*The Return of the Prodigal Son, Almost: George Bush in India, Again

One would not know from reading American newspapers that George Bush —  who has become, we are (not altogether convincingly) told, something of a pariah in many parts of the world — had a second triumphal visit to India last week.  It would certainly be safe to say that Bush has been keeping a rather low profile since he left the White House in January.  Many of those who voted for Obama did so from the conviction that America had seldom had so poor a President as Bush.   Whatever the limitations of every other candidate, many people were altogether clear in their mind that Bush and the doctrines that he embraced had to be jettisoned.  Indeed, the Nobel Peace Prize conferred so strangely upon Obama has also been understood as a repudiation of Bush even more so than as an affirmation of anything that Obama might have done, other than bringing some degree of intelligence and honesty, as well as reasonable command over the English language, to the most powerful office in the world, that of the Presidency of the United States of America.

In the ten months since Bush relinquished the Presidency, he has made only two overseas trips, to South Korea and India.  He is not likely to receive a warm welcome in most European capitals.  His presence is everywhere a liability to the political leadership, except in India.  His state visit to India in 2006, though predictably and for good reasons opposed by many intelligent people, was nevertheless viewed in India and among Republicans as a considerable success.  On the present trip, Bush not only met with a slate of government officials, business executives, and policy types, but he also addressed the annual “Leadership Summit” hosted by the Hindustan Times.  No one, apparently, found it incongruous that Bush should have been pontificating on, of all things, leadership:  of course Bush would say that he knows a thing or two about leadership, among them how to bring a country to ruins, or how to push a reluctant world into a tumultuous war.  If Indian newspapers accounts are to be believed, Bush received a standing ovation both as he came striding into the hall and as he emerged from it after sharing his wisdom with a fawning crowd.

There is but little question that the United States remains the middle class Indian’s idea of the good life.   Many commentators in India are inclined to argue that Bush, moreover, is the best American friend that India has ever had, certainly the American President most receptive to India’s aspirations.   Whatever his hostility to the countries that to him represented ‘evil’, Indians are aware that Bush never doubted that India fell on the good side of the divide.  It is commonly supposed that Bush endeared himself to India’s politicians and elite with his energetic support for the civil nuclear cooperation agreement that was finally pushed through months before he left office.  Bush respected the integrity of India’s ambitions in this and other domains and, as Manmohan Singh gratefully acknowledged, was instrumental in putting an “end [to] India’s nuclear apartheid.”

There is, however, much more to the embrace of Bush found in India’s business and political circles than the hand of friendship offered by him to India.  In a cliché-ridden world, Bush found much truth in the idea that the world’s two largest democracies should be friends rather than adversaries.  In his address last week, he unabashedly pronounced India “a force for stability and peace in one of the most strategically important regions in the world.”  Bush’s simple-mindedness, many Indians are inclined to think, makes him capable of seeing things that Obama, brewing over the decisions that have to be made, overlooks.  In a strange way, Obama is more versed in realpolitik than Bush.  Both Bush and Obama, in their own ways, have taken the high moral ground, but Obama is, from the Indian standpoint, worrisome.  Obama is seen as a proponent of a nuclear hierarchy, though of course his positions are couched in the language of respect for international law (including the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to which India is not a signatory), and the intelligence he brings to his job conjoined to his notions of moral probity makes him unusually dangerous.

That Bush should have been so warmly welcomed on the eve of Manmohan Singh’s state visit to the United States tells yet another story, a story of the strands of individualism and resistance that luckily have never disappeared from the Indian landscape. I should like to say as well that Obama has been amply warned that a way with words will not earn him much mileage in a verbose culture.  When diplomacy perhaps demanded that Bush should have been kept at arm’s length, and certainly not been given access to political leaders, Indians did the very opposite. This, perhaps, is the saving grace of Bush’s visit to India.

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For the text of Bush’s speech at the State Dinner in his honor at Rashtrapati Bhavan (The Presidential Palace) in 2006, see the companion post on this blog entitled ‘My Man Mohan:  Dons of Democracies at Dinner Together’, 10 November 2009).

*My Man Mohan: Dons of Democracies at Dinner Together

Here is the text of President Bush’s Speech at the State Dinner in his honor at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, 3 March 2006 (reprinted with slight modifications from OUTLOOK, Web edition, 28 February-6 March 2006 issue, where it appeared as ‘I Believe in Big Dreams’):
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Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Pakistan; Mr. Man Mohan Singh, Prime Minister; and all other Indians

(Whispers from an aide:   Republic of India, Mr. President, not Pakistan.)

I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen, I did mean to say the Islamic Republic of India.  I just couldn’t remember where Air Force One was first supposed to land.  I am mighty pleased to be in this great country of yours and I thank My Man Mohan for his kind invitation from the bottom of my heart.   That great state of Texas where I come from is really heart county, we’ve got very big hearts, and I believe that some of your country’s great politicians have come down there to get their hearts fixed.  Would you believe it, but surgery may also be linking our great countries together.

Now my predecessor Bill Clinton — God bless him, his family and ours are getting cosier and cosier by the day, though I do wonder if I’ll ever be able to hold Hilary to my bosom — so my predecessor, on coming to your great country some years ago, said that it had always been his childhood dream to visit India.  Now I have to admit that I never had any such childhood dream.  It’s not that I didn’t have a childhood, indeed I know that some people think I never ceased being a child.   And I do dream — that great American, King’s his name, said you should dream from the mountain-top.  And like King, I believe in big dreams.  I never had the kind of dream that Bill Clinton did because, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, I never heard of India when I was a child.  You know they say that old habits die hard, and I never did leave behind the habit of not reading books.   You all know that I don’t read much of newspapers or reports, my advisers do that.  That’s why I’m President, you see, I don’t get to read anything.  But let me again thank Man Mohan Singh.  I knew about the political dynasties you’ve had, the father-daughter, daughter-son, husband-wife, father-grandson, great great grandfather-boy teams, the Gandhis, Nehrus, and even people I’d never heard of before, the Lallus and Yadavs, but I had hadn’t heard of the Mohan dynasty.  I guess I should have thought of it, given that both Mohan Das Gandhi and Man Mohan Singh had some kind of turban on their head.   I might not like to read much, but I sure do like picture books, and I’ve seen pictures of Gandhi when he wore a turban.

Condi told me all about the great country of India on the long journey on board.  I mean, there’s only so much sleeping that even a President can do.  We in America, and especially in Texas, know a thing or two about Indians.  Condi did tell me that that I shouldn’t be talking of teepees, face paint, feathers, squaws, bows and arrows, Geronimo, and Sitting Bull.  Some of that Indian culture has definitely left its mark on the youth of America today:  I do know that the paint is no longer applied to the face, but to the hands.  So I guess that’s why Condi didn’t want me to talk about face paint.  You in India have a great civilization, but it all really began in America.  Somewhere in the history book that was read to me it says that the Indians crossed over some body of water, I think it’s called the Berring Curve, and that was some 10,000 years ago.  That was a long time ago, and I really don’t know why many people continue to say that we in America have a very short history.  I now, and yes its’s true, and I have to admit, that there aren’t many Indians left in America, but most of them, you all know, died of diseases.  I guess it must be genetics, since I hear that you Indians are still dying of many diseases. But, truth be told, it’s not at all a bad thing that there aren’t many Indians in America.  There are over a billion of you in India, and my population experts told me that every sixth person in the world is an Indian.  That’s awesome.  Now if nature hadn’t done her work in America — God bless nature, always giving us global warmth and comfort — the Indians in America would have multiplied as fast as you have, and every fourth person in the world would be an Indian.  If you all believe in multiculturalism and diversity as much as I do, you have to agree that it’s a good thing that we don’t have so many Indians in America.  And the ones that are here, well they are in places that we call reservations where they can’t be seen.  It took me some time to understand why the Indians were called an invisible minority and why they seemed kinda upset.  So you see you just reserve special spots for minorities, but we being an older and more experienced democracy, we actually have a special place for them that we call reservations.  Isn’t that something?

As I said, it’s a great honor for me to be in India, another great home of multiculturalism.  This beautiful lady to my right — well, not quite, since no one is really to my right, except perhaps Pat Robertson, Tom De Lay (and he’s not part of my delegation, being on a delayed schedule) and that other Bill, Frist —  well, this elegant lady who’s from Italy and I’m told is something like an invisible hand running this country (why, it seems whenever we speak of India, we run into invisible people and invisible hands) – well, she’s Roman Catholic.  Man Mohan Singh is Sikh, which I’m told is said the same way we say sick, though why they call him that I sure don’t know, since he seems to be in really good shape, even without going biking, fishing, golfing, clearing the brush, and hunting.  What a life one has as President!  There’s no end of outdoor activity, I tell you.  And the President of your Republic, well, I was sort of shocked to know that he’s a Muslim, though Runny and Condi told me he’s a Hindu kind of Muslim, which really does sound so wonderful.  He reads a sacred text called the Bhagavad Gita, does yoga, doesn’t eat meat, and doesn’t like violence very much.  I mean, either you’re a Hindu, or a Muslim; either you’re with the Hindus, or with the Muslims.  Since we’re on the subject of Muslims, let me say what is one of the main things that brings me to this great country of yours.  Somehow, you’ll pardon me for saying so, when we get to talk about Muslims, we can’t seem to get away from killings, and passion, and violence, and all that stuff.   Now let me be very clear.  I know, though I don’t have any close Moslem friends, that Islam is a religion of peace, and most Moslems, like all Americans, are peace-loving people.  Now I might not read, but I sure do look at the funnies every morning.  Some days ago I heard about this huge fuss — people call it a ruckus, but I believe in plain language — over these Danish cartoons.  These Danish cartoons of Muhammad have got them Muslims stirring again.  In the war room at the White House, we have a large wall map of the world and all those strategic places that are of great interest to us from the standpoint of American national security are clearly marked.  I don’t know much about Denmark, but the White House geographer showed me this country and I couldn’t really figure out how Muhammad got to Denmark.  Now our Librarian of Congress who was present said something about not all being well in the state of Denmark, and when I asked him what he meant, he said it was a literary allusion to some play about a King of Denmark by that great Brit, Shakespeare.  He sure did shake up the world, and that too without a spear.  He only used a pen.  I finally realize, while I’m talking to you, why we always got this question in school, whether the pen was mightier than the sword.  I thought it was a rather daft thing to think that the pen could be mightier than the sword, but both Shakespeare and this Danish cartoons mess makes me think that I should rethink my position.  I hope you do realize what this means:  some people allege that thinking is not my strong suit, but I’m actually a man of very firm opinions.  I’d rather think than re-think.  We Americans are greater inventors, always coming up with new stuff.  Why rehash what’s around?  I’m not known for re-thinking anything, but God’s ways are mysterious.

Everyone knows me as a very focused person, but I’ve been really distracted today.  It must have something to do with being in India.  Our Librarian of Congress, and we have a mighty fine library in Congress, not that I’ve ever been to it, had been speaking of literary allusions.  Now I mean most of us have illusions, and in that special briefing I got on India they said that Hindus believe that the whole word is an illusion, that nothing’s real.  They even have a special word for it, they call it MAYA, although I always thought that was a Russian woman’s name.  Let me reassure Laura that I never knew any Maya.  We in America, and that must be our Indian heritage, know a thing or two about illusions too.  We never did find those weapons of mass destruction, but believe me, they’re not an illusion.  They’re there.  I’d compare these weapons of mass destruction with an onion.  You notice how many layers there are to an Indian?  I meant an onion.  You keep on peeling off layer after layer, but as you get closer to the truth, to the onion’s center, your eyes start to water.  I haven’t peeled an onion in years, but I know that for  a fact.  Yes, Sir, there are ugly facts in this world, and it’s a fact that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but our inspectors’ eyes started to water when they got close to discovering the truth.  We never found the weapons because we threw out the baby with the bath water.

So let me return to the subject of Muslims and say some words about why I’m here today.  I was told by Condi that some Muhammad fellow came to India some 1000 years ago, tore apart a Som-nose temple, and that you’ve been smarting ever since.  Your neighboring country, the one you all don’t get along with too well, even named one of its missiles after that place from where he came, Gas-ni or something.  Mean thing to do, I’d say.  You can see how Eye-raq and Afghanistan are both linked:  weapons of mass destruction and gas-ni (which must be really another way of saying gas-nose) are part of their common history.  So whether Mohamed is on cartoons or on missiles, I guess the trouble never ends.  I know that your leaders were telling us that you had plenty of experience with Moslems, but we weren’t inclined to listen to you.  We’ve got to continue to cooperate to hunt down those terrorists of al-Qaeda.  Many of them, I hear, are holed up in Pakistan.  That worst snake of all — he’s a coward, won’t come out in the open, bin Laden, well he just disappeared on us and has become invisible.  There we go again, I hope you all now understand what I meant when I said that there’s something about India and the word invisible that makes them go together.  The whole point of my trip is to change that, to put India on the map.  Wasn’t India where they had the disappearing rope trick?  I seem to remember something of that sort from the magic show I saw at the White House the day the Twin Towers slowly disappeared from the TV screen.  I am convinced that the power of illusion is truly great.   The War on Terror must go on, and I know that the partnership of our two great countries will be a model for the rest of the world.  Think of all the ways in which we complement each other:  you greet us with folded hands, we stretch out our hands in a firm (well, mostly firm, except for the kind of guys you see in “Heartbreak Mountain”) handshake; you venerate the cow, we love to eat it; your guys are up while we’re asleep; you think with your brain, we think with our bodies.

Our two great countries are on the verge of a special relationship.  Thanks to the Brits, we speak the same language.  Funny thing, that special report I got on your country had a little history lesson, and it said that a general called Cornwallis from Cornwall who was defeated soundly by our General Washington then went on to India.  They wanted a man of experience to spread democracy around the world.  Well, we’re both democracies now.  You have a President, and so do we — that’s me.  People who’ve been studying this kind of thing, you know democracies around the world — and they’re increasing, just look at Iraq, look at those turbaned Afghan women so eager to vote, and freedom’s on the march — say that the big difference is that your President is actually a figurehead.  Many of my critics have said that I’m a figurehead as well and for once my critics are right.  They were wrong about WMD, they were wrong about whether those Arabs would take to democracy like fish to oil, and they’ve been wrong about doggone everything else, except for one thing.  It really is Dickhead Cheney who’s running my government, and he did a very good job of it largely cause we kept him in hiding, just like Bill Laden.  My Dick is really good at nearly everything — he gets the contracts to the right people, wears a pacemaker — you know, I’m a great believer in going at the pace that our Maker set for me, in bed by nine o’clock sharp — and even knows how to fire a gun.  I’m sure you’ve all heard of this expression, Lame Duck President, but it goes to show that our reporters do not always adhere to the high standards that we expect of them.   Dick’s always had a preference for quail, not ducks.  And he’s too manly to shoot at lame ones.  I never did think of it before, but I wonder what happened to that other Quail, you know the guy who was Dick’s earlier incarnation under Ronnie?

Well, your excellencies and friends, I think I’ve gone on long enough.   We’ve got lot of important issues to talk about over the next two days of my visit, and that’s why I brought along my entire team.  God bless you all.

*‘The Greatest Threat to the Nation’: Manmohan Singh’s Carrot and the Stick

Two years ago, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the Naxalites, or Naxals as they are often known in India, as the ‘greatest threat’ to the country.  Manmohan Singh, who has earned, deservedly or otherwise, something of a reputation in India’s educated middle-class circles as a man of integrity and even gentleness, is not known for the expression of extreme sentiments.  He was not even known as a fighter, though the steadfastness with which he refused last year to bow to pressure to undo the nuclear deal, and the ‘grit’ with which he rode the storm that threatened to remove him from power, surviving a dramatic vote of no-confidence in Parliament, have perceptibly altered some people’s previous estimation of him as a weakling or, to put it even less charitably, a mere instrument of Sonia Gandhi.  There is even the sense that Manmohan may well have mastered Indian idioms of power holding much better than those who openly flaunt their power.  Meekness may be the best disguise for strength, just as often allowing the impression of being subjected to manipulation may be a subtler exercise of power.  Sonia Gandhi’s mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, certainly learnt these lessons well as she put the old Congress leadership through spins and turns following the death of her father and, shortly thereafter, Lal Bahadur Shastri.

The Naxals have now surfaced again, in pronouncements from Manmohan and Home Minister P. Chidambaram, as the ‘gravest internal security threat’ to the nation.  Addressing a conference in mid-September of Director Generals and Inspector Generals of Police, Manmohan admitted that there had not been much success in containing the ‘menace’ represented by the Naxalites.  ‘It is a matter of concern that despite our efforts,’ Manmohan told the gathering of the country’s highest law enforcement officers, ‘the level of violence in the affected states continues to rise.’  Manmohan has admitted that reducing Naxalism to a ‘law and order’ problem is not likely to yield the desired results, and in a recent speech he argued for a more ‘nuanced’ approach, which consists in nothing more than putting forward ‘development’ alongside the ‘maintenance of law and order’ as the twin-fold way of fighting ‘the Naxal menace gripping several parts of the country.’  Is it Manmohan’s stint at Oxford, awareness of the repression unleashed against fellow Sikhs during the height of the Khalistan insurgency, simple humanity, or what passes for his gentle demeanor that has made him less likely to embrace the more totalitarian vision of his home minister, who does not mince words when he describes ‘left-wing extremism’ as ‘the gravest challenge to our way of life, our republic and our democracy.’

Perhaps there is nothing subtler in Manmohan’s sense of how best ‘the Naxalite problem’ may be contained than the realization that the carrot may soften the blow of the stick.  Everything in the language of the state is reminiscent of India under colonial rule.  P. Chidambaram, the enlightened voice of reason, one of the heroes of India’s ascendancy into the ranks of what we might call ‘seriously developing’ nations, has even offered to make available the old colonial remedy, first practiced by the British in the Punjab and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), of bombing ‘Naxalite-infested’ areas from the air.  Indian Air Force helicopters with mounted guns, Chidambaram has argued, might legitimately be used to produce results.  As George Orwell noted in his essay on the debasement of the English language, the bombardment of people from the air came to be styled ‘pacification’.  The Naxalites are a ‘menace’, and the ‘infested’ areas must be rendered into submission:  but if all this sounds, as indeed it does, as though vast tracts of the land and people have become diseased, ‘tribal and other under-developed areas’ should be brought under the blessings of civilization.  I shall save for a later post my brief ruminations on the idea of ‘development’, which may be a slower way of leading ‘under-developed’ people to their death.  No state ever devised a more perfect recipe for the elimination of a people than by the promise that, for every atrocity committed under the name of ‘law and order’, they shall be compensated by the gift of a development project.  As one ponders India’s ‘Naxalite question’, it becomes transparently clear that the ‘greatest threat’ to India resides somewhere else than among the Naxalites.