Through 'Hindu' Eyes

New Delhi

When India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee addresses a joint session of Congress on September 14 and meets President Clinton at length the next day, it's a safe bet that few US leaders or reporters will be aware of the views Vajpayee represents. In some ways, his hard-right Hindu-sectarian Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party) is not very different from Jörg Haider's deceptively named Freedom Party in Austria, which also rules in a multiparty coalition. Both derive their inspiration from racial/ethnic nativism and from European fascism of the twenties and thirties. Their ideological gurus share the same predilection for a fiercely exclusionist nationalism. On September 9, addressing Hindu-supremacist groups on Staten Island, Vajpayee strongly reaffirmed his allegiance to the BJP's "mother" organization and ideological master, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps)--an all-male, secret societu-type brotherhood that, with other groups, provided the ideological inspiration for Mahatma Gandhi's assassination.

The BJP and Freedom Party are different, of course. The Freedom Party is largely concerned with downplaying Hitler's evil and restricting Third World immigration into today's Austria. The BJP promotes what it calls Hindutva (Hinduness) or "cultural nationalism," i.e., establishing the primacy of India's Hindus within an emerging militarily powerful and hegemonic state, while culturally and politically disfranchising its numerous religious minorities, as well as its poor majority. The two evoke different responses too. The EU responded to the Freedom Party's ascendancy to power by imposing sanctions eight months ago, although it just lifted them. India under the BJP is declared a great democracy with a magnificent future in the Clinton-Vajpayee joint "Vision Statement," issued this past March during Clinton's first visit to India. This statement describes India and the United States as world leaders and shapers of global destiny--in "a natural partnership of shared endeavors."

The Clinton Administration has coddled Vajpayee's right-wing regime despite its May 1998 nuclear tests, its worsening human rights record and the continuing Hindutva attacks on religious minorities, especially the 12 percent who are Muslims and, increasingly, the 2.3 percent who are Christians. (There have been fifty-eight attacks, including lynchings, against Christians since the year began and a total of more than 400 since January 1998.) Washington has lifted more than 90 percent of the sanctions it imposed in the wake of the tests, even though Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott failed to secure a commitment on nuclear restraint in thirteen rounds of talks with Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh. Although India's progressives reject Washington's claim to police the world morally or impose sanctions, they believe that its softness toward India derives from altogether amoral considerations.

The biggest is that Vajpayee has opened up India to predatory globalization with unprecedented zeal, favoring US agribusiness, energy and financial interests. Shortly before Clinton's visit, India agreed to lift import restrictions on 1,400 commodities, including grain and milk products, before being required to do so by World Trade Organization agreements. US multinationals--whether insurance, telecommunications or automobiles--now suddenly find a restricted market of a billion people "freed." US business has also discovered the "other" India--luring its computer software whiz-kids to Silicon Valley. Their success has had little impact at home, with fewer than two Internet connections per 1,000 people. Encouraged by this interest, Vajpayee is pushing for neoliberal policies calculated to benefit India's 40-million-strong "middle class" elite, but harsh on its 500-million-plus wretchedly poor.

Washington also finds a willing strategic partner in once non-aligned India. With India's rightward cultural and economic shift, New Delhi is eager to join the Western camp. Various other factors--including a Sinophobic calculation of a useful long-term alliance against China, and Pakistan's economic collapse amid exaggerated fears of Islamic fundamentalism--have fueled the closest-ever India-US relationship. But the relationship is skewed and awkward. At its core is Washington's acceptance of India as a de facto nuclear power. Indeed, the United States is initiating India into the nuclear club as a junior member in return for a promise to behave "responsibly" as an ally.

The nuclearization of India and Pakistan has exacerbated mutual tensions and suspicions while stoking adventurism and dangerous complacency. The two exchanged grave nuclear threats no fewer than thirteen times during their seven-week war last year. The United States, India and Pakistan are locked in an asymmetrical, delicate triangle. By tilting toward India, however tentatively, Washington has made a bad bargain, inadvertently strengthening Pakistan's Islamicist right and legitimizing India's Hindu supremacists while encouraging the pursuit of nuclear weapons in both countries. This won't change unless Washington adopts a balanced economic and strategic approach to South Asia and sets an example by giving up its own nuclear addiction.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.