Haneef - the view from India
Our contradictions as a people are astounding. Right now we are consumed with self-righteous indignation over how Mohamed Haneef is being treated by Australia. In his humiliation we see a sinister attack on our national pride. In the decision to scrap his visa we see the premature death of our own dreams of migration.
We want our Government to be less effete in its intervention. We think this is about racism, not terrorism.
In itself, this is a worthy (if slightly selfish) and laudable emotion. By all accounts, the 27-year-old doctor from Bangalore is being victimised and hounded. When the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, grandly declares that he is "not uncomfortable" with Haneef's continued detention, our outrage is spontaneous and entirely legitimate.
But what if Haneef had been arrested in Bangalore instead of Brisbane? What if a suicide bomber had rammed his explosives-laden car into the airport at Srinagar, instead of Glasgow?
Would we have been as concerned about whether an innocent man had been locked away? Would we have demanded transparency from our judicial process on the grounds that the evidence was sketchy? Or would we have ranted about how India is a soft state and Islam a factory for fundamentalists?
We have branded Australia as racist, but would we have called ourselves communal?
The overwhelming anger at Haneef's arrest would be a lot more reassuring were it not undermined by a distinct double standard. Turn your mind back to the 2001 attack on parliament.
In a case eerily similar to Haneef's, didn't our investigating agencies almost put an innocent man on death row? The entire case against Professor S.A.R. Geelani was based on the fact that he had some contact by telephone with the prime suspect in the days before the attack. It was left to the Supreme Court to throw out the case against the Delhi University lecturer and acquit him of all charges. I don't remember any public outrage defining the national response to the Geelani case.
If anything, most people seemed willing to believe the police and were impatient and dismissive of the do-gooder human rights activists campaigning for Geelani's release.
More recently, Tariq Dar, a Kashmiri model who made it big in Bangladesh, was locked away on charges of terrorism. Accused of playing a role in bombings in New Delhi in 2005, he spent three months in custody. Finally, the police were forced to concede in court that they did not have enough evidence to build any case against him and he was able to walk free. The judge who acquitted him was passionate in her ruling. But do you remember anyone you know sharing her anger? How can we possibly explain this hypocrisy?
According to reports, an Australian citizen, Roy Somerville, who has never met Haneef, emerged as an unlikely benefactor and offered to post the $10,000 bail because he believes in a "fair go". Can you imagine anyone in India bailing out a stranger implicated in a case of terrorism?
Of course, it is true that Australia has never known what it feels like to live in the shadow of militant violence and so its civil society may find it much easier to be benevolent. It is also true that the alleged involvement of Kafeel Ahmed, an engineer from Bangalore, in the Glasgow attack threatens several myths we have about ourselves.
India cannot pretend any more that none of its citizens fancies membership of the global jihad club. We need to examine where our secularism has failed.
But, equally, we still need to keep our democracy healthy. This means that as citizens of a modern, progressive country we should be able to demand transparency from our investigating agencies. It also means that when people are locked away on flimsy charges, we owe it to them and to ourselves to speak up, even if their politics and antecedents make us uncomfortable.
Seventy per cent of the men and women in India's prisons are still awaiting trial - that's a staggering 300,000 people. Some have spent more time in jail waiting for a court date than they would have had they been found guilty.
So, as we galvanise public opinion against the arrest of an innocent Indian in Australia, how about sparing some of that anger for the innocent Indians in India?
Barkha Dutt is the managing editor of NDTV 24x7, the leading English-language news channel in India. A longer version of this piece first appeared in the Hindustan Times.