Comment

Can India have an Obama? That question has been put to me so many times in the past few days that I ought to have a ready answer. The people asking the question are TV news anchors, print journalists, industrialists, businessmen and lay people of every age, size and description.

Many of these people, the majority not professionally interested in news, were up at 5 in the morning when TV channels began to beam the results as they came in. As the first early hours went by, and it became clear that Barrack Obama was heading for a historic win, the phone started ringing: a sister in Vadodara, a cousin in Pune, friends in Delhi and Nashik and Bangalore… Then calls from London and New York.

Looking at this unprecedented interest, you would think that Indians had a stake in this election, and a particular stake in Obama winning it. But we know that India and Indians had no possible direct interest, and if at all we wanted to take sides, we should have leaned towards John McCain. After all, the Republicans have taken the Indo-US relationship to a new high under George Bush with the nuclear agreement. In addition there are Obama's views on outsourcing (he doesn't want it), on Kashmir (he wants to play a more pro-active role) and the economy (he might introduce new tariff barriers which will hamper Indian trade). So on purely selfish grounds, we should have been rooting for McCain. But if anyone was doing so, I still have to meet him (or her).
Obamania has swept the world and we weren't immune to it either.

What is it about the man that overcomes deep-rooted prejudices? Let's face it; Indians have an age-old problem with people of a darker skin colour. The majority here also has a problem with a name like Hussein (Obama's middle name, though he is not a Muslim). Yet to have embraced him the way we have does not show that we have overcome any prejudices, it only shows the power of the man. In the same way, his election victory was due to the sheer power of his personality, his brilliant oratory and the charisma he exudes. His has been an individual triumph; not a sign that the average voter of the United States has suddenly become more liberal and tolerant. Barrack Hussein Obama won because he is John Fitzgerald Kennedy with a tan and everything about him suggests that in a deeply depressed and fractured world, he holds out the promise of Camelot.

Will India have its own Obama? The obvious answer is to point to Mayawati, but are there any similarities at all? Yes, she also comes from an economically depressed class and one that has been brutally oppressed for centuries, but is there any other common ground between them? Obama has had a sophisticated education; Mayawati is a run of the mill BA. Obama's main message was inclusiveness; hers is divisiveness. Obama never remotely played up the African-American feeling of victimhood; for Mayawati, Dalit victimhood is a one-point agenda. Obama will not spend taxpayer's money to build monuments and statues of himself; Mayawati has already done so. Obama raised huge amounts of money, but not for himself; Mayawati has raised huge amounts of money, but only for herself. Obama represents the promise of change; Mayawati represents the politics of convenience, changing electoral alliances and allegiances to suit the moment. In short, Obama stands for the very best of America and a hope for the future; Mayawati stands for the very worst of India, with no hope for the future.

If we look at demographic profiles, the equivalent in India of African-Americans will not be the Dalits, but Muslims. In terms of population, Dalits, OBC's and other depressed classes represent a majority in the country, not a minority, whereas African-Americans form 11 per cent of the American population, a similar proportion to Muslims in India.

So if a Obama has to rise here, he will have to be a Hussein, one whose charisma and healing message will obliterate old hatreds and ancient grievances. Possible? We can only hope.

The writer is a commentator on social affairs