Column

Sotto voce

When US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice suggested the other day that India should say goodbye to the Non-Aligned Movement and cast its lot with the United States, even those who otherwise thought of NAM as an anachronism and outdated felt a bit irritated. Agreed, NAM is a relic of a time gone by, when there was a Cold War on, and it is equally true that one must march with the times, but who was the US to tell us what to do?

Besides, hasn’t the US shown time and again that it is a fair weather friend, and a big supporter of India’s enemy, Pakistan? On no issue of importance to India — Kashmir, cross-border terrorism or the bid for a seat in the United Nations Security Council — has the US backed us unequivocally. Till 9/11 happened and Pakistani involvement in such acts worldwide was conclusively proved, the US was immune to India’s fervent pleas about how our neighbour’s intelligence establishment was backing terrorist groups. How can we accept that the US will stand by us come crunch time?

These are solid arguments, but the annoyance comes not only because of the hypocrisy shown by the US, but also because of the generally ambivalent attitude shown by most Indians towards that country. To put it simply, Indians love the US — we admire its energy, its pop culture and its values too — but we find its foreign policy completely abhorrent. We want to go there as tourists and perhaps as migrants — the lines outside the US diplomatic missions are proof of that. We would love to send our kids to American universities — in any case, they have grown up listening to American music and following an American lifestyle. But sorry, Ms Rice, you have no business running our foreign policy.

There are several reasons for this dichotomy. Part of it is of course pride — no one cares to be aggressively told what to do, and certainly not directly and bluntly, as Americans tend to do. The American way is to answer things with a yes or no, and look at things in black or white. Waffling has little place in their scheme of things. An Indian will rarely confront, and if confronted will try and dissemble, or at best deflect. The Indian mind is elliptical and may even be perceived as devious. We understood the British, with their understatement, their irony and their roundabout way of putting things across; we are finding our new American friends a bit difficult to digest.

Then there are what we see as American double standards. A country’s foreign policy is dictated by its own perceived self-interest. We hate America’s support for Musharraf, but do understand that it fits in with some larger plan. Similarly, NAM may not amount to much in these present times, but India has a history there and its membership allows us to network with other countries. NAM’s current president, Fidel Castro, is a thorn in Bush’s side, but he is important to us.

The Bush credo is “if you ain’t with us, you are against us,” and most of NAM’s members are perceived as US-baiters. In the last summit, for example, the Movement condemned the disproportionate response of Israel to the kidnapping of two soldiers by Hamas, supported Iran’s nuclear energy plans, and criticised many of the US’s foreign policy initiatives. Hardly something that would endear the Movement and its members to Bush or Rice.

As new-found friends of the US, and in the warm afterglow of the Bush embrace, should we not take America’s side? After all, on Iran at least, we are on the same wavelength. But as the objections to the Indo-US nuclear deal shows, it is not so simple — had there been widespread support, by now it would have gone through. Even the Manmohan Singh government, with its gung-ho approach towards the deal, has had to admit that the US, for all its platitudes about strategic friendship, has been “shifting the goalposts.”

Yet, polls have shown that India is one country where there is widespread admiration for the US, that too at a time when America’s image worldwide has taken a beating. Under George W Bush, many of the core values that defined America have been undermined and subverted. The world may condemn that, but in India, the regard for America has continued to increase, and the lines outside the Embassy have continued to get longer.

We do appreciate, of course, that there is a difference between Americans and the American government. We know that as a people Americans are friendly and open, that once you get past that dreaded immigration counter (provided you had convinced that dreaded visa officer) you enter a country that has a lot to offer. But whenthey start wagging their finger at us, it grates. It’s best they know that for all our love, there are some things we won’t do, like getting out of NAM. Only then will our friendship really mature.

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net