Scindia’s rough encounter with Romanian official was awfully layered
by Dr. Piyush Mathur
Since March 3, a 43-second long video clip involving India’s Minister of Civil Aviation, Jyotiraditya Scindia, has been circulating through the cyberspace. In the clip, a European man—later identified by The Quint as Mihai Anghel, the Mayor of the Romanian town of Snagov—can be perceived rudely interrupting Scindia, who in turn, sternly tells him to back off. Except that Anghel reacts to Scindia’s command by giving him an additional piece of his mind while aggressively approaching him and coming very close to the yellow line on the floor that appears to mark out the Indian minister’s secure space. One could take a look at this viral video clip here: https://twitter.com/OSINT_Insider/status/1499353203745431555
This unsavoury incident happened at a Romanian relief camp during Scindia’s briefing of Indian escapees from the war-ravaged Ukraine. He was one of the four ministers that India had sent to different parts of Europe to ensure the escapees’ safe return to their homeland. This relief camp was apparently being managed by Anghel—who makes a point of asserting that fact to Scindia and other people captured in the clip.
The camp would have come up only a few days prior to this encounter—given that the war had started on February 22, and the clip had begun to circulate on March 3. While Romania would have been looking after a couple more thousands of Indians escaping from Ukraine since that day, there had been nothing to suggest all along that these escapees had been wanting to stay on in Romania as illegal residents or asylees (just in case that were the biggest sin you could ever commit)—or that India’s government had no plans to bring them home. In other words, the sudden influx of Indian escapees from Ukraine into Romania was not of a huge magnitude—in the grand scheme of things anyway—and nor was there any indication that this specific influx was going to be a long-term problem for Romania.
Against that backdrop, Anghel’s rude grandstanding to Scindia—captured in the clip—is peculiar, to say the least; at any rate, it does not adhere to any diplomatic standards, given that Scindia, as a foreign government’s minister, ranks way higher than a mayor. The question, then, that arises is this: What led Anghel to act the way he did toward Scindia? But a similar question might as well be this: What made a mayor feel empowered to act the way he did, as captured in the video, toward another sovereign state’s federal minister?
Would Anghel have acted the same way if the man who had come to facilitate these refugees—and if these refugees themselves—were from the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, or some European Union (EU) member state? Contrariwise, when was the last time an Indian mayor acted this way toward a foreign government’s elected representative—no matter what the latter’s rank or style of functioning? For that matter, one cannot think of a single such incident from around the world in which the mayor of a country may have publicly confronted a foreign government’s elected representative on a state visit the way Anghel did Scindia during the latter’s address to his own citizens fleeing a war.
Those sorts of curiosities and associated details are the tip of a minuscule political iceberg that has already drifted off into the cyberspace—and would keep shocking netizens, particularly from India, for a long time. The point is, there is a broad and deep, even if an elusive, backdrop to those 45 seconds of drama that deserves to be grasped and highlighted. That aside, there is, oddly enough, some genuine utility to that drama that deserves to be appreciated—and Anghel most certainly felt inspired by a dimension of that utility before proceeding to confront Scindia the way he did.
In his comments to The Quint, Anghel reveals that he had no clue at the time of the incident who Scindia was; The Quint’s report also tells us that Scindia, too, was told only later, albeit on the spot, who Anghel was (though Anghel’s own assertion to him that he was the one who had been taking care of the Indian refugees from the war in Ukraine would have given Scindia a hint—but surely that had to have come a bit too late, which is obvious from the clip). Well, on this count, Romania and India share the blame equally for failing to keep each other’s authorities duly briefed. But what about the rest?
Anghel has given a few statements to The Quint, and one of them is this (and no matter how well-intentioned even this one may have been to him, it hardly presents him in any more positive light than his confrontation of Scindia itself):
I wasn't angry like a lot of people think. I lost my cool because I was sad for those kids. I heard so much about what they went through at the border and they shouldn't be used for some PR shoot. I didn't know that he was the Aviation Minister. I would have done the same if I knew. I was compelled to call his behaviour out. You can't come to my country, my home, and disrespect us.
To start with, one can see in the clip that it is Anghel who starts out angry—which also happens to be a single word for the following three words: ‘losing one’s cool’ (If you don’t trust me, you can check the dictionary.) Now, one can get angry justifiably—but Anghel’s citation of his feeling ‘sad for those kids’ (and thus losing his cool) transforms in that same statement into his having felt that the Romanians (perhaps just himself?) had been disrespected by Scindia (but that is of course not the case). Scindia didn’t insult any Romanian in the clip or outside it: The latter would have made news, irrespective of the Anghel incident. Scindia only had to be firm with this particular man, Anghel, that is—who, as a local, was unknown to Scindia—after he abruptly interrupted his address to the Indian refugees and began to approach him as if he was going to push him or something.
One can totally understand if Anghel had become impatient with Scindia’s failing to come straight to the specifics that Anghel thought mattered most to the Indian escapees in his relief camp—but the right and stately way to go about it would have been this:
Excuse me, sir! Sorry to interrupt you—but I am the mayor of this town and have been taking care of these people here. Could you tell us exactly when these people would be able to leave? It would help us a lot if you could announce that information right now.
Chances are that Scindia would have obliged him—or offered an apology for not having that information with him at the time.
Instead of doing that, Anghel tried to turn what he claims was Scindia’s public relations stunt into something eerily similar for himself—for of course he was well aware, as one of his statements to The Quint reveals, that Scindia had come to the camp with something like a camera crew. Meanwhile, Anghel’s insistence in the clip that Scindia tell the sheltered when they are to depart just as well reflects his lack of patience with hosting these unwanted guests rather than an innocent concern for them—and if this dimension of his conduct is lost on him, then maybe he needs to learn a thing or two about public-cum-international relations himself.
The encounter
Let us take a look below at the actual words that were exchanged, inside that clip, between these two gentlemen. As one could see in the clip, Scindia, wearing a COVID-19 mask, is all but encircled by a bunch of Indians—the escapees from Ukraine—and has his security, staff and perhaps (given Anghel’s allegation) some camera crew (behind him or somewhere else in the room). The clip leaves out what Scindia had just said to the Indian citizens that had escaped the war: It starts out with Anghel’s interrupting Scindia after listening to that bit.
Here is how their interaction, all of which was in English, goes—and this is the most accurate transcript that you might find on the Internet (the other ones available on the Internet tend to have minor errors); what you see in the brackets are my insertions for clarity:
Scindia, masked and on the left, is confronted by Anghel, unmasked and on the right. Image Source: @SALMANNIZAMI_
Anghel: ‘Talk about this kind of guys, not those. Not…’
Scindia: ‘Let me decide what I am going to speak of.’
Anghel: ‘Please, please, explain to them when they leave [for] home.’
Scindia: ‘No, no, hold on! Let me tell…Let me tell them what I had to tell them. Kindly stand back.’ [Indecipherable] ‘Kindly stand back.’
Anghel: ‘Hey, hey, hey!’
Scindia [to the Indians]: ‘So that’s the arrangement.’
Anghel: ‘I provide shelter here. I provide food…’ [Takes around four aggressive steps toward Scindia, who is now within 2 meters of him; and points his forefinger at him.]
Scindia: ‘I understand.’
Anghel: ‘…all this time. Not you. Explain to them when they leave [for] home.’ [The Indian refugees clap for him.]
Scindia [to Anghel]: ‘I understand. I understand. Thank you very much!’ [to the Indians]: ‘So, that’s the plan—as far as all of us moving out is concerned. OK? So, one by one we will move out from every shelter. Also, let me place on record just now my thanks to the Romanian authorities.’
What prompted Anghel to interrupt Scindia is not in the clip—but it is sort of rumoured about aplenty alongside journalistic and social-media uploads of this clip; and these rumours (including Anghel’s own subsequent statements on this incident) won’t be inconsistent with how Narendra Modi’s government had turned this whole transportation of Indian escapees from areas surrounding Ukraine into an advertising blitz for itself. The upshot of these rumours is that Scindia—under directions from Modi or those close to him—had front-loaded his briefing to the Indians with credits to his own government and, specifically, its leader, Modi as well as himself. There are lots of unconfirmed, yet credible, reports in India’s media that all the four ministers and their respective staffs sent on these airlift missions (touted in India as evacuation operations) had been asked to magnify the significance of Modi’s efforts to rescue the Indian escapees.
But even if Scindia had been following Modi’s instructions to advertise Modi, his government, and himself as its minister, it would have yet been an internal matter for India; and, in any case, as mentioned earlier, Anghel could have been more stately about showing his discomfort with it. Moreover, while Indian political critics have taken Modi government to task for their self-complimenting media blitz regarding the Indians’ ‘evacuation’ from Ukraine—contrasting it from previous, far quieter, larger evacuations by other Indian governments—they seem to be blind to the fact that the contemporary, post-COVID mass communication scenario is a far cry from before. In contemporary times, individuals stuck in emergency situations—such as that we continue to have in Ukraine—can yet post cries for help or complaints against governments on the social media, which has all manner of global political authorities and observers active on it. This mass communication scenario puts pressure on national governments—especially of large polities—to toot their own horns through whatever channels possible.
Of course, Modi has been big on exceedingly self-centred self-advertising all through his lifelong political career that far antedates the Age of the Internet; that trait of his personality, however, does not entirely explain why a present-day government, no matter what its territory, would feel the need to tell the world on a minute-by-minute basis what it is doing for its people caught up in some offshore crisis. Modi sure feels the need to impress international observers as much as resident and non-resident Indians; but in the case of Ukraine, it would not have been all about impressing, per se. Indian people needed reassurances regarding their relatives stranded in Ukraine; through his ministers and otherwise, he ventured to provide them that non-stop—but he did that in the form of repetitive and exaggerated compliments to himself as the rescuer, and by keeping from fellow Indians the truth about the efforts of their previous governments.
Back to Romania
Coming back to the Romanian camp, as far as the Indian escapees from Ukraine were concerned, the sheer presence of Scindia in their midst would have been assurance enough for them that they were about to go home—never mind their anger at the Indian government’s lack of alacrity, professionalism, and transparent communication: a lack that they would have (sadly) expected for the most part, given how India’s government usually works. Take a look, for instance, at how an Indian visa officer at the consulate in New York was caught on camera shouting at a visa applicant: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/viral-video-officer-at-indian-consulate-in-new-york-loses-cool-screams-at-visa-applicant/videoshow/88023516.cms; here is another phone footage of how a passport officer verbally abused and physically attacked a fellow Indian who wanted to get his passport renewed, inside India, based on digital documentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioznh-OqvCU . These incidents are very much the norm across India’s government offices, but pointedly so with those connected with the Ministry of External Affairs—which is utterly pathetic in taking care of the country’s citizens.
As to the specific date of Indian refugees’ departure from the Romanian camp, that must have been the paramount concern for Romania as it had been hosting them without help from India (as Anghel would reiterate in a subsequent interview to The Wire). So, for Anghel to assert to The Quint that he was merely representing the Indian refugees’ pressing concerns when he confronted Scindia is not exactly credible. A small number of Indians inside the relief camp did clap Anghel (because he had made the arrangements for them on behalf of Romania, and had apparently stuck out for them in front of their own minister); but to the vast majority of Indians back home, what he did to Scindia (one of their major national representatives) would have been insulting, even though India’s liberal Anglophone media would not want to acknowledge that part somehow (or the part discussed right below).
To come to terms with this small but unpleasant episode and its repercussions, one also needs to understand the fact that the EU is negatively perceived by most people located outside it for its strict borders (even as non-EU polities—including Modi’s India—increasingly wish to imitate EU on that count for the sake of appearing modern and strong, aside for the fear of cross-border terrorism). To be sure, Romania itself has attracted scant negative attention in reference to its territorial policies toward forced migrants, asylum seekers, and trauma escapees—before or during the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the story, however, is very different otherwise in regard to EU (and even Europe as a whole), with a relatively recent exception of Germany (which will continue to bear for a while the distinctive stamp of its former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s benevolent legacy).
During the ongoing Russian invasion itself, there have been lots of allegations of racism against the Ukrainian authorities, who prioritized the movements and escape of the fleeing Ukrainian citizens over others, especially those with black and brown skins. A typical Indian viewer of the clip involving Anghel’s confrontation of Scindia would not distinguish between Romanians and Ukrainians—who are both White/European to the Indian—and a public act of impertinence directed against an Indian leader inside a European relief camp would seem to be in continuum with any other act of racism directed against non-White foreigners. Against this backdrop, Anghel’s impatience regarding the Indian refugees’ date of departure would simply reflect, rightly or wrongly, to most Indians back home the inhospitality of Romania/Europe, no matter how they feel personally about Scindia or the Government of India (or how the sheltered Indians themselves may have felt about Anghel and Romania inside that relief camp).
When some of the sheltered Indians clapped Anghel, they did not necessarily clap against Scindia; they likelier rose to share, as Indians, the responsibility for recognizing Anghel’s efforts when their minister was struggling to adjust to this unexpected outburst from a man he did not know (and whose ignorance and insensitivity in this regard would have been sensed by the Indians). As onlookers, Indians also generally tend to calm down, rather than confront, an aggressor within a given context by giving him what they perceive (s)he wants at the most instinctual level—irrespective of whether (s)he had been kind to them previously or not: One cannot rule out the Indians’ reflexive clapping for Anghel as a part of that tendency, too, just the same.
By clapping Anghel, the Indians gave him instant recognition for his efforts in their regard—recognition that was inadvertently denied him by Scindia in the first instance. In the second instance, though, Scindia has realised his ‘lapse’ precisely in regard to his not having thanked Romania yet—rather than in regard to the Indian side’s failure to give an exact date of exist for the sheltered and similar inefficiencies—and he thus hurriedly ended his address, as captured within the clip, by thanking ‘the Romanian authorities’! The exact date for the exit of those sheltered remained a mystery all the way to the end of that clip, which coincides with the end of Scindia’s address.
But Anghel has things going for him, too
But of course there is a wicked utility to Anghel’s aggression toward Scindia—and this is the part that Anghel intuits well, and would like to be written up about, perhaps. Indians are not at all used to seeing their ministers or even bureaucrats being confronted—be it inside or outside the country—the way Anghel confronted Scindia; freak incidents of violence against political authorities do occur, of course—but they tend to occur mostly during electoral campaigns, via political rivalries, or during large-scale public gatherings that inevitable have undercurrents of discontent and frustration. In small gatherings or meetings—such as what was happening at Anghel’s relief camp—India’s ministers command awe and respect among fellow Indians (even when a minister is not admired, which is not unusual).
But, Scindia in fact would appear to be particularly awe-inspiring to fellow Indians because they know that he comes from an erstwhile ruling dynasty of the Gwalior State and commands a tremendous inheritance; on top of that, he has a piece of the most elite education that the world could afford. In Hindi, Scindia is an absolutely superlative speaker; and, from close quarters inside the local contexts of India, his physical presence is reported to be magnificent. But it is also reported that Scindia—while a mass leader by inheritance—does not connect with ordinary constituents on a heart-to-heart basis; carries an air about him; and is not half as generous as his late father (who was also a Minister of Civil Aviation before his tragic death in a private aircraft accident in 2001).
But that is far from all. Scindia, being a scion of an erstwhile royal dynasty, evokes obeisance toward him from the descendants of those his ancestors had once ruled; these descendants overlap with his political constituents to a great extent in many rural parts of central India. These people—even though they might be decades older than him—go overboard in publicly displaying their reverence for him, by touching his feet, prostrating to him, and so forth; in these types of activities, they are joined in, as it were, by local and regional political aspirants looking for Scindia’s blessings so that they could move upward politically. Scindia has not discouraged this culture of sycophancy and near-servile reverence from his rural constituents and politically aspiring followers—but he is far, far from alone among Indian politicians in failing to discourage or prohibit it: Indeed, many of them expect (and thus subtly promote) these types of practices from their fellow countrymen.
So, when Anghel—who knew nothing of Scindia’s status inside India—rudely confronted Scindia in front of other Indians (most of them considerably younger, as students, than both), he crossed a few lines too many within seconds! While Scindia—who is used to being treated with awe and obeisance among his own regional constituents, lower-level government functionaries, and many Indians generally—himself seems a bit unnerved by Anghel’s street-fighting spirit, one can easily imagine how peculiar it must have been for the younger Indians inside the camp to watch their encounter from close quarters (and how peculiar it must be for Indians generally to watch it as a video clip while it continues to circulate). While impertinence and a selective type of arrogance would yet be pinned on Anghel by a lot of Indians and non-Whites generally, they would also have to credit him, if they were to be fair, for giving them a glimpse into a type of frankness that the high and the mighty of the Indian political scene, at least, won’t afford them.
Perhaps Scindia himself came back from Anghel’s camp with some sharpened humility: Around 23 days after the clip began to circulate, he publicly touched the feet of a sanitation worker in Gwalior. Or maybe Scindia, after his return from the camp, had simply doubled down on his own (self-interested) reverence toward Modi by adopting the feet-touching component of his political playbook—given that Modi has publicly touched the feet of several commoners that he personally had come to admire as well as some notables writ large. Either way, Scindia returned with the gift of an unsettling memory from Romania—and this gift would stay in his mental space as much as the cyberspace until the end of his days.
Background material
ANI (March 26, 2022) ‘Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia touches feet of woman sweeper to take her blessings’ (Downloaded from the following URL on April 1, 2022: https://www.aninews.in/news/national/general-news/union-minister-jyotiraditya-scindia-touches-feet-of-woman-sweeper-to-take-her-blessings20220326231605/)
Chiriac, Marian (January 19, 2016 ) ‘Wary Romanians Await First Refugees from EU Quota’ BalkanInsight (Downloaded on April 1, 2022 from the following URL: https://balkaninsight.com/2016/01/19/romania-under-increasing-pressure-from-refugees-01-18-2016/)
Menghani, Saahil Murli (March 9, 2022) ‘Watch: Romanian Mayor Calls Scindia's Conduct Rude, 'Presence Made No Difference in Rescue Process' (Downloaded on April 1, 2022 from the following URL: https://thewire.in/diplomacy/watch-romanian-mayor-calls-scindias-conduct-rude-presence-made-no-difference-in-rescue-process)
Parent, Deepa (March 6, 2022) ‘“He Had an Arrogant Tone”: Romanian Mayor on Row With Scindia Over Evacuation’ (Downloaded on April 1, 2022 from the following URL: https://www.thequint.com/news/world/romanian-mayor-mihai-anghel-interview-verbal-spat-with-aviation-minister-jyotiraditya-scindia#read-more)
Wire, The (March 7, 2022) ‘Scindia Was Making a 'PR Speech', Not Comforting Students Who Escaped Ukraine: Romanian Mayor’ (Downloaded on April 1, 2022 from the following URL: https://thewire.in/world/scindia-was-making-a-pr-speech-not-comforting-students-who-escaped-ukraine-romanian-mayor)
Dr. Piyush Mathur is a transdisciplinary analyst. One of his short publications is ‘Understanding post-Covid-19 global politics: A tentative theoretical framework’ (November 2020), which can be freely accessed by clicking here. You may also check out his book, Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017). If you wish to contact him, send a message to Thoughtfox here.