This is what he may be being rewarded for:abhishek_sharma wrote:Mr. Kapil Sibal Union Minister for Human Resource Development to get Prestigious US Award
http://www.indianembassy.org/newsite/pr ... /May/1.asp
I was wondering where did "लगाम" come from.. Now I know, it is translation of 'Halter' (per google)the US is eyeing a closer linkage with the Indian space programme, something that New Delhi has already suggested to Washington. In February, Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chief K Radhakrishnan and K R Sridhara Murthi, MD of Isro’s marketing arm, Antrix, met senior Boeing executives and suggested closer ties. Boeing is the OEM of the space shuttle. Senior Indian leaders and diplomats, including Ambassador to the US, Meera Shankar, have persistently pressed for closer US-India space cooperation.
Now, senior executives from Boeing Defence, Space and Security (BDS) have divulged the details of cooperation that Isro has sought for building up India’s capacity for manned space missions. Kevin Hoshstrasser, the head of Boeing’s operations at the Kennedy Space Centre in Orlando, Florida, reveals that Isro has sought assistance in four specific areas:
-A launch escape system (LES) to enable astronauts to escape from a rocket that is undergoing catastrophic failure. Last week, Boeing successfully tested their latest escape vehicle.
-A life support and environmental control system, which creates an environment inside the space capsule in which astronauts can comfortably carry out their functions. This removes carbon dioxide and maintains humidity levels.
-Vehicle Health Monitoring System (VHMS), which keeps a constant check over key systems.
-Reusable space systems and composition cryogenic tanks. These tanks would be used to store fuel for India’s cryogenic motors.
Senior Boeing executives are in contact with Isro and Boeing has prepared an internal white paper on US-India space cooperation. For discussing substantive, and potentially classified, issues with Isro, Boeing has applied to the US government for a Technical Assistance Agreement.
Boeing’s Business Development Senior Manager for space systems, Sam Gunderson, is emphatic that Boeing wishes to partner Isro and in building Indian space systems. Brushing away concerns about US export licencing, Gunderson says, “Dual use restrictions (under the US law: International Traffic in Arms Regulations) in space cooperation would be significant, but we can find a way to work around those.”
Space partnership has gained momentum since the US-India nuclear pact. In 2009, Isro invited Boeing to a conference in India on robotics. The moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, carried NASA sensors made by Boeing.
SK Mody wrote:An interesting tidbit about Obama's Chief of staff
There are web links, and plenty at that, which shows, Advani, Indira Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa to name just a few, are "terrorists" .. but still it is unfortunate, IMO, that BRF and thread like US/India News discussion starts hosting such links. Thanks for discouraging such posts.Manny wrote:SK Mody wrote:An interesting tidbit about Obama's Chief of staff
Thank God, this rebuttal l was there.
That Bright, Dying Star, the American WASP
Kagan Nomination Marks Another Faded Day in the Establishment's Illustrious but Insular History; a New Path to Power
By ROBERT FRANK
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... itorsPicks
On a recent morning at the Links Club, New York's wood-paneled preserve of the old banking elite, a small crowd of white-haired members gathered for breakfast.
The talk around the tables, over poached eggs and toast, was of Europe and sovereign-debt markets. Some were quietly negotiating deals. The crowd was mostly older, though it included a smattering of 40-something and 50-something members.
While undeniably upper-crust, the scene, which included a Latin American and an Asian, was a far cry from the Links Club of 20 years ago, when doing business was forbidden and the strictly homogenous crowd of Protestant blue-bloods spent their mornings comparing golf scores and vacation homes.
"It's changed with the times," said one former member. "That's both our gain and our loss."
In the long downward spiral of what used to be known as America's Protestant Establishment, there have been several momentous milestones: Harvard's opening up its admissions policies after World War II. Corporate America's rush in the 1980s to bring more diversity to the corner office. Barack Obama's inauguration as the first African-American president.
The percentage of Protestants in Congress has dropped to 55% from 74% in 1961, according to Pew Forum. The corner offices of the top banks, once ruled by Rockefellers and Bakers, now include an Indian-American and the grandson of a Greek immigrant.
In old-money enclaves like Palm Beach, Fla., Nantucket, Mass., and Greenwich, Conn., WASPs are being priced out of their waterfront estates and displaced on their nonprofit boards by Jewish, Catholic and other non-Protestant entrepreneurs.
A survey by Pew Research found only 21% of mainline U.S. Protestants had income of $100,000 or more, compared with 46% of Jews and 42% of Hindus.
Until the early 1980s, when a flood of new wealth began to democratize the American elite, the path to power and status in America was straight and narrow. It usually began with old-line families in the lush estates of Greenwich, Boston, New York or Philadelphia and wound its way through New England boarding schools, on to Harvard or Yale and finally to the white-shoe law firms or banks of the Northeast or the corridors of power in Washington.
In "The Protestant Establishment," Mr. Baltzell pointed to the prejudice and insularity of the elite as the eventual causes of its decline. "A crisis has developed in modern America largely because of the White-Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment's unwillingness, or inability, to share and improve its upper-class traditions by continuously absorbing talented and distinguished members of minority groups into its privileged ranks."
Jamie Johnson, the documentary filmmaker and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, said he believed the destructive effects of wealth over multiple generations were also a factor.
"The generations of affluence bred a certain kind of casual, passive approach to life and wealth building," he said. "Lots of people just got lazy."
The Greedy Gates
Immigration Gambit
by Gene A. Nelson
Introduction
The U.S. “Baby Boom” generation (born from 1946 to 1964) had to deal with the consequences of “too many all at once” from the moment of birth into typically overcrowded hospital delivery rooms. Like a “pig in a python” the Baby Boomers then endured overcrowded schools. Demographer Landon Jones noted in his influential 1980 book—where he coined the term “Baby Boomer”1 that as a consequence of their great numbers, the Baby Boomers would have a lifelong
competition for available employment that would make use of their training and experience. The Baby Boomers were the first generation in history to have ready access to a college education, with about one-fourth of them earning a bachelor’s degree.
This author has noted that the U.S. government made available to colleges and universities tremendous economic resources subsequent to the Soviet 1957 launch of Sputnik and President Kennedy’s May 25, 1961 goal to put a man on the moon before 1970. There were unprecedented increases in federal R&D funding, with a rapid rise to over 11 percent of the federal budget in FY1964 to FY1966. (See figure 1 next page.) These resources facilitated the Baby Boomer’s college attendance and a massive U.S. college building boom. However, “high tech” employers enjoyed their first taste of “fresh (inexpensive) young blood” as the first Baby Boomers earned bachelor’s degrees in 1967. Once high tech employers became accustomed to the resultant high profit margins, they were reluctant to give them up, as we shall see later in this article.
By the late 1970s, federal R&D funding, which is a key funding source for higher education, had returned to the more typical value of about 4 percent. Around this time, college and university administrators were apparently becoming concerned with the cost of faculty and researchers needed to staff the recently enlarged campuses. The administrators utilized their trade association, The Association of American Universities, to influence Rep. Joshua Eilberg (D-PA) who chaired the House Immigration Subcommittee. Rep. Eilberg utilized once-in-a-lifetime parliamentary tactics to sneak through a change in 1976 to U.S. immigration law that granted to colleges and universities the right to import unlimited numbers of professors and researchers—and to avoid any attestations that these employers were harming the employment
rights of qualified American citizens. More details are available in the author’s 2005 article about the “Eilberg Amendment.” Title 8, section 1182, U.S.C. 19762.
Private sector employers that learned about the “sweetheart deal” that colleges had obtained in 1976 desired to have access to the same pool of young reduced—cost highly—skilled labor. The levers of power in Washington, DC were manipulated by firms such as Microsoft, HP, IBM, Motorola, Raytheon, Intel, and DuPont in the late 1980s to accomplish this goal.
The astounding information that the U.S. government utilized taxpayer resources in the late 1980s to destroy the careers of both black and white Americans (the science, engineering, and information technology workforce that strengthened the U.S. economy) seems implausible. Legal researcher and MIT mathematician Eric Weinstein, Ph.D. unearthed this information and has published several on line articles regarding these policies.3 The policies included a set of NSF “reports” starting about 1985, claiming an incipient “looming shortage” of scientists and engineers. These “reports” were never subject to critical analysis by outside experts. (There are still versions of this myth being circulated in 2007 by public relations professionals paid by special interests.)
PTI | New Delhi
The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Centre to examine the plea by a 72-year-old ex-US Navy officer, who had fought in the Vietnam war between 1964-1967, for political asylum in India as he fears persecution in US.
A bench of Justices P Sathasivam and HL Dattu forwarded the petition filed by the self-confessed ‘Gandhian’ to Attorney General GE Vahanvati for his consideration and report back to the court. Appearing in person, Knaebel pleaded he should be granted political asylum in India as he feared persecution if he went back to the US.
Knaebel had on June 19, 2009, created ripples by destroying his passport at the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat and condemned the ‘imperialistic’ policies of the US Government.
According to Knaebel, his act of destroying the passport would be considered as an act of ‘treason and sedition’ by the US Government which would prosecute him and hence sought asylum in India.
Rep. Lamar Smith did, and, at the House Judiciary Committee, he was interested to see if the attorney general of the United States thought there might be any factor in common between these perplexingly diverse incidents.
“In the case of all three attempts in the last year, the terrorist attempts, one of which was successful, those individuals have had ties to radical Islam,” said Representative Smith. “Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?”
“Because of . . . ?”
“Radical Islam,” repeated Smith.
“There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions,” replied Eric Holder noncommittally. “I think you have to look at each individual case.”
The congressman tried again. “Yes, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?”
“There are a variety of reasons why people . . . ”
“But was radical Islam one of them?”
“There are a variety of reasons why people do things,” the attorney general said again. “Some of them are potentially religious . . . ” Stuff happens. Hard to say why.
“Okay,” said Smith. “But all I’m asking is if you think, among those variety of reasons, radical Islam might have been one of the reasons that the individuals took the steps that they did.”
“You see, you say ‘radical Islam,’” objected Holder. “I mean, I think those people who espouse a — a version of Islam that is not . . . ”
“Are you uncomfortable attributing any actions to radical Islam?” asked Smith. “It sounds like it.”
The website of the U.S. embassy in India displays a photograph from May 11 in which Ambassador Roemer is shown meeting with rag pickers in Dharavi, a slum in the suburbs of Mumbai. The official caption accompanying the picture indicates Roemer was discussing "ACORN India's local waste management and recycling program."The Indo-Asian News Service confirmed in a report that day that Roemer spent time at the ACORN facility and met with ACORN India representative Vikram Adige
ACORN International is active in Argentina, Canada, Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Kenya, Mexico, and Peru.One of the reasons the group was created was to allow ACORN to apply its corporate shakedown techniques against Western corporations as they expand into rapidly developing markets such as India.ACORN India's website declares that the group was created to help defend the "socialist legacy" of Jawaharlal Nehru, a leftist who was prime minister of India from 1947 to 1964. That "legacy" is "now in danger from the onslaught of the march of global corporatism," according to the website
...
But because of the proposed mosque's location, just around the corner from the gaping Ground Zero hole, the plan has upset some locals.
"The outrage continues," says website www.nomosquesatgroundzero.wordpress.com under a close-up of the collapsing Twin Towers.
The protest site says the centre will "cast a rude shadow over Ground Zero."
Others compared the idea to building a German cultural centre at Auschwitz.
"Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11," writes Blitz, a self-described "anti-jihadist newspaper."
...
Prem wrote:Why is Obama pushing ACORN in India?
http://www.hyscience.com/ .ACORN India's website declares that the group was created to help defend the "socialist legacy" of Jawaharlal Nehru, a leftist who was prime minister of India from 1947 to 1964. That "legacy" is "now in danger from the onslaught of the march of global corporatism," according to the website
Is'nt that what we debate about? what suits us?These are aspects of the US-India defence relationship that India must evaluate unsentimentally, shedding the rhetoric that creeps into discussions relating to the US. This is difficult, given the historical complexity of the relationship and the grudge that India nurses over Washington’s relationship with Islamabad. But, with America, what you see is what you get; it is up to India to cherry-pick and take what suits it.
AcharyaAcharya wrote:Prem wrote:Why is Obama pushing ACORN in India?
http://www.hyscience.com/ .ACORN India's website declares that the group was created to help defend the "socialist legacy" of Jawaharlal Nehru, a leftist who was prime minister of India from 1947 to 1964. That "legacy" is "now in danger from the onslaught of the march of global corporatism," according to the website
No country allows foreign country and political NGOs to come inside and try to "save" the host countries legacy. Something is really wrong
DECLARES OPINION HERE TENDS TO FAVOR INDIA
Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES
London, June 19. - An English audience was told today that anti-British and pro-Indian feeling was far more prevalent in the United States today than pro-British opinion in connection with the present upheaval in India. The speaker was Professor L.F. Rushbrook Williams, who recently returned from a semi-official mission to the United States during which he attempted to spread the British viewpoint on India's troubles.
Professor Williams paid his respects to the strength of the Irish and German influences in the United States, and especially to the "money making mystics" and Hindu lecturers who he declared have colored the American attitude toward India.
The Easter States on the whole, he found, regarded the Indian independence movement with suspicion and considered the Indian situation was being handled with tact, moderation and skill. In the Middle West and West, however, he found "a really active sympathy with the Indian revolutionary movement."
US LOSS OF GOODWILL
Wilkie Sums Up Tour
NEW YORK, Oct 27 (A.A.P.). - "If we continue to fail to deliver promised materials to our Allies", declared Mr. Wendell Willkie, the American Republican leader, in a broadcast to the United States, "the gigantic reservoir of goodwill in the world towards the American people will turn into a reservoir of resentment."
.....
Discussing India, Mr Willkie declared that the wisest man in China had said that when India's aspirations for freedom were put aside to some future unspecified and unguaranteed date, it was not Britain but the United States that suffered in public esteem in the Far East.
"This wise man was not quarrelling with British Imperialism in India, although he did not believe in it," added Mr Willkie, "but he was telling me that the United States by her silence had already drawn heavily on the reservoir of goodwill in the East, where men are unable to ascertain from our Government's wishy-washy attitude to India what we will be likely to feel after the war about the other hundreds of millions of Eastern peoples."
....
Mr Willkie pointed out that India was America's problem just as the Philippines as Britain's problem. America's half-ignorant and half-patronising attitude towards the many peoples of Eastern Europe and Asia must be abandoned....
R. Venkataraman, doing his small part to sway public opinion, back in 1950.Letters to The Times
India's Views on Kashmir
Confidence Expressed in Outcome of Plebiscite in Territory
TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Louis Fischer's letter published a few days ago in your newspaper has had a remarkable reception throughout India - both among the press and the public. In his expressed views over the Kashmir dispute, he evinces far more understanding in the stand taken by India over that question than anybody else in the Western sphere. The Western nations have been particularly cold toward the Indian attitude and they are prone to criticize India, alleging deliberate postponement of the settlement of the question.
The Indians, on the other hand, have been bitterly disappointed that the United Nations should be a misfit in such a clear case. In his exposition of the issue, Mr. Fischer points out that the Indians fear that the holding of a plebiscite would turn the scales in favor of Pakistan. But to my mind the Indian Government's only objection seems to be the presence of the aggressor in the territory. Simply because Moslems constitute 80 per cent of the population of Kashmir, it does not necessarily mean they would join Pakistan.
As is very well known, large sections of the Moslem population in Kashmir have been agitating and clamoring for linking up their destiny with that of India, whose millions of Moslems are enjoying peace and unstinted freedom guaranteed by our Charter. Hence a plebiscite in that territory occupied by the aggressor would be like a plebiscite being held in Communist China- no more and no less.
Indians, as Mr Fischer has stated, feel they have been treated with partiality, whereas aggression in Korea has been treated with alacrity. They would certainly welcome better understanding on the part of Americans. Incidentally, the UN's lukewarm attitude toward Kashmir has been exploited by the Communists of Moscow. They spread the false propaganda that India treats the United Nations as an institution dominated by the Anglo-American bloc. On the other hand, as reiterated once and again, India has placed confidence in the United Nations in spite of its shortcomings and fervently does she hope that justice is meted out to her.
A word about Indians and communism. To Indians the very idea of a Communist state is extremely distasteful because of the primary fact that such a state would be robbing the individual liberty which has been coveted for a long time, and for which they fought bitterly and attained. Recently Communists have begun an orgy of murder, plunder and arson, but they are being effectively put down by the Government with the cooperation of the public. In many states the Communist party has been banned.
R. VENKATAVAMAN [sic]
Madras, India, Sept. 2, 1950.
Amber G. wrote:
I was wondering where did "लगाम" come from.. Now I know, it is translation of 'Halter' ALOOFNESS OF INDIA TO U.S. AID EASING
Quick Response to Nehru Food Plea is Urged as Means of Cementing Friendship
By ROBERT TRUMBULL
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
NEW DELHI, India, Jan. 13 - Recent weeks have seen a significant change of climate in India's attitude toward economic aid by the United States. As a result, both Indian and American observers here believe that a peculiarly favorable movement has arrived for a fruitful United States venture to cement the friendship of the elusive Indian public opinion at this critical time in Asia.
Indian friends of the United States hope that Washington will seize this unprecedented opportunity before it is dissipated by some untoward turn.
The newly favorable Indian official frame of mind, for which United States Ambassador Loy W. Henderson and others have striven for years, was suddenly crystallized by the appearance of a highly critical food picture. A desperate shortage this year can be averted only if India obtains 2,000,000 tons of grain from the United States on concessional terms involving either specially lowered prices, long-term credit or an outright grant.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru has instructed his embassy in Washington to request United States help in what may become a dangerous situation in a few more months.
With India able and willing to pay for a greater proportion of her food needs this year, Mr Nehru is asking Washington for urgently necessary concessions on the rest of her requirements, not in a spirit of suppliance or with any diminution of national pride, but rather as one turns to friend in time of great need.
Indian friends of the United States as well as American observers here are convinced that a quick and generous response to Mr Nehru's appeal would be the most effective demonstration that the United States could make to the Asian peoples of its altruistic intentions. Heretofore, these have been in doubt among local critics of the United States Asian policy.
Coming at a time when India and the United States are poles apart and apparently irreconcilable on such matters as the China question, a supply of badly needed food grains now would tend to silence those who say help from the United States "always has political strings attached'.
Mr. Nehru's overtures, through his Washington embassy, were regarded here as a dramatic turn-about in his standoffish attitude toward the United States. These were believed to indicate the dissolution of his suspicions of American aid and a newborn confidence on his part that Americans will respect the sincerity of his foreign policy though they may differ with it.
There should be no expectation in the United States that this aid to India in her dire hour will change Mr Nehru's foreign policy or "buy" the goodwill of the Indian people. But the Indians are not an insensitive race and one may look forward to an appreciation and a growth of friendship that will be bound to improve mutual understanding between the two largest democracies.
The destruction of crops last year resulted in an estimated loss of 6,000,000 tons of food grains, which is the amount that India must import in 1951 to insure a nominal base ration of twelve ounces a person a day - a subnutritional standard.
The Government is now negotiating contracts to import 3,700,000 tons of food grains in the next twelve months from the United States and elsewhere for which cash will be paid. Approximately 2,000,000 tons more of wheat and various coarse grains must be obtained somehow to guard against a probable disastrous local breakdown in the rationing system. There is no money to pay the current market price for this, at least, not immediately.
In this situation, which the Food Ministry fears may become desperate in another three months or so, Mr Nehru has turned to the bulging granaries of the United States for help.
His appeal creates the first immediate opportunity for the United States to make a substantial and dramatic contribution toward the stability of the most populous non-Communist nation in the world and a reasonably priced investment in Asian goodwill at a time when American prestige is low.
India: A Case History in the 'Cold War'
Many Indian groups think we are warmongers and backers of colonialism-and look on Russia as a peaceable friend. Here is a report on why this has happened.
New Delhi.
The "peaceful competition" between Russia and the United States- to put it less fashionably, it is the "cold war" again- is producing a prime case history here. The results so far are deeply disturbing for the West. A combination of Soviet adaptability, American clumsiness and Indian shortsightedness has built up in the minds of scores of millions of people a mental image of the world that goes something like this:
"The United States, for all its talk about peace, would like to destroy the Soviet Union by war. The only thing holding it back is the fear of dying itself under Russian hydrogen bombs. Many important American leaders think the United States can destroy without being destroyed and some day may try.
"That is why the United States, in spite of talk about freedom and the American revolutionary heritage, is interested in the independence movements of the world only so far as they affect the fight against the Soviets. That is why the United States is the friend of the colonial powers.
"The Soviet Union is trying to walk the road of peace. It is a dictatorship but part of the fault lies in the fact that the Western powers have surrounded it with enemies since its birth. Give the Soviet Union a period of freedom from fear and the dictatorshiop will relax. In the meantime, Moscow supports the freedom struggles of the colonized peoples and the fights for peace."
Not everybody in India feels this way but the preceding three paragraphs are quite close to the picture of the world that is painted across the country- and in much of Asia. And the number of people who would substituted the Soviet Union for the United States in the foregoing is becoming fewer.
This is not just a lot of Communist talk either. The trend is shown in the results, just released, of India's first major public opinion poll, taken in West Bengal. Only 7 percent of the people question said that they would vote Communist. But 31 per cent said they thought the United States was preparing for an aggressive war. Only 2 per cent were afraid of the Soviet Union.
Put statistics aside. A foreigner staying any length of time in a country gets its political "feel". Sometimes that's a good deal more important than polls and figures.
In India the "feel" is not one of hatred, not even of dislike. If it were it would be simpler. Your political nerve ends tell you as you travel around India that you are not among enemies but among people who, to their own unhappiness, are beginning to distrust the motives of your country, who do not see your country as you see it.
INDOCHINA, Goa, Morocco, Quemoy, Dulles, atomic bombs, atomic bombs, atomic bombs. In every corner of India, in shops and Government offices and on campuses, the same words, the same implication that they are words your country must be ashamed of. And everywhere the same eagerness to forget about execution squads and isolator cells and the mass-produced mentality.
Speaking to Indians steadily about your country is like standing in front of one of those crazy mirrors at Coney Island that distort your reflection. And there in the next booth is Mr Khrushchev's grinning face popping up over the cardboard image of a knight.
All this adds up to the most dismal and dangerous story in India: the grotesque distortion of the roles and ambitions of the United States and the Soviet Union.
Whose fault is it?
They say sometimes in this part of the world that we Americans are an arrogant lot really, given to boasting and throwing our weight around and telling the rest of the world what's good for it. But there certainly never was a world power in history before whose people were so fond of political self-analysis, so given to self-doubt and to examining their motives and their goals so clinically, as the United States.
It is good to see yourself as others see you. To the extent that we talk too much about the big punch and bomber range and massive retaliation and the art of verging on war, it is our fault if Asians do not think of us as we think of ourselves. To the extent that we have become fuzzy about colonial issues and have raised doubts where we stand, the fault is also ours.
BUT that is not the complete answer. If you stand so long in front of the crazy mirror that you begin to believe that you are seeing a true reflection, you are lost. Some of the responsibility attaches itself to the Indian Government- its own fears, its own miscalculations and its own self-deceptions. The fault of the Government of India is that it has concentrated on American sins and Soviet virtues and not realizing the consequences, has held up to the Indian people a false image of both countries.
The poll in West Bengal showed that a shockingly large percentage of the people thought of us as warmongers. But that suspicion was just one ingredient in a compound of fears and misunderstandings. It does no good to try to isolate that one ingredient in this awful prescription for doubt and concentrate on it. The other elements in the compound act on the war-mongering fear and build it up.
The suspicion in India that does the United States the most harm is that we can no longer be counted on as friends of the independence movements. The belief is that we have abandoned the anti-colonial peoples in favor of what we take to be our military security.
In the city of Madras there is a road that runs along the beaches of the Indian Ocean. In the evening, when the breeze comes in from the sea, it is just right for pacing up and down and settling the problems of the world. A few months ago an Indian newspaper man and an American newspaper man were walking by the sea, going through the eternal what's wrong with us and what's wrong with you. This is the gist of what the Indian had to say:
"How can you ask for our trust, when you look at what's going on. Don't talk to me about world strategy. For people like us there are only two sides- those that support national independence movements and those that do not.
"I tell you that most of us feel that if India had not become free before this cold war got going we would find ourselves today being kept down by you. That's the truth and you know it. Just picture it- a cold war, Britain, your big ally, occupying India. Wouldn't your people in Washington tell us that we had to patient, that the United States, in the big global picture, had to support Britain? If it hadn't been for the Labor party victory in Britain, we Indians would be your enemies today, not just neutrals."
This reporter has heard that argument by the sea in Madras in a second-class railroad carriage clanking up the east coast, at a cocktail party in Calcutta, in a houseboat in Srinagar, and in almost every other place he has talked politics with an Indian.
THERE is not much point in trying to deny it. For one thing, the fear that Britain would have had United States backing in occupying India today is probably justified. For another, what counts is that Indians feel that way. Indians are willing to concede that the United States has no territorial ambitions. But too many of them believe that in our fear of communism we have become so tied in military alliances that the colonies or territories of our partners have come under our wing.
India is not all Asia, and in India as well as other countries of the continent we still have more goodwill that bad will. But even among some of our allies there is doubt.
LAST spring in Saigon, a young colonel of the Vietnamese army sat in a read plush chair in the Presidential Palace. He was weary to the bone with fighting against a Binh Xuyen gangster army that formerly had been a power in Saigon and that had the backing of most Frenchmen in the burning city. The colonel's army had won but still ahead was the fight against Vietnam's own Chief of State, living on the Riviera and conducting political warfare against the Government of Premier Diem.
After a while the colonel looked up and said to an American: "If it had not been for you Americans we would have kicked Bao Dai out at 3 o'clock this afternoon. Now it will take longer because you Americans held us back."
One of the tragedies of Saigon was that our Vietnamese friends, who had fought the Communists, and still were fighting them, did not believe our policy was clear and honest. They saw us wavering between support for a Government we helped install and a discredited relic of the old never-to-return days. They decided that we had helped Bao Dai cling on for a few more useless months because our French allies wanted it that way. The argument that we had responsibilities to the French as well as to the Vietnamese did not interest them.
In India, a short statement by Secretary of State Dulles about the Portuguese possession of Goa on India's west coast did the United States as much word-for-word harm as any declaration every made. All Dulles did was to speak of Goa as a Portuguese "province". To Indians that meant he was recognizing Lisbon's claim that the little colony on the Arabian Sea was an inseparable part of Portugal.
THE worst of the Dulles statement was that it cut the ground from under many Indians friendly to the United States. Suddenly they found themselves defending a country that had taken a stand invoking their own patriotism. The bitterest reaction to Dulles' statement came from our closest friends in India.
The contrast that is built up when the Russians enter the picture is obvious. Where we give explanations, they give support. Free Goa. Free North Africa. Free everybody- except of course a few hundred million people in certain parts of the world not often mentioned hereabout.
{missing line} phisticated of India know that the Soviet Union's display of affection for people of colonial areas has more behind it than uncontrollable brotherly love. But they believe, too, that because the Soviet Union's support of independence movements in public puts more pressure on the ruling powers, this brings the day of freedom that much nearer. And they think that, when the day comes, the new nations, given the right support by the West, will not turn toward Moscow.
This is part of the picture- the fact that the United States is counted so often on the wrong side of the colonial fence. And part of the rest is that so many Indians think our entire international policy, unchecked, could lead to world atomic war. India feels that our refusal to recognize Communist China is the prime cause of tension in the Far East. The idea that we would have been willing to go to war, as Dulles has indicated, to defend the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, is one that horrified Indians. They think that we have become almost insanely casual about threatening to use atomic bombs.
DULLES' celebrated interview with Life magazine was received with masochistic satisfaction by a good many Indians. It seemed to confirm the worst they had thought about Dulles and his country.
"Suppose a Russian foreign minister had said something like that- that the big thing was to know how to get to the edge of war without getting into it," said an Indian student in a New Delhi coffee house. "My God, fellow, what would have been your reaction? I tell you you are frightening us all out of our wits."
Indians read that we were prepared to use atomic bombs in the crises over Dienbeinphu, the offshore islands and the Korean Armistice talks. They read stories about how our Strategic Air Command has planes always within reach of atomic depots. The Russians have atomic bomb bases and their own strategic air command, but they just don't talk about them so much.
Our friends in India shake their heads at our tough talk. They think everybody knows by now that both sides could destroy each other. They cannot for the life of them see any advantage to the side that keeps talking about how ready it is.
IN the Indian attitude toward the United States there are two other elements. One is Pakistan. Scratch an India on foreign policy and you find deep emotional resentment at the fact that we are giving arms to India's neighbor. The Indians feel that the Pakistanis are taking United States arms to prepare themselves not against the Russians but against India.
Both nations try to avoid war, but both nations know the possibility of it always exists. A country that gives large-scale arms aid to one side must expect at least coolness from the people of the other. Whether it comes to pass or not, the Indians cannot ignore the possibility that American tanks and American artillery may some day be used against Indian troops.
THE other element is color. Old-timers among Westerners in India tell each other that that's what all the fuss is about when you get right down to it. "They're brown and you're white and don't think your best friend in India ever forgets it."
The year this reporter has spent in India has not taught him enough to know whether the color resentment is all that deep and ineradicable. But it has taught him that it exists and that in any political assessment it is best to recognize that it exists.
It exists as between Indians themselves. The matrimonial advertisements in the newspapers often specify that the bride or groom must be light. In "Waiting for the Mahatma", a new novel by India writer R.K. Narayan, young Sriram looks up at the girl on the platform and decides this is love. The light is bad and he cannot make out her complexion. He thinks: "If she were dark, without a doubt his grandmother would not approve of his marrying her."
It exists as between Indians and the foreigner. At a dinner party one of the high officials of the Indian Government was talking about books and art and how, of course, he was really a Westerner in upbringing. Then he thought a brief moment and said, "EVen though I am sure you find that hard to believe because my skin is dark."
THE sensitivity to color cannot be pinned down on statistical tables. But it is not simply a negative matter of resentment against discrimination. It has become a positive thing and so far it has benefited the Communists. There is something satisfying to Asians about the idea of a non-white country such as Communist China being powerful to the point where the Far Eastern policy of every "white" country in the world must center on her. {Rosenthal seems utterly oblivious to the fact that in 1956, it would be impossible for anyone of Indian origin to seek citizenship in the USA because of its racial laws on immigration. American color consciousness is well documented in The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter}
India's self-consciousness about color has not seemed to apply to the Soviet Union. One reason may be Russia's alliance with Communist China and her steady propaganda that under communism people of different races have learned to live together. But more important is the fact that resentment about color naturally turns against the West because it was the West that colonized Asia, ruled as the master and set up "European only" curbs.
As for the United States, it suffers heavily in Asia because of discrimination against the Negro. It may be logical to point out that the Indians themselves have a social color line against people of darker skins in their country or that the communal riots here take thousands more lives than all Southern lynching parties put together. It may be logical - but attitudes on color are not built on logic.
These, then, are the things that make for suspicion and coldness toward the United States - a cloudy policy on colonialism, too much big talk about the diplomatic powers of the atomic bomb, a system of military alliances that strengthens Pakistan, and color.
And then there is India's contribution.
A NATION's neutrality depends on two things: whether she considers herself neutral and whether the rest of the world considers her neutral. India considers herself neutral. But in the past few months the Indian Government has helped the Russians present such a grotesque picture of the state of the world to the Indian people that it must assume a large part of the responsibility if the West feels India is no longer entitled to be considered a neutral except for politeness' sake.
All over India where the Russians traveled there was this sign, distributed by Government officials: "Hail Bulganin and Khrushchev fighters for peace." India was taking her cue from her Prime Minister.
In Calcutta, near the end of the Soviet tour, Nehru was making a prepared speech whose sole purpose was to assure the West that India was uncommitted. He made the speech, but halfway through he wandered from the text and before hundreds of thousands of Bengalis said it was strange that while one side talked peace, other countries were thinking in terms of war and military alliances.
A lot of people in a lot of towns must get the point by now. If the Russians are fighters for peace, against whom are they fighting, and who are the enemies of peace?
BEFORE, during or after the tour, there was no talk about Soviet aggressions, never a word about Czechoslovakia or slave labor camps, never a hint of the fact that the independence of India has been guaranteed these past eight years by Western military power. There was never a hint that if it had not been for that power, the Russians would be giving India something a lot less to her liking than steel mills.
By tradition and emotional make-up Nehru is the antithesis of a totalitarian. In a Communist world he would be one of the first marked for death. At home he denounces Communists. In Bombay during the recent riots Communists were thrown into jail. He attacks the Indian Communists as slaves of the Russians. And yet he builds a handsome image of the masters for the Indian people to look at.
THE Indian people do not even get a full report on their own Government's reaction to the Russians' tour. While they were in India the Russians used the country as a platform for some of the harshest attacks made against the West since Stalin's death. Indians in the Government, including Nehru himself, did not care for that and said so-- privately. But in a speech at Agra, Nehru denied he was embarrassed by Soviet support for India on Goa and Kashmir.
There is more than one reason why Nehru seems so much more concerned with Soviet sensibilities than Western sensibilities. Nehru thinks that given a period of relaxation internationally the nature of the Soviet dictatorship will change. He thinks the Russian people are now at a point where they can keep their Communist economic system going under a government that gives them civil liberties.
And it is not surprising at all that Nehru welcomes the support of the Russians on India's two most emotional controversies- Goa and Kashmire. It seems to have become the thing to take help where you can find it. The United States counts among its allies Spain and dictatorships in Latin America and the Middle East; Washington never got perturbed about the iron-handed rule of the Afghan government until the flirtation with Moscow began.
It is also quite clear that Nehru feels that our foreign policy comes not only to the verge of war but to the verge of madness.
BUT the fact still is that what India is doing is against her own interests as well as ours. It is probable that the essential Soviet game these days is to isolate India from the West. To the extent that India cooperates by hammering us and hugging the Russians she works against her own interests. Within India, it is not to the country's interests to build up a picture of communism as peace-loving and freedom-worshipping. The Bombay riots, which Congress party politicians swear were instigated by Communists, should prove that.
The emphasis on India's responsibility is not for the sake of recrimination. India has made a place for herself in the world. It is an adult world and adults have responsibilities to one another.
There is no point in shrieking at India. She is entitled to her ways and her thoughts. But the Western powers have a right to expect one thing from India- that she makes sure her people see the world not through a distorted and clouded glass, but as it really is.
Yoga will be big business; but its centrality in Hinduism {Each chapter in the Bhagavad Gita is something-or-the-other yoga.} is fatal for its commercial chances in the US. Hence that utterly nonsensical statement, wrong at so many levels. And that is why they're inventing Christian yoga and Jewish yoga and so on."The common belief that Yoga derives from Hinduism is a misconception. Yoga actually predates Hinduism by many centuries...The techniques of Yoga have been adopted by Hinduism as well as by other world religions."
Indeed, however, I would modify your statement, in the last 50 years ONLY Christianity has taken a systematic beating in the US.shiv wrote: Now in all societies the one group that has concentrated on telling kids things in "their formative years" are religious groups. Hence what almost anyone learns in childhood about good and bad, fear and where to find support against fear is religion based.
Let us talk about two different eras, (the 1960s and 2001 onwards) and hypothesize how an American who held a responsible post in the US Govt or military may have seen India and PakistanCarl_T wrote:whether it is vast and pervasive enough to seriously damage US attitudes towards India vis a vis Pakistan. My response to that is - what is Islam's public image in the US? It is certainly not an "abrahamics bhai-bhai" as some are implying.
One thing to be aware is the baby boom generation is the most influential group which swayed the US policies. First was their attitude towards JLN whom they read about when they were children. His anti-west tirades was an early impression in their mind. Next when they encountered IG they found her obnoxious. After 1971 victory IG was considered drunk in power and they truly hated her. The childhood to adult hood to final victory in the cold war was shaped by the baby boomers whose attitude towards India was a major factor.chetak wrote:
The amrekis approached the GOI to grant them free use of Vishakapatnam for their use against the russians like they finally wound up using bases in pakiland for their U2 flights and other shady activities. It was only after the GOI refused that they set up in pakiland. A right royal mess has followed since then as we all know.
But BRF has a way of making one think, what with so many diverse POVs being freely expressed and debated.
Acharya wrote: One thing to be aware is the baby boom generation is the most influential group which swayed the US policies. First was their attitude towards JLN whom they read about when they were children. His anti-west tirades was an early impression in their mind. Next when they encountered IG they found her obnoxious. After 1971 victory IG was considered drunk in power and they truly hated her. The childhood to adult hood to final victory in the cold war was shaped by the baby boomers whose attitude towards India was a major factor.
As per Wikichetak wrote: The baby boomers are now well into retirement saar. The generation that followed them are carrying a different set of baggage.
Some people say 1961 instead of 1964. President Obama is a baby-boomer or just on the edge of it.The United States Census Bureau considers a baby boomer to be someone born during the demographic birth boom between 1946 and 1964.[9] The Census Bureau is not involved in defining cultural generations.
