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Bil Vil Pyaar Vyar

There are two ways of looking at it.

One: We are the best hosts in the world. Mehmaan jo hamara hota hai woh jaan se pyara hota hai. We are the kind of people who bend backwards to welcome anyone home and when that anyone also happens to be the most powerful man in the world, it should surprise no one when we go over the top in playing the host. Cleaning up the roads, painting buildings, driving beggars away, repairing the traffic lights: it suddenly seems that Clinton is an excuse for showing ourselves what we can do to our cities if we really want to.

Two: Our colonised mindset is showing up. We love the rich and the powerful to come and take us over and, much as we may protest against imperialism, we actually enjoy playing the role of a vassal. Three hundred years of Muslim rule. Two hundred years of British rule. Fifty years of rule by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and yet India has not changed an iota. We remain what we always were. Slaves. If it were not for the Great Mughals or the East India Company or the First Family of Indian politics we would have found some other reason to crawl on all fours. And William Jefferson Clinton is as good a reason as any other.

But, whichever way you look at it, the Clinton visit is a watershed in Indo-US relations. It was necessary. In fact, it was inevitable and, I would say, imperative. Imperative because it is time India and the US looked at each other without prejudice. For never before have they needed each other more.

India needs the US for obvious reasons. It needs more dollars, more investment, more technology, more foreign trade. Given the fact that the US is India's single largest trading partner, its importance cannot be underestimated any more. It is also our most natural ally. The socialist demonology, a creation of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, must now give way to the realisation that politically and culturally we are closer to the Americans than any other country in the world.

They share our excitement over democracy. We share their concern for human rights. We love Ally McBeal, Coke and Wranglers. They love our chicken tandoori, Sabeer Bhatia and basmati rice. We want their venture capital, their green cards, their high paying jobs in Silicon Valley. They want to patent our neem, our karela, our jamun. They also want our huge market to offload their junk foods and their trash culture. We find out there a market for our yoga, our vaastu, our ayurveda. They love our Wipro, our Infosys, our Satyam. We love their Walt Disney, their Microsoft, their Amazon dot com.

In other words, we are ideally made for each other and as the new economy grows in the ICE Age, we are finding that our vision of the future is identical.

For years, America wooed Pakistan and pretended to believe that it can make Pakistan into another India. But you cannot beat a donkey, as the good proverb says, and make it into a race horse.

For years, India sucked up to the Soviet Union and pretended to believe that Russia was a super power comparable to the United States. But just as a crow cannot become a peacock simply by sticking bright feathers to its bottom, Russia exposed its true colours the moment it became free from the Communist yoke.

It is time, therefore, for India and the US to give up these silly pointless games and recognise each other for what they actually are. America is undoubtedly the biggest and strongest military and industrial power in the world and, foolish as it often is in matters of understanding the sensibilities of smaller nations, the fact remains that it believes in and respects democratic values and, all said and done, its interests coincide with India's in most matters. India must realize this.

The US must also recognise the fact that India is an emerging nation, prickly and self righteous at times, but it is the one nation in the one world that can stand up to totalitarian China and the frightening spectre of Islamic fundamentalism in Asia. There is no way Pakistan will stand by the US when the chips are down. It is far too compromised to the fundamentalists who use it for sponsoring terrorism in the name of Islam. It may claim to be a friend of the US but its soul is mortgaged to Osama bin Laden.

We must also stop seeing the US as this arrogant and boorish superpower always wanting to cut us down to size. We must make a special effort to understand what are its compulsions and why it sometimes behaves the way it does. You cannot expect the whole world to respect the complex nuances of your own foreign policy if you are not ready to respect the foreign policy of others.

To have expected Clinton to drop Pakistan from his itinerary was a foolish idea in the first place. We must encourage Clinton to go to Pakistan and to try and maintain some influence over them. It is for our good. We have burnt our bridges. There are no channels of communication left with Pakistan and that in itself is a dangerous thing when you are dealing with a bunch of half-crazed hawks who have inherited a basket economy and an undermined political system.

They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by pushing things to the edge. They are foolish and frenzied. Yet they are clever enough to figure out that in any war, India will be the main loser for in today's world wars are never won or lost in the battlefield. They only fester and destroy whatever nations have built up over decades of toil and struggle.

Pakistan knows that India is growing stronger by the day. Our democracy remains in place despite all the prognostications of doom and despair. Our economy is at an all time high and, if things continue to go this way, we are all set to emerge as one of the great powers of the future.

Nothing can set us back except perhaps a silly and pointless confrontation with Pakistan. That is why even though we may be militarily stronger than Pakistan, a battle in Kargil will always hurt us more. They have nothing to lose but a war. We have much to lose even if we win the war.

That is why all means of communication must stay open. All channels. In fact, even as we take harder and harder political positions against each other, we must still keep talking through unofficial channels and keep trying to find ways and means out of this foolish, senseless confrontation. Luckily for us, America's interests coincide with ours. They want exactly what we want.

Just as we cannot afford to allow the jehadi forces to win against us, nor can America. For the very terrorists who are striking against Indian targets today are the ones who will strike at American targets tomorrow. Kargil is just a trial run. The real target, for them, is the Pentagon.

It is, therefore, time to join hands and confront the real enemy. An enemy that is dangerous, resourceful, ready to strike at the very heart of democracy. An institution both the US and India cherishes. That is why we must chart out a common plan of action on how to take them on.

Pakistan will not listen to us. They cannot afford to. That is why we need Clinton to go there and din some sense into their thick heads.

Pritish Nandy

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