President Obama’s recent visit to India seemed to be received pretty well here. Based on my limited contact with opinionated Indians, they don’t seem to like the guy much, largely because he’s been much more diplomatic about Islam and Pakistan than Bush was. But while here, he did a lot to mend his past statements, and to return to a recent string of good will that the US and India have enjoyed.
India and Pakistan have a long history of war, one which I wasn’t too aware of when I got here. I knew they REALLY cared about their annual cricket matches (most of which end in ties somehow... I’m still fuzzy on cricket), but I wasn’t particularly aware of just how unfriendly these two countries are with each other. If the US hated a country this much, we would NOT be playing regular sporting events with them.
The very brief history begins with the British Partition of India, which resulted in the border disputes we see today. Several northern “princely states”, including Kashmir, were given the option to join Pakistan or India, and their choices are disputed. Kashmir was eventually split in two by a U.N. mediator, leaving both sides unhappy. So you start off with a war in 1947 over the initial partition and another in 1965 over Pakistan’s invasion of Jammu and Kashmir (the Indian-controlled half of Kashmir). They fought again in 1971 over the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan, and now an ally of India), and then again in the Kargil war in 1999, again over Kashmir. India and Pakistan now fight over the <"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_Conflict">Siachen Glacier, a useless plot of land that is the highest battlefield in the world.
More recently, we had the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, or “26/11,” as it’s referred to here. “26/11" references November 26th in the rest of the world’s day-month-year date ordering. It also invokes 9-11, and is considered India’s 9-11. I won’t recap that whole affair, but it was several days of terror in Mumbai, with hostage situations unfolding at lavish hotels and other locales. 175 people were murdered. This was tied to a Pakistani terrorist group, but Indians believe it was so well-organized that the Pakistani government must have been involved. This isn’t too far-fetched, given Pakistan’s history of infiltration into India. I’m skeptical, since all this took was guns, boats, and a landing timed to coincide with the India-Pakistan cricket match that everyone would be watching.
Anyway, we have a long history of being flaky allies of the Indians. They’re obviously our best allies in the area, but India has other allies, too. Iran and Pakistan aren’t the greatest of neighbors with each other, and as a result, India and Iran are fairly close. In 1971, when we attempted to diffuse conflict between Pakistan and India, the Soviets lent their support to India (Nixon supported Pakistan, an ally of China and a bastion against Soviet expansion). The Russians and Indians later co-designed a supersonic cruise missile, the fastest in the world, called the Brahmos, a combination of “Brahmaputra” and “Moscow.” It’s the fastest missile in the world, but it’s a medium range thing, so don’t worry about it hitting the US. The French helped India in its conflicts with China over Arunachal Pradesh, and as a result are also good allies of the Indians. Manmohan Singh was the chief guest at France’s National Day celebrations in 2009 (Bastille Day). And obviously they’re still close with the British.
The US has, in recent times, become more stalwart of an ally. Like I mentioned, Bush was willing to speak out against Islam, and this played well in India. Based on my experiences, Indians detest being equated with Pakistan. They consider themselves (rightly, I would think) far more advanced a society than they are, and would consider this on par with equating the U.S. and Mexico. When we have refused to take sides in their conflicts, we have implicitly equated the two as equal powers. Obama is something of a return to that, though. A small handful of Americans may believe he’s a Muslim, but a whole lot of Indians believe that. Obama has also displayed very harsh rhetoric over outsourcing, an industry which has made our two countries great economic allies. Side note: this is anything but an abusive industry–outsourced work is good work here, as opposed to in China. The newspapers were definitely afraid that he would rebound from the election with a lot of populist commentary here (one newspaper also characterized the election with “Prez whitewashed by voters”).
But while the newspapers were skeptical heading in, they seemed mostly won over by the time he left. He saved his Islam-stroking for later, in Indonesia, and refrained from harsh anti-outsourcing rhetoric while here. Importantly, Obama advocated making India a permanent member of the UN Security Council, something the Indians have wanted for a long time, and something which was not lost in the op-ed pages here.
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