September 11, February 28

Globalisation & India's quest to be taken seriously as a world power go hand in hand. But India must conform to certain minimum standards of modern ideas of equality & governance.

It’s now been so long since the Cold War ended that we are even beginning to forget the old Soviet-American jokes. Until a Murli Manohar Joshi reminds you of one.

Do you, for example, recall the one about an American tourist being shown around Moscow by a Russian? Both were boasting about how successful their political systems were. The American bragged about how an aircraft takes off or lands every minute from Chicago’s O’Hare airport. To counter that the Russian took the American to, say, Kievsky Voksal, one of Moscow’s many large railway stations.

‘‘See,’’ he said, ‘‘how many trains come in and go here every minute. And each one of them will be absolutely on time. Bet you Americans can’t beat that.’’

It just so happened that at that point of time signboards were displaying several trains running behind schedule. ‘‘See that. Such a thing would never happen in America,’’ said the delighted tourist.

‘‘That may be so. But what about the lousy way you treat your blacks?’’ countered the Russian.

Trust Murli Manohar Joshi now to remind us, and the Americans, of the ‘‘fate’’ of blacks in their country before they lecture us on how we treat our minorities. He did this in Jaipur on Thursday in response to a question at his press conference. While it is one thing for ministers in government to be irritated with the persistent and open Western criticism of their record in Gujarat, Joshi even forgot that the US is the one Western power that has chosen to keep absolutely quiet on the issue even while its European allies are shouting blue murder.

But don’t fault a minister on his general knowledge. Ministers, anywhere, are not chosen for their GK even if their portfolios sometimes tend to confuse you as to their intellectual calibre. But you can certainly question them on their politics. What would Joshi’s colleague Jaswant Singh do if one of these days Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice turned around and asked what business his government had to complain about the treatment of blacks in the US? This was an American stereotype that died and was buried no later than the late eighties.

Rice and Powell are not the only blacks to wield real power in the US of today. Diversity, equal opportunity and political correctness are the buzzwords around the rapidly modernising world. In fact, today Rice and Powell could even ask Jaswant Singh if the cabinet to which he belongs has similarly empowered the minorities and Dalits. He will have a problem answering that because this is a huge but unique cabinet in that it doesn’t have a prominent portfolio with a Muslim, Sikh, Christian or anybody from a minority or even the Scheduled Castes. Don’t try to fob us off by mentioning George Fernandes. We all know he takes his oath of office and secrecy not in the name of God but through a socialistic ‘‘I solemnly affirm.’’

Jaswant Singh would actually have to handle problems and questions more complex than that. His own party’s ineptitude in Gujarat and then the churlish, bitter way in which it has handled the aftermath has pushed him on the backfoot for the first time in his tenure. Beginning with the Lahore bus ride and then through to Kargil, Agra, 9/11 and 13/12, he has held the moral high ground in international diplomacy as no Indian foreign minister ever did in the past. He may be too much of a gentleman to say it in public but he must rue this massive self-goal, this completely avoidable turning of the table — on ourselves.

He knows better than anybody else that post-9/11 diplomacy is not run by acquiring the image of being anti-Muslim, of running a government that cannot prevent the slaughtering of minorities, rape of their women and the burning of their babies. Other countries are not self-seeking members of the NDA coalition so that they will only see the Gujarat killings in the light of the grave provocation of Godhra.

They won’t even complain about the killings so much — riots are known to break out in India once in a while — or even about the unquestioning defence of someone called Narendra Modi as they would about the political attitude with which this government and its ministers have responded to the tragedy. The counter-attack on the European Union, now even a pre-emptive assault on the Americans, the ‘‘don’t sermonise us, clean up your own act’’ tactic will only complicate matters at a time when we have actually been going out of our way to engage with the world by being the first to condemn 9/11 and to offer to join the worldwide coalition against terror.

The idea that somehow globalisation is confined to markets and trade is dangerously fallacious. What comes along, and mercifully so, is also the globalisation of ideas, attitudes, modern values, principles of democracy and equality. And given the way we have been set up by the founding fathers, this suits us fine. For a half century, we thought we had inherited the right to lecture the world on celebrating diversity and equality. After all, which other nation, with a per capita income of $400 or thereabouts, could boast of such an equal constitution, such an old cultural and religious belief in equality of mankind and such a vibrant political system to ensure the spoils were at least distributed widely, if not evenly? When we tell the Europeans, the Chinese and the Americans now to shut up and mind their own business, it only brings us contempt and derision. After embracing the idea of globalisation, no government can adopt Door hato ai duniya waalo Hindustan hamaara hai… as its theme song. If that is the idea, let’s also revert to socialism, khadi, swadeshi, equal distribution of wealth (such as there might be) and other such nonsense.

This approach is dangerous because, instead of some honest introspection, once you convince yourself of this worldwide conspiracy to defame and malign India, the backwards momentum can be quite overpowering. Much as we admire Israel, India is not Israel, and thank God for that. We would never vote a Sharon into power but we also do not have the kind of clout where we can defy the world to drive us into isolation.

On the other hand, given our own history of inward-looking protectionism, our exaggerated notions of cultural superiority and a deep victim complex, we must always worry about the prospect of receding into international isolationism. At a time when the economy is showing the first signs of revival, when the war against Al-Qaeda has not yet ended and when our army is still sitting on the border waiting for the snows to melt to find out if the Pakistanis keep their promise of stopping infiltration, the last thing we need is this cantankerous, defensive, prickly mindset towards the world in general.

Globalisation and our own quest to be taken more seriously as a world power go hand in hand. If you want to be taken seriously in the big league, you also must conform to certain minimum standards of modern ideas of equality and governance. We have so far been doing remarkably well in a world that’s been coming closer. We cannot let our entirely misplaced peeve make us drift away from this now. He may not tell you that, but this, I am sure, is what Jaswant Singh is worrying about.