Why Bush likes India

During my first undergrad year at St Stephen's in Delhi, one of the college societies organised a talk by a visiting American academic on the US presidential election, due in a few weeks. Some 34 years later, the only thing I vividly recall about the talk was his query about who we supported. Of the 35 or so students present, 33 showed their preference for George McGovern. Only two hands, including mine, rose for President Richard Nixon.

In the November 1972 election, Nixon was re-elected by a landslide—becoming one of the four presidents of the 20th century who polled more than 60 per cent of the popular vote. Yet, if the division among Stephanians was anything to go by, the Indians preferred a fringe liberal like McGovern to Nixon. Arguably, Nixon's run-in with India during the Bangladesh war of December 1971 had much to do with his personal unpopularity in India. But even if Nixon hadn't tilted so markedly towards Pakistan, his popularity in this country would never have touched the dizzying heights of say, Presidents John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton. President Ronald Reagan rescued India from Soviet-inspired drabness but he was thanked with unending sneers and taunts.  

The Indian elite, for no apparent reason, has been partial to Democratic administrations—Lyndon Johnson being the exception.

Kennedy, of course, never visited India but his charming wife did and had Jawaharlal Nehru dancing attendance. Clinton arrived at the fag end of his presidency. The visit was such a spectacular success that the Clintons have since become permanent fixtures on the Indo-US circuit. The former president and his senator wife drop in to India frequently, usually at the behest of a non-resident entrepreneur anxious to derive mileage from his American connections. The Clinton Foundation has marked its presence in India. I have little doubt that if Hilary Clinton runs for president, Indian Americans will be among her main contributors.

As a member of the Sixties' generation, India held a special place for President Clinton. At a time when the American campuses were in revolt against materialist excesses, India offered the perfect antidote. As part of the mysterious Orient, it became the personification of exotica. To this hazy incense-ridden legacy, the Clintons added the friendship of successful Indian Americans. The association swelled the Democratic war chest and lent a cosmopolitan flavour to their social world. It also conferred on a clutch of desis what they always lacked—political connections. The Clintons and their Chhatwals, Kashyaps, Chopras and Guptas enjoy a mutually exploitative relationship.

The significant feature of this relationship is that it had very little to do with contemporary India. During his eight-year presidency, Clinton was not known for any show of political generosity to the land of the chillum. From Madeleine Albright to Robin Raphael, State Department functionaries maintained the traditional perfunctoriness of Indo-US relations. India was always the lesser cousin in South Asia. There was an exotic India and there was a political India, and never the twain did meet.

President George W Bush had a wild past but he was never infected with liberalism. A born-to-rule WASP, the India of Ravi Shankar and Mahesh Yogi didn't intrude into his consciousness. He probably scarcely had any Indian American friends. Yet, for this democracy evangelist, India is an appealing idea. It is a functioning democracy, possesses a massive middle class that is culturally sympathetic to core American values, boasts a hugely successful diaspora and is naturally antagonistic to Islamist terrorism. This is why he believes that the strategic calculus of Cold War must be turned on its head.

Bush's deification of India is the 21st century equivalent of Lord Curzon's infatuation with the "sacredness of India." It is not born of mystical woolly-headedness; it stems from hard-nosed strategic calculations. Curzon never wanted India and Indians to be replicas of the "mother country". He doted on the robust, traditional values and the squirearchy of the "real India" and perceived the subcontinent as an autonomous power and the natural bulwark against an expansionist Russia. Replace yesterday's traditional values with today's democratic rumbustiousness and the Russian bear with the Chinese dragon and you have the importance of India to Bush. 

To the Empire Tory and the Neo-Conservative, separated from each other by a century, India's importance stretched beyond its national boundaries. To Clinton, India is just another exotic photo-op. To Bush, India makes business and strategic sense. 

Email: swapan55@gmail.com