What neighbourhood?
It is easy to imagine the sensitive intellectual of Southasia wringing his hands in dismay at the peripheral place the region occupies in India's public discourse. You too would empathise with such an individual if you were to compare the Indian media's breathless, extensive reporting on the rise of Barack Obama in the United States to the relatively lacklustre, limited coverage accorded to the advent of democracy in Nepal and Bhutan, momentous developments both. Our sensitive intellectual would not be wrong in reaching a depressing conclusion: Indians have lost interest in their neighbourhood.
Policy wonks in New Delhi are likely to dismiss this perception as gross exaggeration, symptomatic of the neighbourhood's inferiority complex about India. Yet it cannot be denied that the middle-class Indian – the driving force behind India's foreign policy – has turned his gaze away from the impoverished neighbourhood, to look wistfully at those distant countries offering him opportunities to earn his millions. Globalisation and liberalisation has removed his fetters; his wealth and influence have grown exponentially; he struts around the world believing it to be his stage. The middle-class Indian has projected his aspirations as those of India's, exulting in the description of his country as an emerging power and an economic powerhouse of the future.
Effaced from this worldview is the plight of the teeming millions languishing in poverty. The middle-class Indian extends his callous insensitivity beyond the border to the neighbourhood: he feels that the countries of Southasia, like the poor at home, are a drag on his ambition, a burden he facetiously believes that he should not have to shoulder. And because he is in the thrall of the rich and powerful, he allows only a tangential place to the surrounding region in the national discourse.
But this is only part of his story. The insularity of the middle-class Indian is also due to his perception of the countries comprising Southasia as arrayed against India in varying degrees. For nearly a quarter of a century, he has seen Pakistan foment 'terrorism', the sweep of death and destruction spreading from the border states to envelop the country's heartland. He is alarmed to discover Bangladesh replicate Pakistan's insidious design; he finds it incredible that Dhaka should tacitly encourage millions to illegally infiltrate his country. Bangladesh's hostility is incomprehensible to him, given that the country was born with India's help. He asks himself, Is it because Bangladesh is predominantly Muslim? But then, he is left aghast at the sight of the 'Hindus of Nepal' likewise venting their sentiments against Delhi. He remembers vividly the price his country paid to broker a truce between Colombo and the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
His experiences have prompted him to reach a conclusion as depressing as that of the sensitive intellectual's: They, the countries of Southasia, are jealous of us, they hate us, their opposition to India is instinctive; but let them wallow in their envy, for there is a world waiting for us beyond the neighbourhood.
Worryingly, the apathy of the middle-class Indian is reflected in his country's conduct of foreign policy. For instance, only three of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 28 foreign trips over the past four years have been to countries in Southasia. Of these three, his visit to Dhaka pertained to the SAARC Summit; he went to Afghanistan before it became a SAARC member. During these four years, it was the Indo-US nuclear deal, and not the neighbourhood, on which Prime Minister Singh expended tremendous time and energy. As the middle-class Indian would say, you go where there are hopes of gain.
Secession
As such, it was not surprising that Southasia caught India sleeping at crucial moments. When angry Nepalis took to the streets against the autocratic Gyanendra Shah, New Delhi dithered over whether or not the country should carve out at least a ceremonial role for the monarchy. India, it could be said, did not end up with a bad name, thanks to its sagacious diplomats, who cautioned their political masters against defying the popular sentiment. In Sri Lanka, India's policy of neutrality between the LTTE and Colombo goaded the latter to seek arms from China and Pakistan. Waking up belatedly, in June 2008, an alarmed Indian government rushed out a high-profile team on an ostensibly secret mission to recalibrate its Lanka policy.
What India cannot be blamed for is the limbo into which India-Pakistan relations have slipped. This has been largely due to the political turmoil in Pakistan, which has lasted for more than a year now. Beyond the immediate, though, it is in Pakistan that Indians continue to evince a deep and abiding interest. Apart from the bloody history of Partition they share, Pakistan has been defined in the popular consciousness as the 'other', the 'enemy', the small and unequal neighbour obsessed with India. For this reason, it is not surprising to find the middle-class Indian rub his hands with barely concealed glee at Pakistan's acute discomfort today. As long as Pakistan remains distracted, the Indian feels his country is free to embrace the world beyond the neighbourhood.
The middle-class Indian can afford to 'secede' from the neighbourhood. Those who cannot do so are the poor, whose fate depends on the greater integration of Southasia. The marginalised in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar could see their lives improve dramatically in a paradigm that treats their states and Nepal as a composite unit for development. This is as true for the states of Northeast India vis-à-vis Bangladesh, and for the states of India sharing the frontier with Pakistan. But to achieve this requires the setting aside of differences, and the formulation of a method to capture the imagination of the middle-class Indian towards initiating a vibrant national discourse on Southasia.
~ Vinod Mehta is editor-in-chief of the Outlook Group of Publications, Delhi.