wooEveryone has heard the saying “hook or crook” and know it as “either way”. The phrase has two or three origin stories, but the one I like best is Oliver Cromwell, in the early 1600s, for taking Waterford in Ireland by way of Hook Head, Wexford, which is east of Waterford, or Waterford. From the nearby village of Crook, west of K. General Cromwell’s vows to this day reflect the path of right or wrong, good or evil.
The Indian presence globally in the form of CEOs, businessmen and top executives from other countries has only grown over the past two decades. Suppose he chose Cromwell’s hook path. But what we haven’t seen is that some Indians are sharing the spotlight with top global defaulters, one of the crooked ones.
Generally, the diaspora is seen as hard-working, harmless nodded IT nerds. But over the past decade, we hear more and more Indian names among global defaulters with white-collar crimes. Conservative Hollywood Indian roles don’t allow an Indian character to be shown anywhere near the plot of a dacoit or a lawless civilian movie, but I doubt there might be an upcoming film Ocean’s Eleven-like the plot and as an Indian main character.
Indians like Sanjay Shah, an unemployed businessman who made $700 million trading CUM-Ex, which is some sort of false tax refund on dividends. Eventually, Denmark filed a $2 billion fraud claim by Sanjay against its taxpayers. Another man named Navinder Singh Sarao, a UK-based trader, was arrested for his alleged role in the 2010 US derivatives market crash. And people like Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya have also made headlines in many big media houses of the world. All these characters would be flawless for the proposed movie plot.
With 32 million Indians or NRIs living outside India and 2.5 million Indians migrating to foreign countries every year, it is very important how the people of the world see us as a community. Indians may face backlash from how we represent our community. Many already fear Indians as job-seeking immigrants and will now be stigmatized as tax-evading, lawless immigrants, without whom their country would be better off.
Do we remember what Jeff Bezos said about Indians? Jeff Bezos, the world’s third richest man, said in January 2020, “I predict that the 21st century will be the Indian century.”
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