As a nation attains economic and political power, inevitably it sees itself — and others see it as well — as some sort of a model. The best examples of this phenomenon came during the Cold War when the United States and the Soviet Union began to project the manner in which they organised economic resources — capitalist and market-driven in one case, collectivist and state-determined in the other — as ideas for other countries to adopt.
After World War II, Japan offered a new formula — focus on the economy and on technology; create a technocratic state with a tight but facilitative bureaucracy; stay out of the big political debates of the age; and seek security under the American strategic umbrella. A series of Asian countries, from Singapore to South Korea, Suharto’s Indonesia to Taiwan, followed Japan’s footsteps.
China offers yet another template. It argues the key to domestic stability is constant and unremitting economic growth, not necessarily the vote. It reckons that by giving a significant number of its citizens material prosperity — and fostering a consumer culture that is in its own way empowering, being the opposite of East Bloc shortage economies — it can create enough of an incentive for citizens to not demand Western-style democratic institutions. Rather, they would stay satisfied that they are better off than previous generations.
Given this backdrop, what is the India model? When asked this question, this country’s political and foreign policy elites resort to anodyne blabber. Mostly, they insist India has never seen itself as an example for other developing countries and is certainly not a society that wants to export values, much less democracy.
While much of this is true, it ignores the point that India — or any country that begins to acquire cross-continental heft — could become a model even without wanting to. Other countries and other societies will look to India and pick and choose those aspects that they find agreeable and worthy of emulation.
No country with serious economic ambition would want to borrow India’s infrastructure, manufacturing laws and regulations and licence-raj legacy. On those counts, China wins hands down. However, when it comes to giving every citizen a theoretically equal voice, and using free speech and basic civil liberties as a framework to harmonise internal anxieties, India will stand out. Minus those soft-power attributes, it is not even in the reckoning; the India-China equation then becomes a no-contest.
What is crucial about each country’s distinguishing attributes is that these must be frequently and visibly demonstrated. Japan’s (or the Asian Tigers’) support for the US in global politics would need to be tested each time there was a crisis. China’s robust growth would need to continue to validate both to its public and to foreign stakeholders that the Beijing consensus is working.
Likewise in India free and fair elections, regularly held, testify to its commitment to a Government run by a popular mandate. Yet, is this enough?
At specific junctures in history, Governments and nations are measured by how they respond to the challenges of the day. It could be the Nazi scourge in the 1930s and 1940s, the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989-91 or, most recently, the Arab Spring. For better or worse, the first decade of this millennium has seen free societies battling a strange amalgam of street Islamism and the new Left.
While other forces — from White supremacists such as that crazed Norwe-gian mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, to the Hindu Right mobs that drove MF Husain out of India and protest at any exhibition of any his paintings — have also threatened the freedom of others, the organised challenge of Islamism and the alluring appeal of the Al Qaeda philosophy for sections of Muslims is a clear and demonstrable problem. It presents to democracy a threat perception of quite another order.
Some trace this to 9/11, others to the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1989 and still others to the Iranian Revolution a decade earlier. There is an inevitable political correctness to any analysis of this challenge, even a degree of denial. Even so, faced with a compelling choice, most free democracies have drawn a line in the sand — and said they will accept, tolerate and live with radical manifestations of Islam only to this degree and no further, at least in the domestic realm.
For example, while the US may be willing to buy peace with the Taliban as part of an exit plan in Afghanistan, there is no question of compromising with cousins of the Taliban at home. Appeasement of radical Islamism in a manner that changes lives of citizens and policies of Governments in Seattle or Chicago or Washington, DC, is incomprehensible. Willy-nilly, this has become the litmus test for post-9/11 democracies.
How does India perform? This past week, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan said he didn’t want Salman Rushdie attending the Jaipur Literary Festival because of “law and order” fears. One extremist religious leader offered a reward to anybody who would throw a shoe at Rushdie.
A terrorist group is believed to be planning bodily harm. The conservatives of Deoband — so important to the Congress at election time in Uttar Pradesh — have asked for Rushdie to be kept out of India. A Government that is committed to safeguarding every resident, temporary or permanent, took the easy way out and succumbed.
It’s happened earlier. In March 2006, shortly after a privately-owned Danish newspaper published allegedly objectionable cartoons depicting the Prophet, the Indian Government asked Denmark’s Prime Minister to postpone his trip. The then spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs said the “timing for the visit was not optimal”.
Two years ago, a private organisation invited Mr Shimon Peres, President of Israel, to a conference in New Delhi, after informally sounding out the Prime Minister’s Office. A few days later, the Congress leadership vetoed the idea, worried the arrival of an Israeli leader would jeopardise the party’s courtship of the north Indian Muslim. The PMO withdrew its pleasure.
The Israelis were told their President could come only for a private visit, without any engagement with the Indian Government. The conference organisers had no option but to disinvite Mr Peres.
These may seem three unrelated, stand alone episodes, each representative of the Congress’s electoral compulsions. Nevertheless they add up to something bigger than the sum of the parts. Fundamentally, they embarrass India. They leave the world wondering whether, when it comes to the crunch, the Indian state really believes in non-negotiable principles. In short, they show up the Indian model as hollow.
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it The accompanying visual shows Muslims protesting against Salman Rushdie after Friday prayers on January 20 in Jaipur. AP photo by Manish Swarup
