RULES OF AMERICAN ENGAGEMENT
It was during his landmark visit to India in the year 2000 that the then US President Bill Clinton described the Indian subcontinent and the Line of Control in Kashmir as “the most dangerous place in the world today”. Clinton was voicing a sentiment deeply ingrained in American perceptions about South Asia, exacerbated by India and Pakistan coming out of the nuclear closet with back-to-back nuclear tests in May 1998. Srinath Raghavan’s well-researched book picks on this enduring element in the US narrative on South Asia as a template to examine the drivers of its engagement with our region since the birth of the American republic. In this description are embedded notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority and entitlement, that nuclear weapons are safe in responsible American hands but not in immature South Asian hands, that the leaders of South Asian countries are incapable of knowing what is good for their countries and in need either of constant hand-holding or raps on their knuckles to be kept out of mischief. The value of Raghavan’s book lies in the historical context it provides to the changing texture of US relations with the Indian subcontinent under British colonial rule and later with the successor states of India and Pakistan. There are cultural and psychological prisms that colour US perceptions and these change slowly. But there are also historical processes that compel both the US and its partners in South Asia to constantly adjust their attitudes and relations to a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. It is a complex story but in the hands of a truly accomplished historian, it is a most compelling and absorbing read.
The focus is on US interactions with undivided India before 1947 and with India and Pakistan thereafter. Afghanistan figures, but mainly because it impinges on Pakistan and for its role in the post 9/11 US war on terror.
It should come as no surprise that much of the book is about the US juggling its relations with India and Pakistan. Up until the end of the last millennium, US relations with Pakistan were framed in the context of the Cold War. Pakistan sought alliance with the US to counter India while the US sought Pakistan as an ally in its confrontation with the Communist threat represented by the Soviet Union and China. Later it became an ally,
though a reluctant one, in the war against terror. But Washington has also played a role as crisis manager, defusing multiple India-Pakistan confrontations through active diplomacy. Keeping India in its place may also have been an objective. As late as 1993, the US Defence Policy Guideline stated that the ‘US should discourage Indian hegemonic aspirations over the other states in South Asia and the Indian Ocean’. This has undergone a change, with India now emerging as a possible partner in a countervailing coalition to constrain China.
Raghavan covers the broad sweep of history from the founding of the American republic to the present in 10 chapters with a concluding chapter at the end. As he explains, his aim is to highlight three key dimensions of US engagement with the region.
The first is the American pursuit of power in its political, economic and military aspects and the place occupied by the region in this context. During the Second World War, Roosevelt sympathised with India’s struggle for freedom but muted it in deference to working together with Britain to defeat Germany and Japan. With the end of the war, US hegemony was a reality as was the onset of the Cold War. US relations with the newly independent states of India and Pakistan played out in the growing ideological and military confrontation between the East and West. India remaining non-aligned while Pakistan eagerly sought alliance with the US meant that the democratic affinity between India and the US was mostly sacrificed at the altar of geopolitical compulsions. In contrast, Raghavan has also shown how much US perceptions of India were favourably influenced in the post-Cold War era by India’s own turn to market-based reforms and liberalisation in 1992, in the aftermath of a grave economic crisis. As the author points out, “There was a graceful symmetry, therefore, in India’s simultaneous turn towards the United States in the global economic order underpinned by American hegemony.”
The second dimension the book covers is the role of ideology, in particular the notions of American exceptionalism, of manifest destiny, an exemplar democracy and being the indispensable nation. In this the US distinguished itself from the old world imperialism, exemplified by the British. This also explains the enduring allure of India as a successful plural democracy even though this has not always kept India on the same side of the fence as the US. Under Trump, this affinity in values has lost some of its shine with relations becoming more transactional.
It is the third dimension explored by Raghavan—culture—which is perhaps the book’s most significant contribution. This is an aspect of relations between India and the US particularly, which has not been analysed with any great depth so far and yet has played an important role in influencing attitudes and perceptions on both sides. The author explores in some detail the activities of American missionaries who came to proselytise in India and conveyed back home highly negative images of religious and ritual practices of the Hindus. But there were also others who were attracted to the esoteric philosophies and spiritual heritage of the same Hindus. This latter trend has continued in the popularity of various India gurus and the practice of yoga. Music has also been a bond. While American jazz and pop music have enthralled generations of young Indians, Indian classical music has many admirers in the US. Raghavan has also drawn attention to the increasingly influential role of Indian-Americans in shaping American perceptions of India and Indians. The ubiquitous presence of Indian entrepreneurs and scientists in the Silicon Valley has done much to raise the standing of India and the Indians generally in the US. Taken together, these influences have probably had a much greater role in the transformation of India-US relations in the new millennium than we realise.
This is one of the best histories of US engagement with South Asia offering a more nuanced and coherent perspective. Raghavan has burnished his reputation as India’s leading contemporary historian and political analyst.
Yoga, classical music and the presence of Indians in the Silicon Valley have done much to raise India’s standing in the US