Darfur diary: Indian perspective

Meena Bhandari is an Indian development worker who recently spent time working in refugee camps in Darfur.

Here she gives her personal perspective on Sudan and the growing Indian economic and cultural influence there.

Around 50,000 people live in Abu Shouk camp in North Darfur

Imagine the slums of Mumbai - tightly packed shacks patch-worked together with scraps of old saris and woven plastic sacking.

People huddling over cooking pots, the smell of wood burning in the cooling evening air, thick with dust, smoke, and prayers.

Chaotic interlocked human stories all set against the backdrop of a hand-to-mouth existence.

Imagine you had been forcibly displaced by 'scorched earth' tactics; your land and home burned and your well destroyed.

Imagine being governed by fear, dictated by men with guns. Imagine tears and heartache. Imagine Darfur.

Silent witness

Everyone in the numerous camps - the cities under siege - has a story to tell. Memories of the horrors are painfully fresh.

Maryam in Abu Shouk camp in North Darfur stands framed against piles of solid waste at the edge of the roadside. Her loud beaming voice is silenced when asked about her journey here.

Everyone has a story to tell and the horrors experienced are painfully fresh

She tells her story only with her eyes and signs. Her fingers draw up to form a shooting gun, then they turn to form legs running, running on and on.

Her hands then sweep up together to form a prayer and come charging down signifying an abrupt end to a tragic story. Finally she raises her finger to her mouth to signal her own silence.

This silent, eerily unspoken story could be repeated thousands of times, because this is what Janjaweed militias have done and continue to do across Darfur.

Indeed the world is a silent witness too, like Maryam, as this ongoing emergency perpetuates itself like a recurring nightmare.

The Indian connection

Sudan is familiar to Indians who, like the Chinese, Pakistanis and Malaysians, have traded with it for years.

The Chinese are leading the way - you see them at the airports dressed in bright orange overalls with green rubber boots - like larger than life action men poised to construct, dig and drill at the call.

Whole swathes of North Darfur are now beyond reach for people wanting to return to their land

Indians have been doing what they do best - trading, and not just in goods. Sudan's love for India and Indian products is evident everywhere.

Dabur oil, soaps and other toiletries are big and everyone discusses the sweet scent of sandalwood.

Thursday and Saturday nights are Bollywood movie nights on television. Both Hindi music and films are incredibly popular for their family tales and romanticism.

In the past three years India's trade with Sudan has increased 100%.

India and its economic might, and even its softer cultural pull, is becoming important here. This means that India's leverage for political diplomacy is also growing - a leverage that India has so far not exploited for the people of Darfur.

Trading with a country without any social responsibility, and turning a convenient blind eye to a conflict of gargantuan proportions, does not bode well for the emerging economic and political giants of China and India.

But, while there has recently been a chorus of international disappointment that China is not pulling its economic weight in Sudan, India too cannot be excluded, for its hands are very much in the honey pot.