New Delhi: Indian Foreign Service officer Devyani Khobragade, who hit the headlines in 2013 following charges of fraudulently underpaying her domestic help and was subsequently repatriated to India by the United States, has recently released a children’s book titled The Adventures of Young Ambedkar.
Born into a Dalit family in Maharashtra, Devyani says that the book’s purpose is to educate her daughters (Amaya and Shaira) about the struggles of the Scheduled Caste community.
The book focuses on Dalit icon B.R. Ambedkar’s journey as a young child and how he comes to realise what it means to be identified as a member of the community.
Devyani narrates an incident in the book when ‘Bhim’ (Ambedkar) is disallowed by a class attendant from sitting with his friends who belong to upper caste communities. A young Bhim is also asked to bring his own “gunny mat” which he has to take home each day because the attendant doesn’t want to “get polluted” by it while cleaning the classroom.
“Young Bhim was confused. He wasn’t allowed to sit with his classmates, whose mats were spread across the room. He did not understand why he was being separated from the others in class. He felt sad and scared. School wasn’t as much fun as he had imagined it would be,” narrates the author.
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Visa fraud and arrest
In December 2013, Devyani, then a senior diplomat at the Indian consulate in New York, was charged of lying about payment of minimum wages to her Indian domestic help in the latter’s visa form.
Devyani was subsequently arrested and strip-searched, which caused a huge outrage in India. The then UPA government demanded an apology from the US authorities for the humiliation Devyani had to undergo.
In a email published at the time, she had said: “I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, in a holdup with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity.”
Deteriorating India-US relations
Devyani’s arrest and subsequent departure to India in January 2014 had set off one of the worst India-US relations at the time. While India had responded to her arrest by removing extra-security barriers from outside the US embassy in New Delhi, America blocked the parking lots outside the Indian embassy in Washington DC.
As Devyani arrived from the US, she was greeted by members of the Republican Party of India with their party flags, balloons and bouquets. They also chanted slogans such as “long live Devyani Khobragade, long Live India” and “down with America, down with Barack Obama”.
Former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, later wrote in his autobiography that the arrest and strip search of the Indian diplomat could have been avoided.
Violation of passport rules
Devyani’s father Uttam Khobragade was also an IAS officer of the 1984 batch. He was involved in the Adarsh Housing Society scam and charged under sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Indian Penal Code in 2017.
It was also reported at the time that the CBI was likely to file a case against both Devyani and her father for allegedly acquiring a flat on the basis of a false affidavit.
No stranger to controversy, Devyani was later also involved in another case in March 2014. This time it was about her daughters and their passports.
Her two daughters had held both Indian and American passports.
Devyani was found guilty of “serious misconduct” as she had applied for foreign passports for her daughters without taking clearance from the Indian government. The Ministry of External Affairs had also revoked her children’s passports.
In response to this, the diplomat had filed a petition in the Delhi High Court arguing that it was permissible for her children, who were both under 18 years of age, to retain both Indian and US passports.
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