India, superpower in the 3rd millennium BC - and AD

[Guest guest]

Koenraad Elst

India, superpower in the 3rd millennium BC - and AD

 

In the 3rd millennium BC, the Indus-Saraswati civilization was the

world leader in science and technology as well as in trade and

philosophy. We are witnessing a return to India's roots, considering

the bright prospects of India in the 3rd millennium AD, soon to

begin. In current discussions about this development, the Pokharan

nuclear tests were the inevitable main points of reference, because

they have acted as an eye-opener to Indians and foreigners alike. The

tests have made the point that India now plays in the top league:

technologically, because Indian scientists have demonstrated their

mastery of that very technology which, after 1945, decides a

country's status in geopolitics; and politically, because India has

demonstrated the will and capacity to assert its vision of a

multipolar world, as opposed to the unipolar "new world order"

inaugurated by the Soviet implosion. In this guest column, I would

like to look into some of the implications of the emerging power

equation.

 

India's relations with the Muslim world It is still customary in the

Western media to see 'Hindu India' as one half of an antagonistic duo

with Pakistan or the larger Muslim world. If this perception was ever

valid, the nuclear tests and other developments have rendered it

completely obsolete. Pakistan just cannot compete with India, and the

Indian tests were correctly explained as necessitated by India's

defense needs vis-a-vis China and the US. Contrary to all predictions

by foreign 'experts', the BJP government has not built gas chambers

for the Indian Muslims, and it has not given an anti-Muslim thrust to

its foreign policy.

 

In this connection, I must congratulate the present ruling party, the

BJP, for a policy of which I personally used to be a critic. When you

study the BJP's foreign policy statements since the party's founding

in 1980, you find that they strictly avoid any confrontationist

positions vis-a-vis the Muslim world as such. There were of course

harangues against Pakistan and its proxy wars, there were warnings

against Islamic 'fundamentalism', but underlying all this was a basic

assurance that a BJP government would continue India's policy of

cooperation with Muslim countries, in parallel with the BJP's charm

offensive towards India's Muslims. While independent Hindu revivalist

intellectuals have analyzed relations with the Muslim world in terms

of a 'clash of civilizations' since long before Samuel Huntington

popularized this expression, the BJP's approach was strictly

nationalistic: treat Indian Muslims as Indians, and likewise treat

the Arabian Muslims as Arabs, the Ayatollahs as Iranians, rather than

as representatives of a mythical pan-Islamic power. In years past, I

used to deride this de-ideologization of the Hindu approach to the

Muslims as a sign an intellectual sloppiness and opportunism; but in

fact, it is eminently wise policy. While focusing on Islam as a

doctrine remains a valid project for scholars of comparative

religion, it would be wrong for politicians to treat Arab or Indian

Muslims as essentially spokesmen of Islamic doctrine, reducing them

to their religious identity. In reality, the national interests of

Iran or Egypt and the individual interests of Indian Muslims are

shaped far more by objective realities than by religion. Hence the

correctness of the BJP's approach of disregarding religious

identities and emphasizing national identities instead.

 

Policy-makers in the West should pay more attention to the difference

in economic and technological performance between India and the

Middle-Eastern countries: while the former is poor but dynamic, the

latter are rich but stagnant, unable to outgrow their status as a

mere market for American goods. India's image is increasingly

determined by its brainy engineers rather than by Mother Teresa, and

the country should prepare to take a leadership role in the progress

of its less dynamic West-Asian neighbors. Among other things, this

will help all parties concerned to exorcise any remaining bad

memories of religious conflict, and get on with their lives. For

Muslims in India, it is now glaringly clear that their best interests

lie in joining the mainstream. They have given up on Pakistan,

witness recent occasions where Indian Muslims celebrated Indian

rather than Pakistani sports victories. Pakistan, let's face it, is

in a shambles: it is socially stagnant, educationally backward,

economically bankrupt, and the number of Muslims killed in sectarian

violence in the last five years is a hundred times higher in Pakistan

than in India. Indeed, Pakistani Muslims too are reconsidering their

position, increasingly emphasizing their ethnic (Sindhi, Baluchi,

Pathan) identities and musing about some kind of confederation with

India. While Pakistan as a state has an obsessive hostility to

everything Hindu and Indian, India can treat Pakistan as just a

nuisance, a failed state from which an increasing number of

Pakistanis seek to free themselves. India plays in a higher league,

it is one of the emerging world powers, and South-Asian Muslims want

to be part of this, rather than play along in Pakistan's pitiable

proxy wars.

 

India and the USA

One of the sad aspects of the Cold War was the estrangement between

India and the West. For most of the time, India has been the only

democracy between the Jordan and the Yellow Sea, and should have been

the West's natural ally in the region. Attitudes on both sides were

shortsighted and pre-occupied with ideological posturing and

strategic calculations, but that should all be history by now. The

aftermath of Pokharan saw a lot of anti-US defiance among Indian

politicians and commoners, but now that the dust has settled, India

should prepare for global partnership with the US, China and other

countries to ensure peace and cooperation. The US, on its part,

should of course invite India into the club of permanent Security

Council members: this is a demand of fairness, but also of American

interests.

 

Both the US and India have been major targets of terrorism, so the US

cannot continue to sponsor anti-Indian terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir

all while combating anti-American terrorism in the Middle East. To

the extent that the US sees China as a threat, it has an interest in

treating India as a counterweight and check on Chinese expansionism.

This is all so obvious to any rational observer, and it is about time

US policy-makers wake up. Probably the gradual realization of the

failure of the punitive policy against India, imposing 'sanctions' on

a fellow nuclear power, which only draws more strength from them,

will drive the message home.