Deaths in an alien land and India’s response

What drives Indians—men from Punjab, Himachal, Bihar and Bengal—to risk their lives in distant, arid, bomb-haunted deserts? Mind you, it’s not for joining war or for aid work that they land up in extreme conflict zones but in pursuit of basic livelihood, a few extra bucks. That’s just a wee better than what the colonial masters made their ancestors do, transporting India’s poor to unknown shores as indentured labour. Now, even with the element of choice involved, the destinations are no more comforting.

It also raises a related question: does the democratic nation-state have a right to stop its citizens from risking their lives for livelihood in places like Iraq, a country that its own citizens routinely flee? Especially since it cannot do too much for its people caught in combat.

For India, having to formally accept that the 39 Indians held hostage in Mosul, Iraq, have been confirmed killed by the diabolical ISIS is a moment of shame. For the hapless families living in hope, it’s a double tragedy. Way back on 19 June 2014, TNIE was the first to report that the Indians were feared to have been murdered, after talking to all sides concerned in Iraq, the Indian establishment, the hiring agency, Bangladeshi survivors and the eyewitness.

What took the government so long to ascertain their deaths? Mosul, no doubt, had to be freed from ISIS for New Delhi to access dependable information. The external affairs minister’s assertion in Parliament that a government could not have gone by hearsay but needed ‘’substantive proof’’ in the form of DNA tests before declaring the deaths is understandable. She also insisted she was keeping her commitment by informing Parliament first.

But the question remains whether it should have been handled differently, the families informed simultaneously? Should an MEA official have gathered the families together to gently break the news, when their hopes had been kept alive? Since Sushma Swaraj has brought an exemplary human touch to the running of the foreign office, the expectations were more.