M.D.
Nalapat
When
President Barack Obama travels to India in early November, he will be visiting
a country much more conscious of skin color than his own. Because of his mixed
Euro-African ancestry, Barack Obama's election as President of the United
States is seen in India as a transformational event. The fact that millions of
American voters of European extraction preferred him to John McCain affirmed a
truth widely believed in India about the United States, that America is
culturally "quadricontinental" and not "unicontinental."
The American melting pot has given the world not just a vibrant people (of
multiple hues) but also a composite culture that is a fusion of strands from
Africa, Europe, Asia and South America. Unfortunately, change even in the Obama
administration seems to be only skin-deep. The contemporary Washington
"establishment" obsessively considers itself and America to be, in
effect, an extension of Europe, in much the same way as the ruling structures
in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
All three
of these latter countries may be termed as belonging to the classical "Anglosphere," the
geopolitical construct ascribed to Winston Churchill in which ethnicity trumped
almost all other qualities. It was Churchill, the wartime prime minister of
Great Britain, who insisted over President Roosevelt's objections that the
freedoms promised in the Atlantic Charter were to apply only to the peoples of
Europe and not to those in Asia or Africa who were denied their liberty for
years after the Allied victory in the "war for democracy." A war in
which, let it be noted, more than two million Indian soldiers served (and a
further six million auxiliaries worked in defense industries and logistics).
This is a figure far in excess than the numbers mustered by France yet Winston
Churchill rewarded France with a seat at the post-war High Table in preference
to India. Had Churchill continued to get his way, even China would not have
gained admission to the Big Five in the United Nations Security Council, as the
country was not European or neo-European. While Churchill deserves the
admiration of the world for the manner in which he confronted Germany's Nazi
dictatorship, his attitude in matters of ethnicity marked him as belonging
firmly to the 19th century.
With Barack
Obama's 2009 entry into the Oval Office, it was expected that the United States
would lead the way to what may be termed a "21st Century
Anglosphere," the grouping of countries with common linguistic, cultural
and, let it be admitted, colonial ties to the former British Empire. While this
concept has been around for some time, especially since Churchill emphasized
the unity of the "English-speaking countries" in the period since
German aggression launched World War II, what may be termed the "Classical
(or Churchillian) Anglosphere" had ethnicity in addition to the English
language as its foundation. Churchill rejected Roosevelt's view that those of
the English-speaking world but not of European ancestry had the same claim to
cultural and other traditions of that world.
An
Entrenched Establishment Retards India's Political and Economic Development
Along with
the United States and, of course, the United Kingdom, India would be the major
player in a 21st century partnership of the English-speaking countries. Given
that India is still a "work in progress," a closer association with
the Anglosphere should help to nudge the country's ruling elites towards the
legal and institutional reforms needed for a deepening of its democracy. An
obvious candidate for change would be the prevailing political party structure
in India, each of which is dominated by either a single family or an equally
self-perpetuating clique of individuals.
