Arnie to Bobby

California, the richest state of the union and Louisiana, the poorest state in the union have both elected unusual governors.

California, the richest state of the union and Louisiana, the poorest state in the union have both elected unusual governors. Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian immigrant and Bobby Jindal is the son of immigrants from India. There is an astounding symmetry in how this has happened. They are both Republicans. The party accused by its detractors as being the home of privilege has turned out to be more open to fulfilling the dreams of high-achiever immigrants than the leftist rhetoric-loving Democrats.

Arnold and Bobby have both made themselves attractive to the American establishment by unrelated and unplanned personal choices. Schwarzenegger married a niece of John Kennedy for love. Bobby became a Roman Catholic from personal conviction. Both these acts happened years before either of them stood for electoral office. They were deeply felt private choices. Only the churlish would suggest that either individual had future electoral gains in mind when they made their decisions. But in politics everything counts. In our own country, possibly from a genuine belief that Nehru had a soft spot for things cultural, rather than based on cynical considerations, his daughter made sure that Vedic chants were part of the funeral of the agnostic Jawaharlal Nehru. And persons as far removed as Sonia Gandhi and Chandrababu Naidu have had advantages stemming from their marriages in their smooth entry into politics. Given the pitfalls of marriage as an institution, it is inconceivable that either of them had planned for the unintended consequences! The contours of democratic politics are such that the perceptions of voters do influence their choices. Private choices do have an impact on political outcomes.

Schwarzenegger and Jindal are both high achievers. The former was and is an enormously popular movie star managing to get adulation in the tough no-prisoners-taken world of Hollywood. The latter has combined academic achievements Ivy League degree, Rhodes scholarship and so on with professional achievements in the sphere of public policy. They are both outsiders who have made their achievements the basis of their political attractiveness. The significant difference is that one is 8220;white8221; and hence has claims to being 8220;related8221; in some way to the majority of Californian voters. The other is 8220;brown8221; and that too in a state which practiced, protected and defended race-based slavery till 1864 and that had institutionalised racial discrimination till the 1960s. Jindal8217;s achievement in this context is somewhat more formidable than that of his Californian counterpart. To convince voters that a person who till recently would have been considered genetically 8220;inferior8221; on account of his race, can actually be their leader and help solve the problems of the unhappy hurricane-ridden state is quite an extraordinary, even positively brilliant achievement in the sphere of communications, if nothing else. The Indian analogy clearly is that of Mayawati who too is outstanding in her communications skills.

Jindal8217;s detractors have been highlighting the fact that he has strong conservative positions on state support of birth control and opposition to abortion. Bobby8217;s PR folks could do no better than point out to critics that Mahatma Gandhi was an inveterate and firm opponent of artificial birth control and abortion was anathema to him. In this regard and in others too, Bobby Jindal can proudly claim to be upholding the principles of the greatest Indian leaders of recent times and thus giving evidence of his pride in his Indian origins!

The interesting thing about democratic politics is that the realm of the possible constantly expands and repeatedly astonishes intellectual pundits who have analysed everything to death and keep telling you that some things are just not possible. What is fascinating is that the extension of the range of possibilities almost invariably comes from market-friendly political parties and not from statist left-leaning ones. It is almost as if the believers in the promise of individual enterprising citizens as against the believers in the wisdom of commissars prevail not just in the economic sphere but in public life as well. Disraeli, a converted Jew, rose to prominence in the Conservative party. In more recent times, Margaret Thatcher, a woman, was made leader of the Conservatives. And in contemporary times, Sarkozy, a child of immigrants has again emerged from Conservative ranks to challenge the Enarque elite of the socialist persuasion.

This is not surprising. When you believe in a political philosophy that the central planning commission of a party knows what is best for people and that left to themselves people will make bad decisions in the marketplace, then you are most certainly in favour of self-appointed and possibly self-perpetuating elites being in charge and in schoolmasterly fashion ordering the people about. The late Kanshi Ram used to point out that the various communist parties in India are invariably led by upper caste, elitist shall we say, scotch-drinking, Marlboro-smoking leaders who literally lived off the efforts of their lower caste followers. It appears that leftists are the same in France, Britain or India. Individual achievements count little with them. Jindal and Schwarzenegger would therefore be ruled out as unfit for leadership.

For Indian supporters of the US, the times of late have been hard. Many of us have held that the US strategy in the Middle East is the correct one although it has been hampered by spotty execution. The American positions on Guantanamo and custodial treatment of prisoners has however betrayed the cause of liberty and tarnished the moral position of the free world. The election of someone like Bobby Jindal restores in some measure our faith in the foundations of the oldest continuing constitutional republic of our times. American readers of this column should take note of the fact that Malerkotla, the hometown of Bobby8217;s parents, has been always even in dark days of Partition been known as an island of peace and brotherhood among different religious communities Hindoos, Moslems and Sikhs. Maybe, consciously or otherwise, the Jindal family has brought this sense of inclusiveness as its very real and symbolic contribution to the fabric of the American republic. Good luck Bobby!

Story continues below this ad

The writer is a commentator on the economic, political and cultural scene in India