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RIGHT
ANGLE
They Also Serve India
By
Swapan
Dasgupta
Vajpayee
has shown he has a mind independent of his minders
 When
it comes to the non-resident Indian (NRI), resident Indians seem to be
engulfed by a strange inverted snobbery. We laud their staggering professional
success, envy their wealth and lifestyle and crave their dollars. Simultaneously,
we sneer at their social conservatism, religiosity and ultra-nationalism.
Their untroubled mix of cosmopolitanism and Indianness leave us flummoxed.
In our bewilderment, we take the easy way out: we make them objects of
condescension. We mock the tiny corners of Manhattan that are forever
Mylapore. Why, we ask incredulously, should a gathering in Staten Island
to felicitate the prime minister include 108 Hindu religious heads? And,
should A.B. Vajpayee have attended the Indian American Community gala
function-tickets cost between $300 and $500-in the first place?
A past master
at sophistry and ambivalence, it is unlikely that Vajpayee couldn't anticipate
the ripples his measured speech would create domestically. To those who
have started believing the slightly spurious hype about a reinvented Vajpayee
telling the saffron brotherhood where to get off, the utterances appeared
like an unfortunate instance of political regression. To his detractors,
it was a case of the mask slipping off and the Hindutva face showing.
A conclusion the faithful happily endorsed, if only by way of reassurance
that the revolution hadn't been betrayed for the sake of power. In a week
that witnessed confusion in the ranks over the vengeful exclusion of K.N.
Govindacharya from the BJP office-bearers' list, Vajpayee's I-am-a-swayamsevak
speech was a clever act of redemption. Given their penchant for viewing
national politics through a narrow foreign policy prism, Vajpayee's minders
unfortunately failed to grasp that logic.
Yet, the
compulsions of domestic politics doesn't explain everything. Vajpayee
could just as well have waited for his return to India to find an occasion
to inform a restive Hindu vote bank he wasn't a lost cause. That he chose
to do it before his overseas fan club was deliberate. Vajpayee said what
he did because that is precisely what the audience wanted to hear.
The dream
of a resurgent India, able to claim its rightful place among the great
powers, has motivated overseas Indians ever since they got off the boat
to seek their fortunes in distant lands. With fame and prosperity-the
per capita income of Indian Americans now equals that of Jewish Americans-this
has been transformed into a mission. The logic is simple: if India is
great, its diaspora basks in reflected glory. Conversely, the ignominy
of the motherland weighs heavily on the shoulders of her children overseas.
The Vajpayee Government is more mindful of this sentiment than others.
Vajpayee
needs to be. After the May 1998 nuclear tests, it was the Indian American
community that rallied behind India both materially and politically. This
was at a time when the more famous NRI intellectuals actively lobbied
western governments to teach the "Hindu nationalists" a befitting
lesson. Last week's New York Review of Books, for example, had Pankaj
Mishra warning the US against cosying up to India because it "ends
up undermining the already fragile safeguards for civil liberties in India's
imperfect democracy". If President Clinton now feels it expedient
to host Vajpayee and sing India's praise, it is partly because the countervailing
voices have prevailed. By gracing the New York function, Vajpayee was
acknowledging those who helped make it happen. He was offering India's
big thank you.
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