Chandrahas Choudhury
By Chandrahas Choudhury
What ails relations between India and the United States? Nothing, if you were to believe the leaders and diplomats tasked with keeping the road between the two well-lit and clear of obstructions. The relationship between America and India links the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest one, between the great beacons of democracy in the West and the East.
The contact between our peoples grows ever more robust and more diverse. Immigration, tourism, education, culture — each has a burgeoning place in this story. We have similar visions of democracy and are committed to a secular state that best liberates the potential, and ensures the fundamental rights, of their multiethnic societies.
Well, perhaps my fancy begins to wax into excess here, but you see the point. There’s nothing wrong with Indo-US relations, but given what the countries share, they could be so much better. The history of the two countries in the last six decades is of the people taking every chance they can to forge enduring links while their governments fail to achieve meaningful amity (for a host of reasons, including the Cold War, the Kashmir dispute and the war in Afghanistan), then miss each new chance to redefine the relationship because of mistrust, disinterest or inertia. I can’t say I’ve ever given a lot of credence to Sen. John McCain’s opinions on foreign policy, especially because they usually involve more airstrikes than conversations. But earlier this week I heard him speak on the subject of US-India relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, and I thought he made a lot of sense — and achieved a meaningful rather than banal use of the word “strategic,” which in our time is no small thing — when he said:
Worse, America’s wars abroad and indulgence of Pakistan have often imposed unreasonable costs on India and generated intractable sticking points in the conversations between the respective regimes of the day, whether Republican or Democrat on the US side or the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party on the Indian side.
To the student of Indo-American relations, a romantic haze attaches itself to the days when John F Kennedy took a great interest in the problems of newly independent India, committed a vast sum to India in aid, and sent to India as ambassador perhaps the most influential American in that position to date: the charismatic and influential economist John Kenneth Galbraith. President Barack Obama should respond to that energy instead of trying to deflect it into initiatives that would once again be “no more than the sum of their parts.” It’s essential he contemplate India without the shadow of American interests in Pakistan and China falling over those thoughts. If for no other reason, it would show respect for the aspirations and realities of India’s 1.2 billion people.
It’s hard to see when there has been a more opportune moment to put down on a clean slate a vision of ties between the US and India for the 21st century, commensurate to political first principles and to the ties the two countries have already forged as societies and as economies. “Historic” is another overused word, but it would be a waste of the capital granted uniquely to political leadership if this month were not a historic one for US-India relations. WP-BLOOMBERG
By Chandrahas Choudhury
What ails relations between India and the United States? Nothing, if you were to believe the leaders and diplomats tasked with keeping the road between the two well-lit and clear of obstructions. The relationship between America and India links the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest one, between the great beacons of democracy in the West and the East.
The contact between our peoples grows ever more robust and more diverse. Immigration, tourism, education, culture — each has a burgeoning place in this story. We have similar visions of democracy and are committed to a secular state that best liberates the potential, and ensures the fundamental rights, of their multiethnic societies.
Well, perhaps my fancy begins to wax into excess here, but you see the point. There’s nothing wrong with Indo-US relations, but given what the countries share, they could be so much better. The history of the two countries in the last six decades is of the people taking every chance they can to forge enduring links while their governments fail to achieve meaningful amity (for a host of reasons, including the Cold War, the Kashmir dispute and the war in Afghanistan), then miss each new chance to redefine the relationship because of mistrust, disinterest or inertia. I can’t say I’ve ever given a lot of credence to Sen. John McCain’s opinions on foreign policy, especially because they usually involve more airstrikes than conversations. But earlier this week I heard him speak on the subject of US-India relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, and I thought he made a lot of sense — and achieved a meaningful rather than banal use of the word “strategic,” which in our time is no small thing — when he said:
Worse, America’s wars abroad and indulgence of Pakistan have often imposed unreasonable costs on India and generated intractable sticking points in the conversations between the respective regimes of the day, whether Republican or Democrat on the US side or the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party on the Indian side.
To the student of Indo-American relations, a romantic haze attaches itself to the days when John F Kennedy took a great interest in the problems of newly independent India, committed a vast sum to India in aid, and sent to India as ambassador perhaps the most influential American in that position to date: the charismatic and influential economist John Kenneth Galbraith. President Barack Obama should respond to that energy instead of trying to deflect it into initiatives that would once again be “no more than the sum of their parts.” It’s essential he contemplate India without the shadow of American interests in Pakistan and China falling over those thoughts. If for no other reason, it would show respect for the aspirations and realities of India’s 1.2 billion people.
It’s hard to see when there has been a more opportune moment to put down on a clean slate a vision of ties between the US and India for the 21st century, commensurate to political first principles and to the ties the two countries have already forged as societies and as economies. “Historic” is another overused word, but it would be a waste of the capital granted uniquely to political leadership if this month were not a historic one for US-India relations. WP-BLOOMBERG
