Utilitarian diplomacy
Devyani Khobragade returned to India in a hurry after Washington asked her to go or face trial on her maid’s complaint. The American diplomat expelled in retaliation for helping the maid’s family emigrate has gone and diplomatic gestures to mend fences have begun. Indian ambassador to Washington, S Jaishankar, met Deputy Secretary of State William Burns over lunch twice this week, while three smuggled antique Indian statues the US Customs Enforcement officers had seized were delivered to the consulate in New York. The question now is, can the suspicion of US intent and actions that injure national pride, be assuaged and bilateral relations raised as was done from the diplomatic crater India’s nuclear test in 1998 caused. What’s useful is to ask why the US behaves this way when everyone thinks the two should be natural allies as the most populous and the richest (powerful) democracies and both former British colonies. The irony is, what’s common has been a cause of dissimilarity in their world view and asymmetry in responses, probably because of the composition of their population and their culture – more likely, history.
The US actively backed India’s independence but their World War II experiences and lessons drawn influenced how the two saw their places in the comity of nations since. Although India as a British colony was in the war with the Allies, there was a freedom-seeking India (Netaji’s INA) fighting in the Axis camp. After the US entered the fray as the saviour of the world with atom bombs to vanquish the Axis powers and created a post-War order by realigning of forces where Soviet Russia and its Communist acolytes parted ways, there stood an independent India wanting no place in either camp and fancying itself as a beacon of decolonisation. While this conflicted with the interests of the war-weary colonials, whose leader US became by its saviour role, it riled them more to find India applauded by the Communist bloc which had a post-war axe to grind against capitalists.
Soon after Independence, India took the Kashmir issue to the United Nations which ordered a ceasefire, troop withdrawal and plebiscite to decide which way Kashmir goes. Pakistan played the injured party and won some sympathy of the West by the status quo (leading to two wars since). In 1949, China’s US-backed government was overthrown by Mao’s Red Army and India became the first to recognise this New China and with that stature became a party to the Armistice that ended the 1952-54 Korean war. While all this put India out of favour with the US-led West, Pakistan curried favour by joining the 1954 Manila Pact (SEATO) which US crafted as the counterpart of NATO to deter Communists overrunning Asia’s French, British and Portuguese colonies. India meanwhile was holding China’s hand to get it together with decolonised Afro-Asian countries in Bandung (Indonesia) and went on to create the Non-Aligned Movement. That China, which fought a war with India in 1962 was helped by a Pakistan smarting from the 1971 humiliation by India, to receive Nixon in Beijing the following year to win recognition of US and the West and took Taiwan’s place in the UN Security Council.
When India feels indignant at US insult, it is instructive to recount who has played who over the years. India has a history of standing up to bullying, which others will not forget even if our politicians and diplomats want to. How useful we are matters and in that, money matters.
What’s useful is to ask why the US behaves this way when everyone thinks the two should be natural allies as the most populous and the richest (powerful) democracies and both former British colonies
