FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS...:

India, a natural ally (Larry Pressler, 2/02/03, Washington Times)

America must decidedly change its India-Pakistan policy: in particular, to side with democracy and human rights. We should then invite strategically located India to join us at the foreign policy altar.

Beginning with a state visit to New Delhi, Mr. Bush should acknowledge India as America's foremost friend in this corner of the world. Forming a free-trade zone with India - the arrangement similar to NAFTA or the free-trade zones in Africa and, essentially, with Israel - should follow. The United States must also reduce military aid to Pakistan and demand that Pakistan stop terrorist activities against India.

In Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau suggests that one of the best ways to neutralize a rival power is to make good friends with its neighbor. Embracing India could, perhaps, push China toward democracy and a new respect for human rights. A political alliance with India - in addition to a synergetic economic relationship - would stimulate trade and boost America's economy. And, in the war on terrorism, this new partnership would prove America values a country that treats its Muslim minority well.

A billion Indian people of diverse faiths practice democracy and enjoy religious freedom. They look to courts for justice, respect human rights, and, in short, embody American values far more than our closest allies in this region. It is time for Mr. Bush to embrace India - as a key ally, democratic torchbearer and trading partner - for the sake of security in a post war world.

We yield to no one in our enthusiasm for an alliance with the belt of nations across Asia--Turkey, Israel, Afghanistan, India, Taiwan, etc.--that are struggling to create or maintain democracy. India, positioned between an increasingly radicalized Pakistan and a still dangerous China, has a particularly pivotal role to play in suuch an axis of good. However, before we can embrace her fully, India has to face up to the long term incompatibility of genuine freedom with its current Hindu nationalism The Other Face of Fanaticism (PANKAJ MISHRAFebruary 2, 2003, NY Times Magazine):

There was much relief, also some puzzlement, when the assassin [of Gandhi] was revealed as Nathuram Godse, a Hindu Brahmin from western India, a region relatively untouched by the brutal passions of the partition.

Godse had been an activist in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers Association, or R.S.S.), which was founded in the central Indian city of Nagpur in 1925 and was devoted to the creation of a militant Hindu state. During his trial, Godse made a long and eloquent speech claiming that Gandhi's ''constant and consistent pandering to the Muslims'' had left him with no choice. He blamed Gandhi for the ''vivisection of the country, our motherland'' and said that he hoped with Gandhi dead ''the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan.'' Godse requested that no mercy be shown him at his trial and went cheerfully to the gallows in November 1949, singing paeans to the ''living Motherland, the land of the Hindus.''

Now, more than half a century later, many Indians feel that the R.S.S. has never been closer to fulfilling its dream. Its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party, B.J.P.), the most important among the ''Sangh Parivar'' -- the ''family'' of various Hindu nationalist groups supervised by the R.S.S. -- has dominated the coalition government in New Delhi since 1998. Both Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India's prime minister, and his hard-line deputy and likely heir, L.K. Advani, belong to the R.S.S., and neither has ever repudiated its militant ideology.

In the last five years, the Hindu nationalists have conducted nuclear tests and challenged Pakistan to a fourth and final war with India. They have taken a much harsher line than previous governments with the decadelong insurgency in the Muslim majority state of Kashmir, which is backed by radical Islamists in Pakistan. After a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, they mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops on India's border with Pakistan. The troops were partly withdrawn last October, but a war with Pakistan -- one involving nuclear weapons -- remains a terrifying possibility and is in fact supported by powerful, pro-Hindu nationalist sections of the Indian intelligentsia.

The Hindu nationalists' attempts to stoke Hindu fears about Muslims also appear to be succeeding among many of India's disaffected voters. In December, the B.J.P. won elections in the western state of Gujarat, despite being blamed by many journalists and human rights organizations for the vicious killings of more than 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat early last year. [...]

Many secular Indians saw the ghost of Nathuram Godse presiding over the killings in Gujarat. In an article in the prestigious monthly Seminar, Ashis Nandy, India's leading social scientist, lamented that the ''state's political soul has been won over by [Gandhi's] killers.''

India deserves the same amount of patience as Israel receives as it works out the not dissimilar difficulties of maintaining a society with an especially large religious minority, but that can't include our acceptance of what have come to resemble state-sponsored pogroms. We will be doing our friends in India no favor if we turn a blind eye to these problems. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2003 12:33 PM