We all have heard the saying “by hook or by crook” and know it as “by any means”. There are two or three origin stories of the phrase, but the best one I like is the vow of Oliver Cromwell, an English general in the early 1600s, to take over Waterford in Ireland either by the path of Hook Head, Wexford, which is to the east of the Waterford, or by a nearby village of Crook, west of the Waterford. General Cromwell’s pledge to this day signifies the path of right or wrong, good or bad.
Indian presence globally as CEOs, businessmen and top officials of other countries has only magnified in the past two decades. Let us say they have chosen Cromwell’s hook path. But what we haven’t noticed is that some Indians are also sharing the spotlight with top global defaulters, one with crooked paths.
Generally, overseas Indians are seen as hard-working, harmless head-nodding IT nerds. But in the past decade, we hear more and more Indian names among global defaulters with white-collar crimes. The stereotypical Hollywood Indian roles wouldn’t allow an Indian character to be shown anywhere near a mobster or a lawless citizen movie plot, but I doubt there could be an upcoming movie with Ocean’s Eleven-like plot and an Indian as a lead character.
Indians like Sanjay Shah, an unemployed trader who made 700 million dollars doing CUM-Ex trades, which are some kind of false tax refunds on dividends. Eventually, Denmark claimed 2 billion dollars of fraud against their taxpayers by Sanjay. Another man named Navinder Singh Sarao, a U.K.-based trader, was arrested for his alleged role in the flash crash of the 2010 U.S. derivatives market. And the likes of Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya have also created headlines in many big media houses of the world. All these characters will be faultless for the proposed movie plot.
With 32 million Indians or NRIs living outside India and 2.5 million Indians migrating to foreign nations every year, it’s very important how the people of the world perceive us as a community. Indians could face backlash from how we represent our community. Many already dread Indians as job-taking immigrants and now they would be defamed as tax-evading, lawless immigrants without whom their country would be better off.
Do we remember what Jeff Bezos said about Indians? “I predict that the 21st century is going to be the Indian century,” the world’s third-richest man Jeff Bezos said in January 2020. We ought to be taking over the world either by hook or by crook.
deolipratik@gmail.com
