He skirts around and looks at all issues except the core one that inavariably US policies tend to hurt India even if not directed at her. Look at the recent NPT adherence resolution in the UN. It hits India without addressing the core security issues for India. That resolution doesnt address the US and PRC proliferation to India's enemies. As a recent de-colonized country that got of the British colonialism India wasn't going to get colonised again even if it was indirect. That is the core reason for so called anti-Americanism.EDITS | Friday, September 25, 2009 | Email | Print |
India, US need each other
Sunanda K Datta-Ray
The “almost reflexive anti-Americanism” that US President Barack Obama spoke of at the UN on Wednesday as a recent global phenomenon has been a consistent feature of India’s discourse for many years. Ambassador Timothy J Roemer’s assurances on Pakistan and terrorism must be music to Indian ears but may not succeed in endearing his country to Indians once the euphoria has passed.
Defying Palmerston’s logic, bilateral relations are as complex as the current furore over austerity. Both paradoxes illustrate the conflict between principle and practice which the Vietnam war slogan “Yankee go home, but take me with you” highlighted. Mr Roemer must bear this in mind when he hears Indians accusing the US of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan or dragging its feet over the sequel to the 123 Agreement and yet grumbling that Mr Obama went to Egypt and Ghana while India had to be content with the Secretary of State and seven months late at that.
William B Saxbe, US Ambassador during the Emergency, commented on the quirk. “When I call on Cabinet Ministers, the President or governors, they all love to talk about their sons, sons-in-law and daughters in the United States and how well they’re doing and how well they like things. The next day I read in the papers the very same people are denouncing the United States as a totally different kind of country.”
India has always been coy about admitting its need for the US. Even when PV Narasimha Rao turned foreign policy round so that the two defence forces held joint military exercises, he avoided explicitly acknowledging the alliance. That was left to Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee who gave the term ‘natural allies’, coined by Gen Sunit Francis Rodrigues when he was Army chief, a deeper cultural and strategic meaning. An India that feels threatened by Pakistan and China, whose domestic stability is challenged by Maoist rebels and whose confidence has been shaken by allegations about the 1998 thermonuclear test, has greater need than ever for America’s friendship. {Whats common to all those things? And anyone recall the panchatantra tale of old man, young wife and the thief? All these originate from US.}
Military help alone would undermine the very concept of India and what it stands for. The need is for diplomatic support, economic and technological cooperation, and markets and investment to safeguard the growth rate amidst global recession. Economic self-reliance is the ultimate guarantee of India’s freedom.
In turn, the US seeks to sell India everything from pizza to washing machines, as Mr George W Bush told the Asia Society on the eve of visiting India. Just as more troops are necessary in Afghanistan to win the war against the Taliban, the US cannot do without the support of the region’s biggest power, which happens to be the world’s largest democracy, to win the peace.
It would be simplistic to explain Indian reticence about this interdependence in terms of a gulf between Indians and India, between the people and the Government. That may have been true of Asia’s fallen regimes in Seoul, Manila, Saigon and Teheran. It applies to Pakistan where religion makes Pakistanis anti-American which no Government can afford to be. Hence, an enraged mob burned the American embassy in Islamabad to the ground (suspecting the US of bombing Mecca) even though, despite various conspiracy theories about his death, Gen Zia ul-Haq was then as much an American protégé as South Korea’s Syngman Rhee or Iran’s Shah. But in India’s vibrant democracy, the people are the Government. The dichotomy is not between rulers and ruled but inherent in India’s psyche.
When Mrs Indira Gandhi, strident in her denunciations of the ‘Foreign Hand’, wanted to highlight her son Sanjay’s no-nonsense hands-on approach, she called him “very American”. Many such instances can be cited. Surveys in 2005 and 2006, one conducted by the BBC and the other by the Pew organisation, showed India to be one of the few countries that thought the US exercised a positive influence on global security and which welcomed Mr Bush’s second term. The former held that 62 per cent of Indians favoured his re-election while the Pew survey found that 71 per cent of respondents thought highly of the US.
Mr Natwar Singh may have understated the case, therefore, in suggesting to this writer that India is pro-US only because eight out of 10 External Affairs Ministry officials want their sons to go to the US. That may well be so, but so do eight out of 10 urban educated Indians. However, that ambition will not stop them from roundly berating the CIA and blaming American pampering of Pakistan whenever any problem crops up in India. Indian pride would be profoundly hurt to be told that India is hardly a matter of consuming interest for Americans.
Western analysts would attribute this contradiction to ingrained hypocrisy. And, yes, there is no denying that opportunism does play a part in the calculations of many Indians. I am reminded in this context of the CPI(M) mayor who asked the US consul-general to twin Calcutta with San Francisco. Reminded that Calcutta was already twinned with Odessa, the Marxist explained that he needed an official reason to visit his son — at public expense no doubt — who was studying in California. But some might also cite Ralph Waldo Emerson’s belief that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Reconciling many contraries, the enlightened Indian can both want the Yankee out and to go with him. But neither expediency nor philosophical breadth makes for a steady and stable partnership.
Mr Sitaram Yechury once claimed India under Mr Vajpayee and Mr Manmohan Singh was trying to be the new Pakistan vis-à-vis the US. Perhaps some Indians nurse that yearning. But the apposite parallel is Japan, especially at a time when India is at last beginning to resist encirclement. The Chinese have already noted that the bilateral agreements on expanding military, space and civil nuclear power generation cooperation signed during Ms Hillary Clinton’s visit are expected to impact on South Asia’s balance of power.
After talking to Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Wednesday, Mr Obama described their relationship as “a cornerstone” of the prosperity and security of both countries. Mr Hatoyama, who sometimes sounds anti-American, called it “a key pillar” of Japan’s foreign policy.
With the compulsions of the Cold War and non-alignment over, both statements should also apply to India-US relations. They probably do, despite the verbal vagaries.
-- sunandadr@yahoo.co.in
India has her tryst with destiny to keep and cant let others chain her.
baby
. But I am glad you came to the conclusion I have been trying to instill in you, namely in mathematical terms, given any e > 0: