M D Nalapat
During
the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidential term, “Billary” (
Bill and Hillary Clinton) has been his motto. More than 90% of his
policies, and his staff - those not Republican -come from the ranks of
those who supported Hillary Clinton and husband Bill in their personal
attacks on the charismatic African-American who overshadowed them.
Within his administration, he formidable trio of Defense Secretary
Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Commerce Secretary
Gary Locke saw India as a troublesome country that ought to be told to
behave (in other words, accept US diktat) before being given any
concessions. Their condescension towards India was in contrast to the
stand taken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who backed Indian
independence even while Winston Churchill said that the “Hindoos were a
beastly people” who do not deserve freedom.Of course, Churchill believed
that Muslims too ought to remain British subjects for eternity.
President Roosevelt (and his idealistic spouse Eleanor) disagreed,
pointing out that the Atlantic Charter to which both the UK and the US
was committed stood for freedom. Of course, Churchill’s reply was that
only those of European origin deserved to be free. The rest should
remain in the same way as several European peoples were under the
occupation of Hitler-led Germany.
Although they pass themselves off as “liberals”, there is a subliminal prejudice beneath the “tolerant”l veneer of several of the East Coast intellectuals who form the bulk of the Clinton cohort. They are people who would like to freeze “primitive” societies into their present lifestyles, the way anthropologist Verrier Elwin got Jawaharlal Nehru to do to the North-east. Because of Nehru’s policies, the Northeast of India was denied development, so that “the people may continue in their pristine way”. Even today, the standard of roads and other infrastructure in that region is way below that of other parts of India. While George W Bush embraced multiculturalism - especially as it related to the vibrant Hispanic community - Bill Clinton sought to impose solutions on the rest of the world in partnership with Europe. To the Talbotts and the Holbrookes, the only way a country can be a “responsible stakeholder” is if it accepted the US-EU position on all major issues. Small wonder that many were sceptical of the faith of Manmohan Singh that President Obama would not come to India empty-handed, but would announce several major agreements in a Rooseveltian spirit.
