The difference in the reception of George W. Bush to that which greeted Bill Clniton in ealier days during visits to India is remakable, stark, and worrisome. As was the case of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first U.S. President to visit the world’s largest democracy, Clinton was greetef by cheering throngs of smiling, dancing admirers who threw rose petals at him. If somebody had thrown something at George W. Bush, he would have been well-advised to duck. Instead of enthusiastic welcomers, Bush was confronted with the spectacle of tens of thousands of Indians, of all religious faiths, proclaiming him to be a murderer and a butcher.
How did it get to this point? If anything, I have always been of the opinion that Bush should be given a modicum of credit for enouraging dialoque between the governments of India and Pakistan. This was doubtless due to the seeming decisivenness in which he dislodged the vile and despicable Taliban from their perches of power in Khandahar, as this set up within the region the atmosphere by which the two nations could be jointly discouraged from any further provoations, which usually are centered around the region of Kashmir, which both claim.
India in particular is a nation I have long suspected might one day become a world powe. It is, after all, the second most populous country in the world, with now over one billion people. It is also one of the largest antions in the world in terms of land mass, and has considerable natural resources at it’s disposal. They are also sufficiently aggressive when it comes down to matters of their own self-defense. Three times the nation of India has beentt he decisive victor against its hated rival Pakistan, and one time in the early nineteen sixties it sent the communist Chinese governemnt of Mao-Tse Tung retreating from it’s borders which it had unwisely invaded.
A number of facrors have prevented India from becoming a world power on a major scale. The first thing would have to be it’s religious based caste system, which has not only relegated a substantial majority of the population to a marginalized status, but has ensured that the nations abundant resources have been contained to the benefit of the ruling elite. This and a series of natural disasters, mostly due to monsoons, but also alternately drought, have hastened and enhanced the effects of famine and pestilence. If the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse had a headquarters, India would be the place.
The fact that they weret raditionally divided into warring states made them easy prey to fall to such conquerors as the Muslim Moguls, and later the British, who were in their own way as responsible for keeping the nation destitute as any, until the coming of Ghandhi.
Ghandi set this nation on it’s opriginal road toward the world status that it will doubltess eventuallly acquire, and at the expense of the U.S., as they stand to become an economic powerhouse, and one of our most worrisome competitors. Rest assurred, they have not forgotten that, since the days of the Nixon Asdministration, our nation has typically sided with the Pakistanis, despite the fact that India was by far the most open society, and the only true democracy in the region. Payback is a bitch.
For a brief time, Clinton seemed to have reversed the trend, and though Bush has not been anti-Indian, they seem to have somehow decided that this President is the one they should take their frustrations and resentments out on. Irony of this is, while I am not a supporter of George W. Bush, and I resent his lies and deceits by way of the Iraqi War, and the fact that he has failed to sufficiently follow through with the Afghan successes, and failed to devote the resources necessary to shore up the security of that fledgling new democracy-I wonder how this is of concern to India. While Bush has shored up, or attempted to anyway, his partnership with Musharraf of Pakistan, this does not seem to have been at the expense of India. Again, if aything Bush has encouraged dialoque between the two long bitter rivals. The dialoque and admittedly tacit cooperation between the two seems ot have progressed toa more positve point than at any time previously.
This would probably be the reasoning behind the proposed Bush visit to the tomb of Gandhi. Bush’s detractors say this is the height of hypocrisy, that a war-mongering President such as he has been should not step foot near the tomb of such a great man of peace. Ordinarily I would agree. Yet, in just this one instance, given Bush’s role in encouraging dialoque and diplomacy between the two, even over such a profoudly contoversial issue as the Kashmir region, his presence at the tomb may, in fact, be unusually appropriate.
