The Houston
event is over. Cheerleaders are still debating the outcome of it and how it has
‘influenced’ America that no other Indian PM could have done so. Of course,
when the leader of the House of Representative spoke about the vision of India
that has a shared understanding with that of America, of a liberal, plural and
secular society based on the ideals of Gandhi as espoused by Nehru and quoted
Nehru’s famous Tryst with Destiny speech, the cheerleaders were shocked. The
face of the Supreme leader watching the American leader speaking so eloquently
about idea of India as espoused by Gandhi and Nehru, the Supreme leader was in
complete shock.

Anyway, the bhaktas
were there in huge number and the entire event was sponsored by the big
corporate of the United States who will squeeze much bigger profit from India
than what they invested in this event. The problem with the short-sighted
approach is that they do not accept that India was not built in a day.

Just a look at the videos of those years, a when India was just a new nation, independent from colonial power and did not have these NRIs to influence, Nehru had already impressed the world leaders. One could see President Kennedy receiving Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru at the airport unlike the junior Minister or Foreign Ministry officials who do this work today.

The rousing
reception to Nehru in the White House as well as in the American Congress
showed how America looked at India those years which could be called formative
years of Indian democracy.

Every political leader has weaknesses and definitely Nehru cannot be called as blameless but to vilify him all the time and attempt to obliterate his memory will boomerang. The International audience will remind us of the great work that they did which differentiated India from all those countries where the powerful heroes of anti-colonial struggle became dictatorial and took benefit of their unprecedented popularity. Nehru could have done that by the middle of fifties when all his contemporaries had gone. But despite that if he ensured that we remain a liberal secular democracy then the credit must go to him.

Yesterday’s
event was also marked an unprofessional way, I would say. Donald Trump or any
Western leader during the time of political campaign would love to use the
platform for their political benefit.

We are
sure, American Indian are different than the Hindu Americans who have now
become the most vulgar face of the Hindutva’s hate campaign and Islamophobia
world over. Using
the Kashmiri Pandit bogey, if the establishment want to justify of what they
have done in Kashmir valley then it won’t work. After jailing all the political
leaders of the valley, the Supreme leaders want to tell us that they know what
is good for ‘Kashmir’ without speaking to Kashmiris. Yes, they can now say that
a few disgruntled Bollywood directors and actors are Kashmiris who have already
joined the cheerleaders of the saffron brigade.

Now, the
political immaturity was at its best to seek vote for President Trump. How can
a sitting prime minister do that in another country? Diplomatically, it is
wrong and send absolutely wrong signal but then Americans are still a far
superior democracy than us and they will look at it. I n case of the defeat of Donald Trump,
it would become much more difficult for our foreign Ministry to justify such
acts.

And how can
Indian American support such a leader who is anti-immigrant and who is calling
America for Americans’ basically a slogan of white supremacists. But it looks
that these worshipers of Donald Trump feel that they would be safe because
Trump is actually targeting the Muslims and not the Hindus. Let us hope how it
goes. Yesterday, an American NRI tweeted that why are the left liberals hating
them. It was a big joke, why should we hate any one. Hatred is in their minds
who want the best of liberal democracy in the west, enjoy their liberalism,
minority rights, human rights, diversity but back home want to support a
regressive regime. Also, this love for India is nothing because they only want
to enjoy weakening rupee and invest in property market so that time and again,
they can colonise this country by living in their safe heavens of the West.
None of them would ever want to leave United States, Canada or Europe to settle
in the dirty lanes of Varanasi to get ‘spiritual’ satisfaction. Their spiritual
satisfaction is not possible without a green card or an American passport.

It is the
duty of all Indians who enjoy the liberal democracies of the west to support
and promote those liberal values of tolerance, embrace equality and treat human
being as equal but do they do it. No, Indians and particularly these bhakt
variety take their caste along with them. So, caste has travelled to America,
Canada, UK, we well as in Africa. Gujaratis, Punjabis, Bengalis, North Indians,
Tamils, Telugus, Malayalis all have one common quality and that is they love
their castes too much, there has been no attempt to remove that. In fact, the modern-day
Hindu intellectuals in the west have used the western liberalism for hiding the
dirty facts about caste system and blamed it on the colonial power though many
of their ‘intellectuals’ in India blame it on Mughal rule as if Manu-Smriti was
written or prescribed by them.

After the
Houston show of strength, President Trump has again spoken of Narendra Modi’s
‘aggressive’ tone and would be happy to be ‘mediator’ if both India and
Pakistan want it. The fact is Kashmir issue has been internationalised
otherwise there was no need to speak about it at the international gatherings
but when we speak it in Jumlebazi then it won’t work in longer term. Not everyone
globally will take these WhatsApp Gyan and challenges as seriously as the bhaktas
think off.

I can say firmly that American Establishment want to intervene in Kashmir and it will be difficult to keep aside their pressure.

It is time
for government to focus on good governance whether in India or Kashmir. All
slogans and claims on Kashmir will be just of no value if the political
leadership of the state is not taken into confidence and government show and these
restrictions are lifted. It will be a hugely difficult task and if the
government think they can develop the new leadership by discrediting the
current political leadership then that model too will fail. The solution to all
these issues will ultimately come from political negotiations in which both the
sides will have to show flexibility and should have faith in it. As it is the
government which acted unilaterally on Kashmir, the onus is on it to start the
peace process.

Vidya
Bhushan Rawat

September 24th, 2019

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