Myanmar’s Indifference to Rohingyas

The Muslim minority, attacked by the majority Buddhists, allege
that Aung San Suu Kyi, the United Nations and other countries
are looking the other way

The present wave of unrest in Myanmar’s Rakhine state has seen about 90 people killed, more than 22,000 people displaced and around 4,600 houses torched. The tension is between the Buddhist and Rohingya Muslims. The 90,000-odd Rohingyas are considered by the majority Buddhist (3 million) as ‘outsiders’ and ‘intruders’ from Bangladesh. While ethnically they might be from the west of the present Rakhine state, Muslim presence has been recorded in Burma for a good century or more. The government of Myanmar has made things further hard for the minority group by refusing to recognise them as one of the 135 ethnic groups in the country.
President Thein Sein has expressed concern over the developments but considering that it was him who had suggested in July to hand over the Rohingyas to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to ‘resettle’ them in a third country, Sein’s concerns are at best hollow. According to the president’s office, the Rohingyas are an “illegal border-crossing” community and not “an ethnic group in Burma”. In wise counsel the UNHCR rejected Thein Sein’s relocation plan.

Easy Target

Many times in the past the Rohingyas have been victims to Burmese nationalist politics, most notably in 1978. In 1978, General Ne Win carried out Naga Min Sitsin Yae, better known as King Dragon Operation. While the said purpose of the operation was to tackle Mujahid rebels in Rakhine, many observers believe that it was a pretext to round up Rohingyas. An estimated two lakh Muslims were displaced and many of them made it to relief camps across the border to Bangladesh.
While the Buddhist and the Muslim Rohingyas have not much love lost between them, the spells of peaceful coexistence is relatively longer than the sporadic violence as is seen now. The present wave of deadly clashes started in May after a Buddhist woman was raped and killed by three Muslim men. In what is considered to be a retaliatory attack, in August, 10 Muslims were killed in Taungup, in Rakhine. The violence that ensued resulted in hundreds getting killed. Emergency was declared and the army was deployed; but local accounts and rights groups have accused the army of not protecting the Rohingyas — some accounts accuse the army of siding against the minorities.
Tom Malinowski, of the Human Rights Watch, is of the view that the ruling authorities in Myanmar, over the decades, have used the Rohingyas as a decoy to divert popular focus from the administrations shortfalls. Speaking at a news show recently he observed that “sometimes dictators single out ethnic or religious minorities in a country for special hatred in order to distract their people from the abuses of their own government and that’s what the Burmese government did for decades. Those chickens are coming home to roost right now.”

Suu Kyi Silence

Suu Kyi featured in the
January 10,2011 cover of Time.
Where is this fighter?

This being the case, there are sections in Burma that want to peacefully co-exist with the minority communities. Perhaps the greatest such voice was that of Bogyoke Aung San, father of Myanmarese leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. He was a great supporter for an independent Burma that also included all minority groups.

What has surprised many is the silence Aung San Suu Kyi has maintained throughout on the issue. Suu Kyi undoubtedly is the most recognisable face from the country and a stand taken by her will go a long way in bringing nations to sit up and take notice of this persecution. However, that is not the case and the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate is being accused of not willing to stand up for justice in fear of derailing her political career.

Unfounded Fears

The West, especially the United States, which was more than eager to intervene in the Afghanistan, has not taken a shining towards the plight of the Rohingyas, who are stateless people in their own country. It should be remembered that in addition to Washington’s justification of fighting terror after the September 11 attacks, it was said that the invasion will bring justice to the people of Afghanistan who have been persecuted by the extremist Taliban.
Linh Dinh, speaking to PressTV, was of the view that “the US and the West are remaining silent on this because they have nothing to gain from intervening. For decades Myanmar was ruled by a military junta that was pro-China and anti-West. Now it has a government that is open towards the West and moving away from China. The West is not going to upset this balance....”
This fear that antagonising a supposedly pro-West and pro-democracy government in Naypyidaw would push the Thein Sein government into the hands of a waiting Beijing arises from a deficient understanding of the situation in Mynamar. Today, the people of Myanmar realise that the junta leaning on China for decades has resulted in a very predominant Chinese presence in trade and commerce. The Buddhist majority have also realised that an over-ambitious China is not in the interest of an independent and sovereign Myanmar.
The West and other countries, including India, that are rushing to do business with Myanmar should tell Naypyidaw in no uncertain terms that trade ties can only be established is the government is more receptive towards the needs of its minorities, in this case the Rohingyas.

No More Neglect

This problem comes at a very crucial time for Myanmar. A religious and sectarian violence at a time when the country is testing democracy cannot be left to resolve on its own. The government in Myanmar does not have the expertise to heal wounds that have been festered for decades. It is here where the international community should intervene. It is here where the United Nations should wake up. Going by the effort and reaction the UN has towards the crisis, it should hang its head in shame.
If only a fraction of the sound and noise it has been devoting to Syria was given to Myanmar, maybe by now the Say Thamagyi Internally Displaced Persons camp, located on the outskirts of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, would have not been brimming with people fleeing for their lives.
To ignore the Buddhist-Rohingya tension or to sweep it under the carpet is to do unimaginable injustice to Myanmarese people, many of who genuinely want to live in peace — all of them who have a right to live in peace. This crisis, if neglected, will have repercussions on generations of Myanmarese who will pay just because the world chose not to take a stand when it mattered.
(An edited version of this article appeared in The New Indian Express on November 2)

Cold War Hangover

The 16th Non-Aligned Movement summit underway in the Iranian capital Tehran offers a mixed bag for India. India’s large delegation, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, sends out a signal that we still hold a lot of brief for a multilateral institution that has long outlived its purpose of creation. This is evident from the fact that for the Tehran meet the prime minister is accompanied by the external affairs minister, the national security adviser, and foreign secretary among other delegates. Giving such importance to a Cold War relic is a reflection of the flawed foreign policy approach of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.

While the meeting between Manmohan Singh and his Bangladeshi counterpart Shiekh Hasina is a positive, it would have had a better effect if the leaders met in either New Delhi or Dhaka. Singh meeting Pakistan President Zardari or any other Pakistan leader — and such meetings on the ‘sidelines’ of important summits have become nauseating frequent — will have little of the desired effect. Manmohan Singh and his government must realise that we have done enough of talking with our neighbour and now the message should be that unless there is tangible action from Islamabad normalcy in ties cannot be restored.
For Iran the NAM summit is an important event and it will be Tehran’s answer to Washington, and other Western powers, which has been exerting pressure to make it an international pariah. The presence of Latin American leaders, rulers from Oman and Kuwait, leaders from the subcontinent, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and the attendance of UN general secretary, Ban Ki-moon, is definitely a show of strength by Iran.
While it goes without saying that India has to have good ties with Iran on its own terms and not take instructions from the United States, it is important that we not strain our relations with Israel at the cost of extending a hand to Iran. This diplomatic tightrope walk is the challenge the Singh government will have to face.
(This appeared as an edit in The New Indian Express on August 31)

Hope can work wonders even in the deepest of abyss

English Novelist George Orwell’s 1984 is summarised by The Literature Network as: ‘1984 is possibly the dystopian novel, set in a world beyond our imagining. A world where totalitarianism really is total…’ The novel talks about how The Party is overseeing lives of all citizens and controlling their mind. One is not sure if George Orwell knew about Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s ‘Eternal President’, but there is an uncanny resemblance between Orwell’s 1984 and the way the Democraic Republic of Korea has turned out to be today. 1984 was published in 1949 -- Kim Il Sung had assumed office a year earlier and it seems the Korean leader built the nation taking cues from the book. Orwell’s work appears as a juvenile attempt when compared to the totalitarian state North Korea has become today.

Blaine Harden’s Escape From Camp 14 is a novel about the escape of a person from a gulag (prison camp) in North Korea to China, from there to South Korea and finally to the US. There is nothing new about North Korean gulags -- like global warming and climate change it is an inconvenient truth great nations in the world have either chosen to deny, ignore or live with in spite of human right groups proving beyond doubt that the regime in Pyongyang is a brutal and fascist one.
A number of books and reports have been published by escapees from the North and commissions that have visited the closed nation. However among the many things that makes Escape From Camp 14 unique is that it is the life story of Shin Dong-hyuk who escaped alive from Camp 14. Shin was born in Camp 14 -- Camp 14 is different from other camps as most of the inmates in this camp are born in the camp -- and escaped while he was 23-years-old. Going by records maintained in Seoul and Washington, Shin is the only prisoner born in a gulag to have escaped.
Harden very deftly uses the third person narrative and interweaves it with a narrative voice to corroborate Shin’s observations using facts and accounts from interviews he has done with other escapees. In one account Shin recollects how guards in the camp used to hit and torture the inmates without giving an explanation; if in the process someone died, it was a ‘lesson’ to the others. No guard was ever questioned for the death of an inmate. To give more credence to Shin’s observation, Harden uses an interview with An Myeong Chul, a former prison guard, who escaped to Seoul. An says that they were taught to look at the inmates as “dogs and pigs”. “We were taught not to look at them as human beings”.
Shin’s story is special, Harden explains, because ‘his life unlocked the door, allowing outsiders to see how the Kim family sustained itself with child slavery and murder.’ In another instance, Harden throws light into one of the reasons as to why the human rights abuse in North Korea has gone unnoticed for such a long time. He quotes Suzanne Scholte, a long-time activist as saying: “Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, Darfurians have Mia Farrow and George Clooney… North Koreans have no one like that.”
Harden’s book also explains, through Shin, why Pyongyang has been able to hold on to power despite unimaginable human suffering. Kim Il Sung brought in a caste system and divided the people into three groups, based on their allegiance to the leader. The lower strata consist of people who have tried to escape the country or family members of those who escaped. They are treated as inferior beings and torture – physical and psychological -- is the least of benevolence they can expect from the guards.
Harden’s Book gives an unprecedented picture of Camp 14. Shin, who is born in the camp because of a ‘reward marriage’, is taught that he has to suffer because of the sins of his parents and to wash away those sins he has to work very hard and snitch about others. Like all children born in the camp, Shin is loyal to the guards (who are also his teachers) and will snitch about anyone -- he even betrays his mother and this leads to her execution, which he watches sitting in the front row.

Shin Dong-hyuk at Amsterdam in 2012

In another instance he observes that ‘A perverse benefit of birth in the camp was a complete absence of expectations’. Oblivious to the outside world inmates born in the camp take torture and begging the guards as part of survival and not as humiliation as seen by prisoners who arrive at camps later in their life. Suicide is a route many take in the camp, but as Shin says ‘he had no hope to lose, no past to mourn, no pride to defend.’
Escape From Camp 14 is an account of gulag brutality and an account of how indoctrination is helping Pyongyang further its stranglehold. Above all it is shows how once hope is given the human spirit finds its way to freedom overcoming insurmountable obstacles.
Escape From Camp 14 is Blaine Harden’s third book.
(An edited version of this appeared in The New Indian Express on Sunday, May 6, 2012)
 

Syria Question Divides the World

On Saturday the United Nations saw Russia and China vetoing a West and Arab League-backed resolution against Syria demanding President Bashar al-Assad to step down because of the bloody crackdown on his people. Hours before the UN meeting deadly attacks carried out by Syrian security forces (Syrian authorities have blamed the opposition) killed more than 200 people in Homs, 160 kilometres north of Damascus. Though Russia and China acted on expected lines, India voting in favour of the resolution was a surprise. Known to usually abstain from such moves, India has asked for a peaceful resolution that sees Syria also being involved in the process. India has done the right move by showing that it is capable of taking tough decisions at an international forum. This is also a statement that it has earned its UNSC seat.





With Syria being the vortex of the so-called Arab Spring, the West has got in its hand a crisis it wished had not begun. Not only has the West lost its set pieces on the board, it has seen the rise of ‘radical’ forces like the Muslim Brotherhood in the region. Add to this the chaos spreading to other countries and an all-too assertive Iran - the West (primarily the United States of America) is having what seems to be a series of nightmares.
However, anyone who has observed Syria over the decades will not be surprised at the turn of events. After all it is Bashar whom the US preferred to keep in spite of the atrocities he has carried out in the region and against the US. Bashar has killed thousands of his people and sent militants into Iraq to kill American contractors; he has armed the Hezbollah, supported the Hamas, is an Iran ally and has adversely influenced the developments in Lebanon. But Washington maintained the stand that the known devil is better than the unknown. The fear of a more radical outfit gaining prominence in Damascus or that of the country descending into chaos has vanished and now the US is in the forefront of demanding the ouster of Assad. The factors that have led to Washington’s change of mind are not clear yet. David Schenker, a former Levant director at the Pentagon, was of the opinion that America’s policy towards Syria has always been one that has not yet been developed.

The Survivor
Bashar al-Assad has been able to hold fort till date mainly because of two reasons. First is the relation he has maintained with the West and other countries, importantly Russia (see Russia Factor). The second is Assad’s minority plank. Assad, a Ba’ath Party member and Alawi has made sure to infuse pride among the minorities in the country that their president, ruthless as he may be, he is one among them and has protected them from the majority Sunni community which otherwise would have relegated them to the margins of society. There are also sections in Syria that feel that he has lend respect and honour to a country that was otherwise not taken seriously in the region. Bashar al-Assad is known to have told his close associates that he was of the view that if a ruler provides the people with what they want, he can rule without hassles. According to Bashar he would provide the people of Syria the basics - a home, a job and a car - and in return his rule will go on unopposed, unquestioned.

Lessons Learnt
The prolonged crisis (the unrest started in March last year) in Syria shows that unlike as was the case earlier when the United States (without considering the option of approaching the United Nations) thought it fit to invade Iraq on its hunt for non-existing WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), now the scene has changed. The economic slowdown, the rise of other economies and the international condemnation Washington has received for its exploits in West Asia, both from within the country and outside, has played a role in it mellowing down on its ways. It has realised that its trigger-happy enforcement of democracy around the world has earned it more enemies than friends.
The experience in Egypt and Libya has taught the world, especially the West, important lessons on how not to go about in Syria. While in Egypt (after initial reluctance) the US supported the opposition movement, the result is not what as expected. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, through the ballot, has caught them unawares. In Libya, the West managed to oust and capture Muammar Gaddafi but the Libyan Transitional Council has not been able to show the promise of stability and peace, vital for a country that has witnessed a revolution.

Russia Factor
Russia has been criticised for being the stumbling block for a UN Security Council resolution against Syria. Russia’s deputy foreign minister Gennadi Gatilov has said that the move to ouster Assad was a “doomed” one and instead the call should be to fight the opposition forces that are causing violence in the country. Syria is a big client of Russia’s arms industries and this lobby has a great sway over Kremlin. Syria yearly buys close to $700 million worth of arms from Russia. The unrest in the region has caused a dip in the sales and Russia has already cancelled lucrative deals with Iran after reaching an agreement with Washington.
Political analyst observing Kremlin believe that elections in Russia will change its approach towards Syria and any future UNSC resolution. Many say that President Dmitry Medvedev was ‘fooled’, by the West, into believing action was necessary in Libya. Moreover, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is likely to be the next president, has not been mincing his words while criticising the West (US) for creating unrest in Russia. He is also doubtful of the West’s intentions in West Asia. Russia is also not buying the argument put forward by the West that unless it supports the opposition movement in Syria, it will not be a frontrunner when the new government is formed in Damascus. Russia’s defense, and a valid one, is that if the current government falls it will be followed by a civil war and sectarian violence leading to chaos, as is witnessed in other countries in the region. Assad’s iron hand over the political system has rendered it without a visible and efficient opposition that can takeover once Assad is gone. The civil war will create large-scale migration into neighbouring countries further worsening the situation.

Arab League Report
As is the case with most of the developments in West Asia, the Arab League report submitted by its observers who toured Syria is mired in controversy. While the report was backed by Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and Oman, it was opposed by Qatar - the current president of the league. One of the arguments is that the observers were not able to extensively tour the affected regions and thus their report does not reflect the extensive damage done by the Assad regime. Damascus, in its defense, is arguing that violence was on the rise in many of the regions the observers toured because the government had pulled back its forces, according to the demand of the observers. Groups backing the Assad regime state that the government is fighting ‘shady armed gangs’ that are causing unrest in the country to bring down the government.
The Arab League report and the developments thereafter should be viewed from the fact that Syria was suspended from the league in November last. Also, among the more than two dozen countries that are calling for Syria’s ouster from two UN committees are Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The UNESCO executive board meeting convening from February 27 will take a call on this issue.

Conclusion
There is an urgent need for a plan to stop the violence and bloodshed in Syria because the longer the unrest prolongs more are the chances of sectarian wars breaking out between the Sunni majority and the Alawite, Christian, Kurd minority. The United Nations will not be able to bring peace to the country once things deteriorate to that level and we can expect something at par or even worse than what is now being witnessed in Iraq and Libya.
Given this one cannot sit idle and watch as Assad, or as he claims ‘extremist elements’, continue to unleash violence and kill innocent people throughout the country. The West has its interests and so do Russia and other Arab nations. There are pitfalls in a UNSC resolution against the Assad regime but if one were to weigh both the options, it is better than not taking any action at all. The world has to choose between the lesser of evils to check a brutal dictator and give Syrians the freedom and peace they deserve.

(An edited version of this article has appeared in The New Indian Express on February 6)

Artist Who Dares the Bourgeoisie

Ai Weiwei

On April 3 while on his way to Hong Kong Ai Weiwei was arrested by Chinese police at the Beijing airport. His arrest was acknowledged by the authorities three days later and it was reported in the Global Times, the Communist Party-run newspaper. It was stated that Ai was held for ‘economic crimes’ and the authorities were investigating into it. His studio was raided, his wife was questioned and many of his assistants were also detained.
This information in itself should not be alarming, unfortunately, as this has become routine in the People’s Republic of China where the Communist Party-government has been on a protest/dissent crackdown overdrive from December 19, 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze after police highhandedness in Tunisia and tension gripped the Middle East and North Africa.

The Muffled Voices
The list of people who have been detained, arrested or ‘missing’ is endless: Liu Zhenggang, a designer who suffered a cardiac arrest while in detention; Xu Zhiyong, a lawyer charged with tax evasion; Wu Liliong, an environmentalist who was exposing industrial pollution at Lake Tai in eastern China; Guo Feixiong, a legal rights activist; Liu Xianbin, for inciting subversion; Ran Yunfei, Chen Wei and Ding Mao, all three for inciting subversion; Yang Hengjun, a novelist; and many others like Jiang Tianyong, Li Tiantian, Liu Shihui, Tang Jingling, Tang Jitain, Teng Biao…Of course how can one forget Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Liu is a political prisoner who is serving an 11-year sentence for pro-democracy appeals, especially through his Charter 08. The list goes on… Some of these people have been released while some continue to be under detention.
The vagueness in the details regarding the arrests is partially also because of the secretive nature in which the police work. Also most of the people who are released are warned not to go public about the time they spent under arrest. All this should not be surprising for a country that is run by a government that deems it fit to lock up its only Nobel Laureate.
If one were to profile all the people who are arrested or just ‘disappear’ there are a few common traits — they are either artists, or social activists or human right lawyers; all of them are either vocal about the injustices prevalent within the system or are seen as a threat by Beijing.

Protester Artist
Ai’s case is different mainly because of the political influence he has, or rather had at one point, and the international status he enjoys. Ai’s father Ai Qing was a revolutionary poet who was with Mao Zedong during the proclamation of the People’s Republic in 1949. But within a decade he was accused of advocating free-speech and revolution and was sentenced to 16 years community service. Ai Weiwei grew up seeing this dichotomy and in 1981 Ai Weiwei left for the US. As an artist Ai had a different approach and perspective to what many saw as everyday mundane things. In 1988 he got his first solo exhibition.
One of the architects of the famous Bird’s Nest (stadium) which was the cynosure of all eyes during the Beijing Olympics, Ai Weiwei has always been vocal of his discomfort the way the Communist Party was taking the Chinese people. Ai was rattled by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed around 80,000 and left close to 40 lakh homeless. More than 5,000 schoolchildren were buried alive as school buildings collapsed. Through his blogs he attacked the corrupt local administration that built the “tofu buildings”. He campaigned for the family of Chen Xiaofeng who was run over by the son of an influential official in Baoding. The campaign came to be as ‘My father is Li Gang’ — these were the words of the son as he drove away. Ai was also vocal in his support for Liu Xiaobo.

‘Fat Guy’ Difference
Ai Weiwei was released after 81 days on June 22 under the quobao houshen. The quobao houshen, which has been loosely but incorrectly compared to a bail, is an agreement in which the accused is released but investigations continue for up to a year. The accused will have the freedom to move within a restricted area (town, city) but access to the media is restricted. Ai, after lying low for a month or two, sprung back in August in a highly critical article of the government’s proposed law to detain a person for up to six months without informing the family. Later he was slapped with a $2 million fine for the tax evasion done by the company that promotes his art. Ai, known in twitter and sina weibo as Uncle Ai or ‘fat guy’, made an appeal to netizens who collected close to $1.3 mn (Ai said this was the ‘beginning of civil society in China’). The latest charge against Ai is that he is spreading pornography. Nude art is common among Chinese artists and with the emergence of a photograph titled ‘One Tiger and Eight Breasts’ the authorities are hounding Ai and the people behind the shoot. Expressing support to Ai, his fans are posting their nude pictures on the Internet.
The Chinese government arrested Ai for ‘economic crimes’ thereby making the issue an internal matter. This prevents any foreign country from interfering in their ‘internal affairs’. That this is a ‘Trojan’ used by Beijing is a well-known fact. However, his background, international support and pressure from the artistic community made it hard for the government to detain him further.
The predicament or opportunity Ai Weiwei is in — depending on which side you stand — has been very succinctly put by journalist Kelly Crow: “What happens when you become the modern-day, artistic equivalent of that young man who once stood before the tanks in Tiananmen Square?”

Ai Weiwei with his Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern, London

Heart-Patient Sprinter
Ai Weiwei in one of his blogs describes China has a sprinter with a heart condition. China is zooming ahead with a resurgent zeal of be ‘the’ world superpower. This is aided with its economy doing well and Beijing is expanding its defence forces and forging ties with countries around the world. However, while these positives are there, it is a nation that is crumbling from within. Corruption is increasing and inequality is widening. There are no forums to address ones grievances and the government, especially the provincial ones, do not entertain complains against corruption. Add to this the fact that freedom for a Chinese citizen is the ration what the state doles out.
The uprising in the Middle East and North Africa has got Beijing worked up. While initially the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt was censored, the authorities soon understood that it could not keep its people away from the Arab Spring that was spreading like wildfire. So it got cracking on the people who were voicing their dissent or people likely to gather support for the causes they were voicing.

Different Chinas
China has changed a lot from the ideals of what it claims to be ever since it started economic reforms in 1978. Though it claims to be a socialist in outlook, a socialistic approach is today more or less on paper. The way the government has gone about with its policies of development has resulted in disparities of two kinds — income and regional. China has some of the world’s most rich people and a large pool of poor people. In the cities migrant labourers, along with their families, form this pool and are treated as second-class citizens with almost no rights. Region-wise the development can be seen as a trickle-down model. While coastal areas and cities have got the lion’s share of development, central provinces come next and the western provinces and interior regions come the last, usually getting the leftovers from the central provinces. This has led to massive migration to cities in search of labour/food. Developmental migration, due to power projects or urbanisation, should also been seen as a reason for spurring poverty and inequality.
China, today, is one of the world’s most capitalistic country in which the Communist Party is the biggest bourgeoisie. And anyone who questions the ways of this bourgeoisie is silenced.
(This appeared in The New Indian Express on November 28)

What's in it for India, Obamaji?

India is just recovering from an Obama spell for the past week or so. There are various analyses on the different things he did and did not. The best way, I think, to sum up US President Barack Obama’s visit to India is the way a friend commented on the Obama visit on facebook -- Obama angane nammaley padhapichu. He also posted a translation for the less privileged ones -- Obama has buttered us up with his sweet nothings! How true!

All the sweet talk, rhetoric on security and cooperation and ‘India’s vital role in world order’ will keep the Indian media and pundits busy for a few days. To get a hang of this a bit of Indo-US diplomatic history is essential. I’m not sure if how many caught a good analysis of the history of US meddling with Kashmir since Independence by Goplaji Malviya in the The New Indian Express (http://tinyurl.com/3xxh8dc).

There are many things that stand between an Indo-US relationship that India envisages and a relationship the US desires. And the reason for this is not far. President George W Bush had stated this sometime during his first term in office -- ‘the US has no friends, only allies’. And in politics there are no permanent allies; they keep changing according to the political realities of the time. This fact is tacitly discussed by Harold A Gould, a visiting scholar in the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia, in his book The South Asia Story where he describes the relationship various US presidents have had with India and it is clear that India has always been viewed with difference, as the ‘other’.

If now the US has started looking towards India it is not because India has ‘reached’ the world high table (as if often said about India). We should not forget that India’s record on various Human Indices is worse than sub-Sahara Africa. If the West has started to give India a glance it is only because of the latter’s growing economy and the chances these countries see in advancing their cause by getting into partnerships with New Delhi.

Regionally also India is not the nation to look up but one must admit that India is ‘on its way’ to greater height. The greatest example of the neglect was seen when India was not invited to the 50 nation conclave discussing the future of the Af-Pak region early this year. At that time the US did not see it fit to acknowledge India’s ‘important presence in Afghanistan’ as a vital factor’. Today Obama is all praise for the good job India has done in the war-torn country. Talk about changing perceptions!

I don’t think that his visit is in anyway a message to China. All the analysis that the US wants to check an intimidating Beijing by boosting New Delhi is thin air. We are no match for the power that China has risen to be today and no one knows that better than the US. More than $2 trillion of foreign reserves is with China. Annual trade between China and the US is around $50 billion while with India it is $13 billion.

No matter how much we try to deceive ourselves into the supposed grandeur of Obama’s visit, the fact remains that the world’s most powerful man came calling on because it was necessary for him to create jobs in the US to salvage his job. One should not forget that his ratings have been climbing downhill ever since his historic win in 2008. It seems like he lost a magic talisman he was keeping until November 4 and is now in the hunt for it. Obama’s India visit is sure a big boost for him back home as he has brought 50,000 jobs and business worth $10 billion.

Obama has told what we in India were waiting to listen. Our fixation in painting Pakistan black and that of getting a permanent seat at the UNSC have blurred our vision for the actual targets -- focusing on increasing our GDP and investing more in R&D. Obama’s visit in a nutshell has done more damage to India than the likely benefits it is to bring about. The damage is long-term and the benefits are only likely.