Kerry or Bush?

An article by my father, S. Viswam,

Courtesy: Janata, Mumbai, India.

Kerry or Bush: Who is better for India? The cover of the latest issue of Outlook magazine (Oct 25) poses this question, and the article inside discusses the merits and demerits of the two candidates in the coming November 2 Presidential polls but leaves the answer in the hands of the reader.

Does India care? Or should India care? Does it really, really matter to the one billion Indians who rules the United States? Conversely, does it really, really matter to any American President, Democrat or Republican, what India thinks of him and what it expects from him? I honestly don’t know whether the American presidency is such a crucial factor in the life of the ordinary Indian that he has to prefer one to the other. Certainly, it may matter a great deal to the Indian Ambassador in Washington which administration, Democratic or Republican, he has to deal with. Also, certainly, it may matter a great to the foreign policy establishment in South Block which depends a great deal on the Ambassador’s inputs to assess America’s India policy. Also, to the numerous “think tank” souls in New Delhi who are expected to be “in the know” of anything and everything in international relations. But to the so-called “average Indian” or the proverbial “man in the street”, Bush or Kerry, the more America changes the more it remains the same. Does America change ever? Even after 9/11 has it changed? It is still America for itself and the devil take the rest of the world.

The debate in India over the years has always been on a related issue. Not which man but which party is better for India, the Democratic or the Republican. And the jury is still out on that issue. During the Nehru era, there was a general belief in the Nehru-led foreign policy establishment that the Democrats were more sympathetic to India than the Republicans. This belief arose out of the knowledge that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his better-known-in-India wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, supported India’s freedom struggle and exerted influence and pressure on the Imperialist Winston Churchill to be more sensitive to “the Indian situation”. The belief acquired some meat and bones during the Kennedy presidency. Nehru and Kennedy were said to have hit it off at their first meeting, and photographs of the two handsome men obviously enjoying each other’s company made the front pages both in India and the US. Kennedy’s assassination came as a personal tragedy to thousands of Indians who had been so captivated by the Kennedy lore that they felt a good friend of India had gone. However, face-to-face Nehru did not seem as much impressed by the Kennedy mystique as he was by the Kennedy legends floating around Washington those days. Nehru dozed when Kennedy was talking to him!

Indians have learnt by bitter experience that the so-called Democrat sympathy for India was a myth. Even so, the myth survived for many years thanks partially also to the fact that Republican Nixon tilted towards Pakistan and sent the Seventh Fleet to the Indian shores and partially to the fact his Democrat predecessors, particularly Johnson, never tried to stab India in the back. Thousands of Indians cheered when Nixon was forced to quit after the Watergate scandal.

Indira Gandhi found it easier to establish a personal rapport with Johnson than her father could with Kennedy. She returned from Cancun after meeting Johnson “feeling good” about relations with the US. She found Nixon totally insensitive, and in turn, Nixon thought she was a “cold lady”. In India’s eyes, any President after Nixon would be an improvement, but it hoped that equations would be easier to establish with a Democratic administration. New Delhi’s perceptions about Democrats being easier to deal with quickly evaporated. Carter was the first Democrat President to visit India, but the euphoria over his visit ended suddenly and dramatically when his threat (supposedly delivered in a private conversation in the VVIP suite in Rashtrapati Bhavan with a White House aide) to “send a nasty note to the old man” ( the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai) was publicly heard outside thanks to an open telephone line. The contentious issue between the two countries in those days, as it has been in subsequent decades, related to India’s nuclear ambitions and America’s desperate attempts to halt them.

India-US relations were more or less stagnant during the unremarkable tenure---for both the US and India--- of George Bush Sr. But the Clinton era saw revival of new hopes of a Democrat President showing greater understanding and sensitivity to India’s concerns. Nothing much came out of these hopes. Clinton the Democrat was no different from his Republican predecessors. In fact, on the nuclear issue, he was harsher and totally unsympathetic, even to the extent of imposing economic sanctions on India. The only difference between Clinton and his Republican predecessors was that his public relations were better, he could switch on charm, and he could sound extremely friendly even when he rebuked India for not coming to terms with Pakistan. He must have been taken aback when the Indian MPs fawned on him unabashedly after his Central Hall address and fell over one another to shake his hands.

And George Bush Jr. A Republican, and the son of a Republican President. Winning the presidency from Democrat Al Gore by default. Gore at least knew his India. He authored a well-regarded book on Mahatma Gandhi. He may have done better by India. But he was pipped at the post. Bush was unsure whether Vajpayee was India’s Prime Minister or President. But then, his knowledge of the world outside Texas was minimal. He was and is unsure of many things, including the English language.

However, incredibly enough, India-US bilateral relations have registered a phenomenal upswing under his presidency. The Bush administration has been able to exert enormous pressure and influence on New Delhi’s foreign policy establishment. His Secretary of State Powell claimed last week that he was instrumental in forcing Vajpayee to offer the olive branch to Pakistan during his now famous April 2003 Srinagar speech, that it was at his suggestion to President Musharraf that Pakistani Prime Minister Jamali lifted the telephone to say “Hi” to Vajpayee, that he inspired the India-Pakistan peace process and so on. What is even more incredible is that Bush has managed to stay on the right side of India despite tilting heavily, like Nixon, towards Pakistan, even to the extent of declaring that country as the non Nato ally, and that too after bluntly refusing to support India’s membership of the UN Security Council. And, to the utter surprise of the Indian external affairs ministry, a Republican administration under Bush is committing itself seriously to engage in a strategic partnership with India and has made a small beginning by agreeing have military-to-military cooperation, and to provide access to US high technology and permit technology transfers.

But all this does not make Bush more acceptable to India than his predecessors or even his current opponent, Democrat Kerry. Overweighing every other consideration, the Indian assessment of Bush and his presidency will always hit the bottomline of his needless war against Iraq, his totally unimaginative post-Iraq leadership, his obsession with Saddam, his uncritical endorsement of Musharraf, his “right or wrong, support Pakistan” policy, and his anti-Muslim, anti-Islamic campaign which has already polarised the world into “good Christians and bad Muslims”.

And John Kerry? Neither officialdom nor the Indian public knows him or his history or what he stands for. No one knows how hot or soft he is on India, or even whether he cares about what India thinks. Between the unknown Kerry and the known-devil Bush, Indians may plump for Bush, even while suspecting that nothing will change basically if Bush is re-elected. Kerry has yet to say something which will stimulate India’s interest in his candidature, but he is not all that of an unknown commodity to the more influential among the 550,000 Indian-Americans who are raising funds for him nor to the equally influential Indian-Americans who are raising funds for Bush. Obviously, they are hedging their bets, but the Indians at home are in position to place bets on either of them. And incidentally, how is it that India never bothered to worry about who is better for India,Putin or whoever his opponent was?Or who is better for India, Sukarnoputri or Yuyodhana who fought each other in the Indonesian elections? Or who is better for India, Jang Zemin or Hu in China? But we are worried over who will be the winning candidate in the US elections!

Ran Beers, John Kerry’s national security advisor, is probably more acceptable to India than the candidate himself. The Outlook carries an interview with him in which whatever he has said re. India will sound like music to Indian ears. He says, and that too without any ifs and buts, that cross-border terrorism in Kashmir must end, that Kerry will actually adopt a soft line on business outsourcing to India, that unlike Bush, Kerry will visit India, that the strategic partnership will get more content and a positive direction under Kerry, and that Kerry will work for strengthening co-operation with India in all fields.

But then, unfortunately, Beers is not the candidate against Bush. And Kerry as a candidate and Kerry as President could be two different beings altogether.

Who is better, Bush or Kerry? The question perhaps is being raised in many other countries as well. Every country is involved with the US in one way or another. There is no escape from this sole surviving super power. It is not only the self-appointed world policeman but it hesitates not a bit in poking its nose in everybody’s affairs, whether it is Haiti or Honduras, India or Pakistan, Iraq or Iran, South Korea or North Korea, China or Japan, or ………American interests overtake the interests of the rest of the world. And whichever party rules the US, no President can get out of the superpower syndrome. The US is the 20th-21st century Imperial Power and its tentacles reach far and wide. Which is why the Indian media, like the media in many other countries, bothers itself with a question like who is better, Bush or Kerry.

It is inconceivable that the American media, powerful as it is, will ever bother itself with a question like, say, who is better for America, Vajpayee or Sonia Gandhi?! The American media could not care less who gets elected where. It is obsessed with America. Everything else comes after America. Other countries come under its radar only when they individually or collectively threaten or harm American interests.

During his visit to the US, P.V.Narasimha Rao and President Clinton addressed a joint press conference in the White House. The only question Rao had to answer was from an Indian correspondent who asked whether Clinton had done any arm-twisting on the nuclear issue. Rao said that both his arms were intact. Clinton was mighty pleased with the answer, but it provoked no follow-up of any kind. No American correspondent, and there were dozens of them, asked Rao a question on the talks he had with Clinton, nor did any of them ask Clinton himself how the talks had gone. The press conference lasted an hour, and all the questions were addressed to Clinton while Rao stood forlorn holding the lectern, and all the questions were about US policies and decisions about the issues that were agitating the Us at that time. The Indian Prime Minister may well have been invisible as far as the American media was concerned.

That story is a telling foot note to the question, who is better, Bush or Kerry? Makes no difference, really. The more things change in the US the more they remain the same. Particularly, the Super Power syndrome. But that syndrome will change only another Super Power emerges on the world scene. When will that be? Not in your lifetime or mine. So, for today, the question has to be who is better for India Bush or Kerry? Who cares? I don’t. Do you?