You are a Foreign Service official working in an embassy overseas. One of your duties was to liaise with the local Indian community, one of the country's largest immigrant groups. A group of wealthy Indian immigrants wanted to build a place of worship and a school to promote their language and culture. The school was intended to act as a center for promoting and preserving Indian culture among the immigrants. The Indian community leaders went through all the legal procedures to acquire the land, got the building plans approved by the city council, and with all the approvals in place, the construction work began. A few months into the construction, the locals started complaining about noise, and slowly a campaign began against the construction of a religious structure. The local city councilors joined in and raised the issue of how Indian immigrants having their own cultural space will lead to a similar demand from other immigrant communities. And this may escalate intolerance among different ethnic groups. The local politicians filed a public lawsuit to halt the construction and demolish whatever was built. Indian community responded with their lawsuit and approached the embassy for help. They wanted the Ambassador to take up the issue with the government. Meanwhile, the Ambassador deputed you to meet the Indian community leaders to understand the issue and prepare a report. You met with the community leaders and found that the reason for local antipathy towards the Indian community was just an expression of latent racism and intolerance. You presented your observations to the Ambassador and requested him to do something as the Indians were on the right and were being victims of racist behavior. The Ambassador, in turn, replied that he would not like to get involved in local politics. The Indians were citizens of that country; they had nothing to do with India besides ethnicity. Further, a crucial Economic agreement was about to be signed between the two countries in the coming weeks, and he did not want to jeopardize the growing relations between the two countries over some local politics. You were shocked to see economics getting priority over the diaspora. (a) What are the issues involved in the above case? (b) Do you agree with the Ambassador's position of prioritizing economics over helping the diaspora? Why/why not? (c) Among Care, Consequentialism, and Duty, what do you think is the appropriate perspective to guide Indian Foreign policy? Justify.

Answered by 1 topper · CSE 2023

Syllabus: Case Studies on above issues.