Opinion | Coronavirus: this pandemic is revealing how we’ve betrayed our global values
- Natasha Khullar Relph fled for Britain before India shut itself away from the world
- A generation promised a connected planet now questions their place on it as governments erode hard-won freedoms
The call came on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-March. It was a friend from one of the European embassies in New Delhi, where we lived. State governments were quietly planning to round up foreigners, he said, and put them in indefinite quarantine or on planes back home. Embassies were making arrangements to fly out citizens. You should make plans for your family, too.
After all, most cases diagnosed then were tourists. Friends told stories of being spat on and having street vendors shout “corona foreigners” at them. Large groups of tourists were being thrown out of their hotels; others were being held in quarantine despite showing no symptoms.
Even though I am an Indian citizen, my husband and son are British nationals who hold OCI cards. This nationalistic view was not new to us. Last year, for the first time in as long as we’ve been travelling to and from India, the immigration officer looked with disdain at my husband as he issued a not-so-subtle threat. “Journalist, huh?” His eyebrows were raised. “Don’t do journalism here. You can do anything in India. But you can’t do journalism. Understand?”
