The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

40 MAY 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FOCUS N ewly arrived in the political section at U.S. Embassy New Delhi, I soon set off for Punjab in northern India for my first official visit outside the capital. As a reporting officer, I was tasked to better understand the political and economic situation ahead of assembly elections in a state crippled by corruption, drug abuse and a growing agricultural crisis. I planned to meet with a wide range of locals, from state officials and politicians to journalists, businessmen and civil society activists. One of my first meetings was with one of the Punjab chief min- ister’s principal advisers, a six-foot-tall man in his 50s with the tra- ditional Sikh turban—a long piece of white cloth neatly wrapped around his head with his beard coiled up into the headpiece. Wearing a gray pantsuit and with my hair tied back, I reached out my hand, ready for business. After quickly disposing of the req- Sandya Das currently serves in the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs at the State Department. She previously served as a political officer in New Delhi. She has also served in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration; as a line officer in the Executive Secretariat; and in Juba and Mumbai. An Indian American FSO learns to navigate the rocky waters of ethnic and gender identity while serving in India. BY SANDYA DAS ON PROFESSIONAL DIPLOMATS: LEADERSHIP & LESSONS uisite greetings, he got right down to his first pressing questions: “Where is your family from? Are you traveling here alone?” I was taken aback: What on earth does this have to do with anything? I could feel my cheeks flush as I faltered with a response, beginning to suspect that he viewed me as a young, impressionable Indian woman rather than as a U.S. diplomat to be taken seriously. The interaction reanimated many unflattering biases I had about Indian men and their treatment of women that I had developed growing up and through the media. And I was dead certain of one thing: my fair-skinned male colleagues were not facing similar lines of questioning. b Like other American children born to immigrant parents, I went regularly on family trips back to my parents’ birthplace in Kerala to visit relatives. These trips back felt routine, schlepping from one relative’s house to the next, eating sumptuous meals while aunties affectionately pulled at my cheeks. My twin brother and I would sit glued to our portable Gameboys and comic books, competing over who had the most mosquito bites. But several years later, when I traveled by myself as a high school student to the remote Himalayan foothills of Ladakh, it was as if I were visiting my motherland for the first time. Landing at a remote Buddhist monastery in India’s northernmost state of Dual Identity andDiplomacy