“Focus on US Problems”: Democrats’ Rubio Letter on India Protests Draws Fire Ahead of Mumbai Visit

Six Democratic members of Congress have written to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asking him to confront India over protests, policing and electoral rolls. The timing and the target tell you a lot. Rubio is due to meet External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in Mumbai next week, and a letter sent days before he lands is aimed at an audience as much as at a diplomat. It is a message to Washington’s domestic constituencies, with India as the backdrop.

It is a letter from one party, not from America. The six signatories are Pramila Jayapal, James McGovern, Rashida Tlaib, Chuy Garcia, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Ilhan Omar. They are opposition members writing to an administration they oppose. Congressional letters carry no force, and this one speaks for a faction.

Their credibility problem is obvious. America’s own debates over protest policing, voting access and the treatment of demonstrators have run for years, and members of Congress do not hold the moral high ground on them. A country still arguing about these questions at home is poorly placed to hand out grades abroad. Even within the Democratic camp, a former Biden adviser, Ajay Jain Bhutoria, told Jayapal to focus on US problems. When critics on your own side say that, the objection has some force.

Student protests, a cancelled medical entrance exam and the electoral roll revision are all live questions, and India’s courts, press, opposition parties and voters are working through them in public. The Election Commission’s revision is being contested openly. That process is the proper place for these disputes, and an American letter adds nothing to it.

Ambassador Vinay Mohan Kwatra called Jayapal’s earlier remarks unacceptable interference in India’s internal affairs. Indian reports say the lawmakers carried on regardless. A partner that is told once that the line has been crossed, and then crosses it again, is showing disregard for the relationship.

In June, Jaishankar told Rubio directly that India strongly protested US Navy attacks in the Gulf that killed three Indian mariners. Rubio’s reply was that violations of the Hormuz blockade would not be tolerated. India did not enjoy a sympathetic hearing then. It is fair to ask why American lawmakers expect India to welcome their concern now.

A partnership between two large democracies works when each treats the other as a sovereign equal. India does not write letters to the US Secretary of State about American domestic controversies. It expects the same restraint in return.

The lawmakers say the right to protest and to vote is a shared democratic value. They also raise reports that Indian missions surveilled and intimidated protesters inside the United States, which they argue is conduct on American soil and therefore not purely an internal Indian matter. Supporters of the letter add that a country’s own flaws do not disqualify others from raising human rights concerns. By that logic, if hypocrisy barred criticism, nobody could say anything about anyone. They also note that Indian officials regularly comment on the treatment of Indians and Indian-origin people abroad.