Wednesday, March 24, 2010

India Retold: INDIA AND AMERICA: MORALITY AND 'KRISHNA-SUDAMA' SYNDROME

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    • India, on the other hand, has a few basic tenets totally inverted.

      National interest, it appears, is a bad word, if it does not measure up to the yardsticks of democracy and morality. This fanciful and, in my view, utterly ridiculous positing is a legacy inherited from Nehru. Unfortunately, protecting the legacy has taken precedence over protecting national interest. This has prevented this huge country from looking at itself as a strong, confident nation which should matter and command respect proportionately at the global stage. That is why, to give one example, even a small country like Bangladesh, which we helped create, can disdainfully show us the middle finger and blatantly permit anti-India activities on its soil. Let us not even talk Pakistan. Will any other large country allow such nonsense in its backyard? But for Independent India, morality has almost always been more important than anything else, no matter what price the nation has had to pay and continues to.
    • The modern Sudama, happy being where he is, expects that the US will play King Krishna and honour him for his "loyalty" and "friendship". He refuses to realise that America, like any other nation, will act only in its national interest; there is no space for compromising it in any manner, no matter how much someone genuflects disregarding his own dignity and pride. The pain that some of us are experiencing is due to this lack of understanding, this "Krishna-Sudama Syndrome", more than anything else.
    • The meek shall not inherit the earth, if past and present experience is anything to go by. The sooner some of us understand it, the better.

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