In any discussion of the future prospect of Indo-US relations, we should take note of a new element that has entered the picture. Which is that there now exists in the United States a popular awareness of India the like of which has seldom been witnessed before. A variety of factors have reinforced one another to produce this awareness.
It all began with Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s visit in the summer of 1982. On the face of it, the visit was not too big a success from the Indian point of view. By way of specific results, it only paved the way for a resolution of the dispute over the supply of enriched uranium and spare parts for the Tarapur plant, and that too because the French and the West Germans were prepared, for their own reasons, to help; the French in respect of enriched uranium and the Germans in respect of spare parts. And it did not end the US policymakers’ ambivalence towards the former Prime Minister. But it ended a major source of friction between the two governments, created the possibility of the US adopting a more helpful approach toward India, and above all, it was a significant media event. Mrs. Gandhi apparently came off very well on the TV screen, so much so that a number of Americans recalled it to me almost three years later during a recent visit to their country.
This was followed by Attenborough’s Gandhi towards the end of 1982. To borrow from the language of war, it was a blockbuster. Several Indian commentators who happened to visit the United States then wrote about the appeal of the film to Americans who saw it in their millions. But while no Indian commentator could anticipate that Gandhi would firmly install India in the hearts and minds of a lot of Americans, this is precisely what it did. Gandhi stirred something quite deep in the American psyche.
The real Mahatma, as students of history would know, had made an impact on the United States. After all, Martin Luther King had derived his techniques of non-violent resistance to racial discrimination from him. The Mahatma’s message had also had an appeal, especially in the sixties and the seventies, for those Americans who had come to reject industrialism and were looking for what they regarded a saner alternative. But Attenborough’s Gandhi was a different story altogether.
It did much more than introduce the Mahatma and therefore India to ordinary Americans who had not heard of the former and did not care for the latter. It brought alive for Americans a Christ-like figure all Christians have yearned for in the deepest recesses of their psyche.
Positive Impact
For all we know, Attenborough was not concerned whether or not his film would promote India. But his Gandhi gave Americans a view of India which was different from the one either popular magazine articles or well-meant charity publicity campaigns had given. It transformed the image of the Indian. It transformed the image of the Indian people – from victims of poverty, illiteracy and superstition into brave fighters for freedom and justice. Perhaps for the first time Gandhi impressed a positive picture of India on the American mind.
Mrs. Gandhi’s visit to the United States had been preceded by the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979, India’s refusal to support the UN resolution condemning it and calling for the withdrawal of Soviet troops in January 1980 when she was back in power in New Delhi, and the Reagan administration’s decision to extend military-cum-economic assistance to Pakistan totalling £ 3.2 billion.
Many of us in India have viewed the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan in the context of the new cold war. And since we have by and large held President Reagan’s unashamedly right-wing administration responsible for this second cold war on account of its policy of wanting to restore America’s superiority over the Soviet Union in the military field, the only field in which the Russians have managed to achieve parity with the Americans, we have no idea of the impact of the Soviet action in Afghanistan on the American psyche. It angered and aroused the Americans as no other Soviet move had for a long time. Almost to a man, they were united in their condemnation of what they called Soviet aggression and occupation of Afghanistan.
So when on her return to office in January 1980, Mrs. Gandhi refused to join more than 100 other governments, many of them members of the non-aligned group, in their condemnation of Soviet intervention, the American reaction was one of dismay, annoyance and resentment. For them her move to stay neutral was one more piece of evidence that she was irrevocably pro-Soviet and anti-US. At least to me personally, no American has ever compared her with Mr. Krishna Menon, though he too irked them so much so that they remember him almost a quarter of a century after he ceased to be important in India’s affairs.
Enduring Fascination
She, however, fascinated them as no other Indian has fascinated them, not even her great father, Jawaharlal Nehru. This became evident at the time of her visit to the United States in 1982 but not fully. America’s fascination with Mrs. Gandhi came into full play at the time of her assassination.
No political assassination since President Kennedy’s in 1963 has received the kind of media coverage Mrs. Gandhi’s did in the United States. Leading newspapers such as the New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times devoted pages and pages to her and so did popular magazines such as Time and Newsweek. Even more significantly, the cremation ceremony was telecast live for four and a half hours on the west coast and by cable service in the rest of America where the time difference was unfavourable for popular viewing.
This explosion of interest in Mrs. Gandhi was, of course, spontaneous. It was also a tribute to her status as India’s Prime Minister and chairperson of the non-aligned movement. But above all, it was an expression of the Americans’ fascination for her.
It would be intellectual laziness to describe American fascination for Mrs. Gandhi as a love-hate relationship. I have not seen either much love for her among Americans of any strata and description or the kind of sizzling hatred which Castro arouses among them. President Reagan and his aides certainly wanted to do business with her and were confident of being able to do so at an appropriate time. Even the move to sell some weapons involving high technology to India on terms acceptable to India was initiated when she was still around.
In my opinion, the American fascination for Mrs. Gandhi was a mix of admiration and distrust. They admired her precisely because she refused to be brow-beaten by them, however heavy the odds and great the risks. Kissinger gave expression to this fairly widespread admiration for her in his memoirs when he described her as a cold-blooded practitioner of realpolitik in the service of her country. And they distrusted her because more often than not she was seen to side with the Soviet Union. While this distrust was not strong enough to exclude the possibility of a deal with her, it informed the American attitude, official as well as popular, towards her.
As far as I can determine on the strength of my discussions with American scholars and policy-makers over the years, I can say that despite their distrust of her they had come to equate India’s political stability which they valued for their own geostrategic considerations, with her. During the recent visit I also discovered that the ease with which Mr. Rajiv Gandhi first stepped into the office of Prime Minister on that fateful October 31 and then won a massive mandate from the people came as a great surprise to most Americans.
Ironies Of History
It is impossible to say what the American reaction to Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination would have been if as a result India had been thrown into confusion. But as things have turned out, it has produced a sense of relief. Since the admiration was a forced one, the other ingredient of distrust has come to the fore. Some Americans might challenge this assessment and it is likely to irritate many more. But during my three weeks in their country I met barely a couple of individuals who were genuinely sad at Mrs. Gandhi’s murder or remembered her with fondness.
In all fairness, however, I must hasten to emphasize that Americans feel relieved at the exit of Mrs. Gandhi from the Indian political scene because it has been followed by a smooth transition and demonstration by Mr. Rajiv Gandhi that he is a leader in his own right. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi enjoys in the United States a level of popularity which I do not think even his grandfather enjoyed at the time of his first visit there in 1949 when President Truman expected to win him over as an ally in the fight against communist China.
The Prime Minister commands a wholly positive image in America. His calm and self-possessed face on the occasion of his mother’s last rites is impressed on the minds of millions of Americans. They regard his conduct on that occasion as a sign of inner strength. They have been greatly struck by his election campaigns and their results. His western education, love for flying and western music, marriage to a western woman and his commitment to high technology are for them evidence enough that he will be inclined to be more pragmatic and rational than his mother and grandfather, pragmatism and rationalism being for them euphemism for free enterprise and free enterprise a euphemism for a friendlier attitude a towards the west.
His first budget has convinced them that they were right in their assessment of him. This positive image will naturally give the Prime Minister a considerable advantage in his discussions with President Reagan and his aides when he goes to the United States in June.
Finally, it is a helpful coincidence that just as Mrs. Gandhi’s visit to the United States in 1982 was followed by Attenborough’s Gandhi, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi’s succession to her has been followed by the screening of Granada’s 11-part Jewel in the Crown TV series and David Lean’s Passage to India in that country. These too have reinforced a positive image of Indians. How strange the British should have contributed so much to promote our country in America. But history is full of such ironies.
The Times of India, 9 April 1985