India is suffering not because it’s a “developing” and “third world nation,” and while we’re here, can we stop using those types of terms? Lest we forget, prior to colonial rule, India was considered one of the world’s “wealthiest” nations (that was of course) before the Brits invaded and plundered practically everything. From cotton, to spices to gold and jewels. To even our languages. Britain drained $45 trillion from India in their 200 years of imperial rule. What a negligible island could do to a vast nation tells you how nefarious avarice is.
No, India is the epicenter of the virus for similar reasons that America was the epicenter of the virus. Systemic inequities, nationalist/protectionist agenda, epic failure of governance. America, the world’s supposed “super-power,” lost over a half a million people for similar (though not identical) reasons. Like America, and any country, India isn’t unblemished either but what India isn’t is “backward,” or “inferior,” let’s dispose of that rhetoric. It’s patronizing, it’s colonizing.
While vaccine apartheid and unequal access to healthcare for the poorest and lowest of classes and castes exists, there are so many in India on the frontlines, let’s not erase them in our western egoism, in our western ethnocentrism. Let’s not erase with our tainted gaze. Let’s also not put down the poor. In catastrophic times, it’s perennially those at the peripheries of society that are struck the hardest, in them we should see ourselves, not "others."
So while we watch bodies engulfed by fire, and bodies awaiting cremation as they lie in deathless lines all across India, let’s not forget the significance that every single one of these pyres symbolize, an entire life lived, one that loved and was loved. Let’s consume not just pictures of despair and death but also lingering life. And let’s vet who we give to, but let’s still give (avoid orgs with nationalist ties).