanitized soon after they
were discovered, but not before the online warriors had saved and uploaded them
on other social media sites, portraying them as ''racist American diplomats.''
The Indian ''holy cow'' is a recurring theme in their
entries, starting from the time Wayne May was posted in New Delhi in 2010. The
first of the pictures appears in June 2010 with a comment from Wayne saying,
''No eating the sacred cows.'' A little later, he adds, ''one week in country
and I already miss steak.''
His wife Alicia captions another photo ''Stupid Cow.'' A
friend comments, ''You just insulted their cow,'' to which May responds, ''Not
the first time, not the last time.'' But a short time later, she shows the kind
of frustration that many Indians might also share: ''Just wait till you have to
dodge these beasts in your car because they are laying in the middle of the
road blocking traffic - they lose their "holiness" real fast. And, as
holy as they are supposed to be, most of them are bodyline starved. It's awful
to see. Everything is a contradiction here...''
There is other banter in which enraged nationalists see
signs of Indian laws being broken by the meat-loving diplomats. ''Had real
American Hamburbers for dinner last night. A friend smuggled them in his
suitcase last night,'' Alicia Muller May writes in September 2010, soon after
their arrival in India, adding, ''water buffalo burgers just aren't cutting it.
Oh, the simple pleasures of life....'' Another time, she alerts her friends in
Delhi to ''a good friend in Beijing who is coming to the CLO office with
beautiful pearls for sale...'' - which some see as evidence that embassy
premises were being used for commercial activities.
In one bizarre exchange in November 2012 in response to a
Huffington Post article on claims that are meat eaters being more prone to
violence and sex crimes, Alicia May says ''I'd like them to do a follow up
article on how many vegetarians rape women here every day.'' It is the
vegetarians that are doing the raping, not the meat eaters, she says, later
adding, ''applies only to Indians, not westerners.''
The domestic Indian staff for whom they professedly had
concern don't come out very well either in their corrosive social media
exchanges. In one photograph, it is pointed out that their pet dog Paco looks
bigger and in better health than their Indian gardener. Paco, says May, gets
more protein in his diet. Another times, May goes to a mosque in Delhi with two
visitors where they get a VIP tour because they are from the US embassy.
"I hate the taste but I have to be polite,'' she says
about having to drink tea at the mosque. Her friend: ''Tea? I thought it was
coffee.'' ''If it tastes like rancid mushroom, don't drink it.'' Friend (who is
evidently serving in Afghanistan): ''Everything is rancid in Afghanistan.
That's how you know it is farm fresh.''
To be sure, most of the exchanges are frivolous and typical
of social media tattle. But given the sensitive positions they occupied in the
US embassy, they are, particularly in hindsight, astonishingly offensive,
robbing the couple of their "bleeding heart" credentials that is said
to have led them to spirit out Sangeeta Richard's family from New Delhi.
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