The US is used to getting what they want using any and all means at their disposal - “Carrots or Sticks” as they say in the west or “saam daam dand bhed” as we say in India. A friendship with the US will be a friendship of the unequals. Therefore, as NV Subramanian says that all this talk of US and India being natural allies is hollow rhetoric. It will be foolish on our part to think that the US will do anything out of magnanimity or because it is the right thing to do. They will do what is in their interest –security or financial. Now if we want to ally with them then we need to position ourselves in such a way that our interests coincide. In fact that is how most nations, in absence of an ideology, make friends. With PM Modi at helm we see right moves being made.
Israelis have used their Diaspora and American Jews to their advantage. We must take a page out of the Israeli book and make use of our Diaspora as well. Indian Americans are fast becoming a super minority with economic and financial power. US politicians need to be made aware of our concerns through lobbying and networking. There exists a lot of bad institutional memory in the US vis a vis Indo-US relations. Despite the US being the biggest trade partner and money donor we voted against them in the UN over 70% of the votes (until the late 1980s). This sowed seeds of extreme distrust especially in the Republican Party. That we were Soviet supporting Hindus did not win us any favors there. This is why people like Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney who used to be part of the Nixon / Ford / Reagan administration, hated us. That era politicians are now retired. We now have to deal with US foreign policy forged during the Clinton Administration which has now become the new institutional memory. During the Clinton days it almost seems that the Indo-US relations were single handedly ruined by the then South Asia secretary Robin Raphel who was a close friend of the Clintons. A poisonous person like Raphel who has had the ears of the Clintons for almost three decades must have some effect on their impression of India (all the singing and dancing Bill Clinton does in India notwithstanding). It is said that Preet Bharara who is the US attorney for the Southern District of New York will become the Attorney General in a possible Hillary Clinton cabinet. Those of us who followed Devyani Khobragade (a corrupt Indian diplomat in her own right) episode and then the ensuing issuance of the court summons against PM Modi know that this despicable man has decided to prove his fairness by going to extra mile when it comes to indicting and punishing Indians. Moreover with Hillary Clinton in the white house, every anti Indian leftist in the US will have an extremely powerful ally.
The Indian American voters, from what I see and hear tend to vote democratic despite being conservatives in their personal lives. I can understand that. Republicans are a white Christian party and we are neither white nor Christian so we gravitate towards the Democratic party against our natural tendencies. However the new generation of Republicans do not have the Reagan era institutional memory and are pragmatic politicians. The two non white Republican governors are Indian Americans (both have converted but that is still a minor point). The Republicans trusted Neel Tushar Kashkari who is a Hindu to challenge Jerry Brown for the Governorship of California. Kashkari lost but he still managed to garner 42% votes.
My appeal to the Indian American voters is that they need to take a hard look at the Republican party. For that they may need to overcome a lot of their biases but it is for the betterment of Indo-US relations. We do not need lip service providing Democrats who appoint Indian Americans to a lot of junior and unimportant posts but hurt us when it comes to real issues. The Indian American voters need to overcome their own institutional memory and look at the 2016 candidates pragmatically. A person like Hillary Clinton will not be good for India. We do not know who will be the Republican candidate but he or she deserves an unbiased look from the Indian American voters. Please don’t underestimate your own power. Your votes, your lobbying and your voice is extremely important for Indo-US relations.
NV Subramanian's article on the Indo-US "friendship" can be read at:
http://www.newsinsight.net/Raphel%E2%80%99sAmerica.aspx#page=page-1
