When Barack Obama comes to India as chief guest for India’s Republic Day celebrations, he would become the only US President to have visited India twice in his tenure and the first one to be invited for the occasion. The Indian Republic Day, contrary to what the public parades on that day may suggest, does not celebrate India’s military might, its myriad folk dances, or even the hardiness of its school children who enthusiastically march nearly eight kilometres in the bitter cold of Delhi in January. It celebrates the Indian Constitution, which was adopted on January 26, 1950 — the “Holy Book” which helps us imagine ourselves as Indians living in a democratic, liberal and inclusive India.
President Obama would find a changed atmosphere from his first visit to India when he praised the country as a rising global power and a modernising state. The Indian economy has not quite taken off and modernisation is giving way to creeping intolerance and obscurantism.
Like the last time around, he will stand under a gold-trimmed canopy with the Indian President as the military bands play US and Indian national anthems. He may still greet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as he did in Washington, D.C., by inquiring, “Kem chho?” And India’s military and technological might, on display at the Republic Day parade, might help him gauge our potential to absorb new technology — especially defence technology — from the US.
When President Obama looks at the Indian flag, he will find that the “wheel of righteousness” of a great India Emperor, Ashoka Priyadarshi, adorns its centre. One of Ashoka’s inscriptions aptly encapsulates the plural nature of our society: “King Piyadasi (Ashoka) dear to the Gods, honours all sects, the ascetics (hermits) or those who dwell at home, he honours them with charity and in other ways. But the king, dear to the Gods, attributes less importance to this charity and these honours than to the vow of seeing the reign of virtues, which constitutes the essential part of them. For all these virtues there is a common source, modesty of speech. That is to say, one must not exalt one’s creed discrediting all others, nor must one degrade these others without legitimate reasons. One must, on the contrary, render to other creeds the honour befitting them.”
Unfortunately, our incumbent Prime Minister is silent about growing religious intolerance. His friend and mentor Mohan Bhagwat, who heads a proto-fascist organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has lent public support to the “re-conversion” of Christians and Muslims by his acolytes. Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion is countered by the idea that Indian Muslims and Christians were “stolen” from Hinduism and must be restored to the fold.
Before he became Prime Minister, Mr Modi has been known to describe Muslim attitude to family planning as “hum paanch, humare pachees (we are five and we have 25 kids)” — referring to the four marriages permitted in Islam; he has defended re-conversions as a “natural process” of people returning to their “old homes”; and he made the Christian faith of one of India’s finest Chief Election Commissioners, James Michael Lyngdoh, an election issue for which he was reprimanded by the then Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee.
The India which welcomed St. Thomas to Kerala in the middle of the 1st Century and the Jews who fled the Roman attack on Jerusalem, today wants everyone to be a Hindu. It has sheltered people who fled religious persecution — such as the Zorastrians (Parsis) in the 9th Century, the Tibetan Buddhists in the 1950s and even the Bahá’ís. Today a sister organsiation of the RSS claims that their goal is to make India free of Christians and Muslims by 2021.
President Obama is no stranger to religious controversy. He has been accused of being a Muslim “secretly” because his father and stepfather were “nominal” Muslims. The right-wing in the US made him protest his Christian faith several times, during his election campaign and even after he took over as President swearing on Abraham Lincoln’s copy of the Bible. When he visited India in 2010, he was advised against visiting the Golden Temple where he would have to cover his head.
One doubts, however, whether President Obama will see these as significant concerns. Today, perhaps, he represents American economic interests more than universal freedoms. A lot will be acceptable so long as India buys US goods.
A couple of nuclear power plants are on offer — one from GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy at Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh (1,500 MWe) and another from Westinghouse Electric Company at Mithi Virdi in Gujarat (1,100 MWe). An attempt would also be made during Mr Obama’s visit to achieve a breakthrough in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act of 2010 — especially to cap the potential liabilities of the US suppliers and to cover the liability of local operators through insurance products.
Two pilot projects, one of joint production of a small unmanned aerial vehicles and the other involving systems for the C-130 military transport aircraft built by Lockheed Martin Corp. The assembly line for M777 artillery gun, a 155 mm titanium based ultra-light howitzer, is also on offer. About 17 defence trade and technology proposals are likely to be made by the US. The US President may even offer to make our cities as smart as American ones, even if they are run by bigots.
However, having walked in the footsteps of the legendry civil rights leader Martin Luther King, President Obama would do well to recognise that the idea of India is not about military or economic power but about moral prowess. Military and economic might, although necessary, can wax and wane. The relationship between the two great democracies of the world will endure only if they are on the same page on universal freedoms and rights. So while India celebrates its deepening relationship with the US and the achievements of President Obama, he would do well to note that India, much like the United States, is defined by liberalism, tolerance and celebration of differences. Without these qualities, we are not even a nation.
The writer is a journalist based in New Delhi
