I remember reading something once regarding how Indians have cast a wary eye towards the United Nations ever since they failed to do anything during the whole Indian-Pakistani flare-up after WWII. They do NOT trust the United Nations or the usual yammering about "multilateralism" or "the world community."

And there's surely a mutual understanding between us about the necessity of hunting down Islamist terrorist swine.

If you endorse the idea of the Anglosphere, India, now that it has moved beyond the old days of non-alignment, fits the concept quite well. Given the British Empire's legacy, it's not surprising.

Considering India has the world's second largest Muslim population I would be very curious to see what the breakdown would be along religious lines of the 62% who answered positively.

That's right. Moreover, by the end of this century, China could very well have turned out to be the proverbial hare, while India was the tortoise. Whatever the flaws of its political system, India has been a practicing democracy for decades. This is an achievement that China hasn't even begun to try to emulate, and all of China's economic gains are likely to be reversed when its corrupt dictatorship finally collapses. In contrast, India has an excellent chance to continue to enjoy steady economic growth under the governance of leaders who are elected and who aren't desperately trying to avoid being killed by an increasingly angry population out to take retribution for oppression and misrule. In the end, even though it will have done so with far less fanfare and with much less acclaim from Western intellectuals, India could very well win the economic race with China for creating enduring prosperity. If this scenario is even close to what will happen in the coming decades, the future will belong not to an authoritarian China with its Potemkin economy, but to an alliance between America and an increasingly prosperous and free India.

I am not sure that the leadership, particullarly Congres, is there yet. They still have a lot of anti-British, Pro-Soviet baggage.

In the long run yes.

Robert:

That's what we're talking about and the point of the story about the tortoise and the hare: the long run.

India is roughly 10% Muslim, or about 130 million people.

Congress does have plenty of baggage. A large section of the party is still trapped in the Fabian mode of Nehru and Indira Gandhi. However, the Indian diaspora in the States has played a role in pushing the Indian haute bourgeoisie(i..e much of the party apparat) to being more friendly towards America, seeing Britain for the cheesy museum piece with bad food that it is.

Indian democracy faces severe problems before we should be sanguine about its prospects though. Regional and linguistic differences, manifested by regional, linguistic and personalist parties, still matter. The caste structure remains in place and Dalits feel that they have gained little to no benefit from the recent expansion of the economy. The BJP was seen as heavily anti-Dalit. So long as large segments of the population see government's role as redistributionist rather than as enabling people to build their own futures and so long as a powerful group of politicos remains convinced a la francaise that they are better judges than the free market of who should get what, there will be trouble. Indian infrastructure, its legal system and its regulatory network are a total nightmare.

We should be friendly with India because the advancing India and our country have pretty much identical interests and we are both under siege from the Muslims. India is also a potential victim of PRC bullying which should make it a natural future partner along with Taiwan and Japan.

India is roughly 10% Muslim, or about 130 million people, IOW about 130 million more Muslims than any civilized society should be compelled to accept.

Congress does have plenty of baggage. A large section of the party is still trapped in the Fabian mode of Nehru and Indira Gandhi. However, the Indian diaspora in the States has played a role in pushing the Indian haute bourgeoisie(i..e much of the party apparat) to being more friendly towards America, seeing Britain for the cheesy museum piece with bad food that it is.

Indian democracy faces severe problems before we should be sanguine about its prospects though. Regional and linguistic differences, manifested by regional, linguistic and personalist parties, still matter. The caste structure remains in place and Dalits feel that they have gained little to no benefit from the recent expansion of the economy. The BJP was seen as heavily anti-Dalit. So long as large segments of the population see government's role as redistributionist rather than as enabling people to build their own futures and so long as a powerful group of politicos remains convinced a la francaise that they are better judges than the free market of who should get what, there will be trouble. Indian infrastructure, its legal system and its regulatory network are a total nightmare.

We should be friendly with India because the advancing India and our country have pretty much identical interests and we are both under siege from the Muslims. India is also a potential victim of PRC bullying which should make it a natural future partner along with Taiwan and Japan.