The Fourth Plate

By Babu

Respected Sirs,

I am Babu, the name you might not have seen graffitied when the Burj Khalifa was built.

I am Babu, often mocked by the international press you write for — to make maybe many ten times my monthly wage — as the tallest crane operator.

I am Babu who paved those 10-star villas and homes where the Ambanis and Shah Rukh Khans vacation.

I am Babu. NO.

We are nine million Babus.

Not the babus who sit in your air-conditioned offices and embassies in Delhi pretending to be our voice.

As we say here: Kullunna Babu. We are all Babus.

Do you know why? Because here in the Middle East where we work and live, we are not divided by caste and religion and creed or whatever lines you draw on election day.

Many of us went to cheer Modi when he visited. Many of us went to see your leaders too. We hold dearly the flag hoisting in our embassies and consulates, where, of course, the richer among us are always more welcome.

When India and Pakistan battle it out on the neutral ground of the Dubai cricket stadium, we don’t boo.

After the match, whoever is the victor, we don’t jeer at the other.We just go back to the camps and live, often, in one crammed room.

What is Pakistan? What is India? What is Bangladesh? For us, they are just homes to return to, not nations to war against.

We do not understand the geopolitical complexity of your Nehruvian diplomacy. We just feel that if his five-year plans were really wondrous, we wouldn’t have had to travel the seas to find work.

And yet we don’t mock Nehru or Gandhi like many proud Indians do today. We celebrate Gandhi on the Burj.

Unlike our American counterparts who talk endlessly about India while embracing that country’s citizenship and green card, our loyalties are not divided.

We respect our motherland and we celebrate our second home.

That is not put on. It is the story of some five decades of sweat that went into nation-building.

So when a drone is intercepted over our heads and its debris causes damage, it is a part of what we built that is being undone. That hurts.

Why I write this, you may ask. Because Mr. Tharoor, you dragged us nine million Indians into this to score a brownie point.

No sir, let us look deeper. We are not here to take sides.

Because, maybe Mr. Aiyar didn’t get it fully but Dr. Tharoor did, this is not a war of binaries.

It is not Sholay where we just take on Gabbar Singh and the end credits roll.

Tharoor sir, your position is clear. You believe it is important to put long-term Indian interests first. That can mean complicity is fine — although yes, as you say, you are a peace-monger who once sat in the very institution that is now a mockery.

But let us cut to the chase. From where we sit, your intellectual sparring over the war feels deeply insulting.

When the Strait of Hormuz chokes, the men in your circles write op-eds and appear on television panels to debate the ethics of imperialism.

But out here, we look at the sky with dread. If the economy here collapses because of the war, or if the oil stops flowing, we do not get to retreat to a bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi. We lose our jobs.

Dr. Tharoor, you defended your stance as “principled pragmatism.” You write of our well-being as a reason not to antagonise Washington. For that, we are grateful.

But do not mistake our presence here as a triumph of your “responsible statecraft.”

We are here because of the systemic failure of the very state your party governed for decades.

You use us as a shield in your debate — a geopolitical statistic to justify a foreign policy stance.

But please do not do that. Do not reduce us to statistics.

When you say you are protecting us, Dr. Tharoor, remember that true protection would mean creating an India from where our next generation does not have to migrate.

But look at your own state, Kerala. Nay, Keralam. I am sure you know how many homes are occupied by just old parents, or how many more are vacant as their children and grandchildren move and settle in the US and Australia and Germany. At least a majority of we Gulfies return there.

Your debate is a symptom of a political class that views the Global South as a chessboard.

You argue over the legacy of Nehru and Gandhi, over who is the true anti-imperialist, over who has the better vocabulary to describe international law.

But your open letters don’t admit that one little thing: you are both debating whose version of India’s foreign policy  is more moral. Moral. Not real.

Because the India we helped build with our remittances too — that many right-wing Indians now mock — are the real foreign policy.

India’s real relationship with the Gulf is not written in NDTV or in Frontline magazine by elite intellectuals.

It is written in the hard-earned money we remit.

The next time you wish to discuss the morality of India’s foreign policy, think not of moral amnesia, but the systemic amnesia and failures that prompted our migrations.

And do something to fix it.

In short, Annanmaare, chumma podo rombha pesathe.