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To say that America has been "affected" by the ghastly events of September 11, as well as by their Afghan aftermath, is an understatement akin to saying that General Pervez Musharraf is not one of nature's democrats. I live in America and I have detected a change in attitudes-both social and administrative-so profound, so tectonic, so darned refreshing, that I feel I live in a different country, a better and stronger country.

WRITING ON THE WALL: Security concerns united all Americans. Stars like Mariah Carey went and entertained troops (below).

At the outset, let me dispel a canard that has been doing the rounds. The Indian press, and the ethnocentric desi rags in America, have focused to irritating excess on the incidents of Sikhs or other subcontinentals experiencing a "backlash" post-September11, on account of their headgear or the tint of their epidermis. Of these incidents, yes, there have been a few, and even these few, in a civilised society, are too many. Yet stop to ponder awhile the fate that might have befallen a "target" group in other, less tolerant societies. Stop to ponder, in fact, the fate which befell thousands of Sikhs in India, in the murderous days after Indira Gandhi's assassination. Here, in America, only two people were killed-one Arab, the other Sikh-and their deaths reaped a bitter national condemnation, from President George W. Bush down. The killers were arrested; in India they still roam free. America's is a better, nobler society than ours by a long way. But back to that society, and to the way it has changed.

Let's start with a paradox. In the days after September11-days in which widows and widowers and orphans grew wrenchingly aware of the depth of their calamities-America was awash in sentiment. The country was in mourning, in tears; the mood, though stoical, was deeply emotional, as people unfurled flags, attended memorial services, lit candles in public spaces, placed flowers in squares and street corners, and said prayers for the dead and the bereft. Americans pray with feeling, and in times of tragedy they plunge deep into their liturgical culture in search of support and sustenance.

AMERICAN WILL

WAR IN WORDS Sept 11: Hijacked jets crash into the WTC. Another plane hits the Pentagon. "Make no mistake, we will hunt down and punish those responsible," promises US President George W. Bush. Sep 20: Bush outlines a broad framework for the campaign against terrorism. "Any nation that continues to harbour or support terrorism will be regarded by the US as a hostile regime." Oct 7: Attacks on Afghanistan begin. "We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfil it," says Bush. Dec 11: On the three-month anniversary of September 11, Bush says, "Our enemies have made the mistake that America's enemies always make; they saw liberty and thought they saw weakness, and now they see defeat."

Yet a new America has emerged from all this sentiment; perhaps for the first time in its existence, America is prepared to be coldly, ruthlessly unsentimental. I refer here not to the administration-there have, after all, been some memorably unsentimental presidencies in American history-but to the entire civitas. With the exception of a small band of incorrigible leftists and liberals, all America is united in the pursuit of its national interest abroad. There is an unapologetic assertion of a national right to self-protection-to self-preservation, if the truth be spoken plainly-that brooks no opposition from any nation that might seek to challenge this new, blunt mood.

The boundary, the frontier, that separates home from abroad has simply melted away. Americans are now aware, as never before, that what happens There has implications that can be bloody, too bloody, for Here. So the aversion to intervention abroad that had accumulated in the smug years after the Soviet Union's collapse-accumulated, in fact, like tartar on bad teeth-has become almost extinct. President Bush's promise to avoid "nation-building" as a tool of foreign policy during his pre-election debates with Al Gore are now anathema, and rightly so. America will not now shrink from "nation-building," a phrase once used pejoratively by the Republican Right, because it has awoken to a crude and potent truth: if other nations unravel, or become undone, or collapse, or fall under the sway of malign forces, then they pose a threat not merely to their own citizens, but to civilisation itself.

One of the clearest changes that one detects in American political discourse after September 11 is, in fact, the return to fashion, and to eminence, of the notion of "civilisation". To an Indian, it was striking that one of the most widely-quoted opinions on the subject-and this even before he was awarded his Nobel for literature-was drawn from a lecture that V.S. Naipaul gave to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative New York think tank, a decade ago. Sir Vidia had said then that the beauty of "our universal civilisation" is that it enshrines "the idea of the pursuit of happiness ... the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement". Such a society, he said, "cannot generate fanaticism". To be fanatical, after all, would be to be intellectually dishonest, and sterile.

These words resurfaced miraculously after September11, and were e-mailed to friends by people across America. They captured the sense that America, along with the rest of the civilised world, was at war with forces that were fanatical, intellectually dishonest and sterile.

As the most powerful country in the world, and, therefore, by most reasonable forms of calculation the guardian of our universal civilisation, America is suddenly aware that everything this civilisation stands for-its edifice of rights, liberties, economic freedoms, political prerogatives, cultural and philosophical emancipations-will come crashing down if the spoilers, the vandals, the barbarians win. But it is not merely a question of shutting the gates on the marauders; there is a realisation that it is prudent now, even imperative, to take the battle to their lands, to pursue war as prophylactic.

America now addresses its international responsibilities. The Third World left-the children of a lesser god, as it were, who work feverishly on their algebra of infinite justice-is up in arms, shrieking about neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism (but never "New York bachao!"), the surest sign that Washington is on the right track. India's interests are inextricably linked to America's, and there has been real appreciation here-in spite of an outward, sometimes gaudy profession of respect for General Musharraf-for the calm, collegial, pragmatic role that India has played in this first chapter in the war against terrorism.

This administration is partial to India in a way that has not been seen before in Washington, and is just as frustrated as Delhi is with the geostrategic straitjacket of Pakistani manufacture that it has had, perforce, to endure in the Afghan campaign. Here, too, one senses a change in America. The public has not swallowed the line that Pakistan is an "ally". The American "street", to borrow a phrase employed to describe public opinion in the Middle East, is deeply sceptical, now, of states that are in any way Islamic or which in any way put a price on their support. India stands to profit in the medium to long term-not just strategically, but also as a partner in the universal civilisation that is threatened by fanatical Islam-from the new, straightforward "us and them" approach to foreign policy.

America now seeks unconditional, instinctive allies, not opportunistic ones. This is part of the post-September11 yearning for clarity-a clarity of purpose, of intention, of morality, of allegiance, alliance and friendship. There's a new world order emerging out there-again! But it's for real this time. I live in America and I see the change.