Shining India?
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
Those who are bedazzled by the myth of Shining India would have their illusions punctured by seeing the new movie, “Aarakshan”, which spotlights the intolerance of upper caste Hindus to have the untouchable Dalit share the same piece of the cake. India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, has banned this movie.
India, however, is now widening its international reach even in distant Latin America, where, according to an article in Americas Quarterly (Spring 2011):
“India is now a palpable economic presence from the Caribbean to Uruguay … Since 2000, Indian companies have invested about $12 billion in the region.”
It is fashionable nowadays for Washington policy-elites to gush like salesmen about the virtues of India and tout shared values, common approach, and mutual trust.
Tensions with Pakistan and China have reinforced Washington’s new romance with Delhi. The US-India nexus includes, but is not limited to, close-knit defense cooperation, military sales, joint naval exercises, and making the latest American technology available to India.
On July 20, in a policy speech in Chennai, India, Hillary Clinton, noting that “our interests align and our values converge,” further remarked:
“We have watched the progress of India with great admiration. You have … focus[ed] on improving lives, particularly on the poorest among you … We share common interests like stopping terrorism.”
No wonder Indians term the November 2008 Mumbai attacks as 26/11, to rhyme with 9/11.
Hillary is a vocal proponent of women rights. But can her star-struck position withstand the rigorous scrutiny of a fact check? A documentary movie, “The Forgotten Woman” (2008), highlights the harrowing plight of Hindu widows in India abandoned by family and society.
Singing the same tune as Hillary, Senator John Cornyn, Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and co-founder and co-chair of the US Senate India Caucus, remarked on June 22 that the US and India “share similar security concerns in a very dangerous world … because we share the same strategic challenges and many of the same values.” He also stated that India now conducts more military exercises with the US than with any other country.
The popular upsurge generated by the anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare speaks volumes about how the Indian public itself views Shining India.
Washington is pressing the international community to believe something that Indians don’t believe themselves.
In a foreword for a 1991 book, “Caste or Democracy” by M.N. Masud (private secretary to Maulana Azad), former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral remarked that “the Caste system is patently based on social injustice and iniquity. It is anti-democratic. The society cannot have democratic equality expressed through votes and social iniquity practiced through barbarous Caste practices.”
On August 23, TheNew York Times cited an investigative report by the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission cataloguing the existence of mass graves containing over 2,000 bodies.
Much of the Indo-US nexus has, in effect, been enabled by the failure of Pakistani policy and diplomacy, which is quite comfortable in a subservient role. It has failed to frame a counter-narrative. Not recognizing the problem means not correcting it.
