Dear Jaswant, I may not agree with all the articles in this book, but I doagree with the headline.Love, Madeleine IT was a book called EngagingIndia, a compilation of articles written some six months by both Indian andUS scholars, and gifted to External Affairs minister Jaswant Singh by his UScounterpart Madeleine Albright that prompted the above inscription on thefly-leaf of the book.As the two parties and their leaderships finally get ready to meet on Indiansoil next week, One Big Question still overwhelms most people in thecountry: are India and the US truly ready to engage in a partnership for thefuture, as is being proclaimed in colourful language on both sides? Or isthe positive spin only a thin cover for many grim differences - especiallythose over Kashmir and nuclear issues - that still sustains bilateralsuspicion?The truth, most likely, lies somewhere in between. However, the fact thatsuch a question is even being asked, less than two years after thebitterness and anger fuelled by Pokharan II nearly destroyed therelationship between the two countries, can be said to represent a greatleap forward.From bitterness, then, to cognitive dissonance and even optimism in Indo-USrelationship, the responsibility for the shift in the Indian mood restslargely on Jaswant Singh. But after all the gains and losses are tallied andtabulated, the thing that emerges is that the BJP has succeeded, through itsdialogue with the US, in upgrading Washington as the power that will occupythe space vacated some ten years ago by the erstwhile Soviet Union.For on the eve of Clinton's visit, the very same Madeleine Albright whomade headlines soon after Pokharan when she said, ``India has dug itselfinto a hole'' was quoted as saying, ``Today, the conflict over Kashmir hasbeen fundamentally transformed. For nations must not attempt to changeborders or zones of occupation through armed force.''Albright's reference to freezing the Line of Control something thatPakistan has always rejected and India is privately tempted to considersince it would, for all time, solve the Kashmir problem is a major shiftfrom the US position, since 1948, that it does not accept the Instrument ofAccession of Kashmir to India. Or, that it does not recognise Kashmir asbeing an integral part of India.New Delhi is bound to be pleased if Clinton and his team amplifies upon thisformulation during his visit to India this week, even if the US positionfalls short of recognising the Instrument of Accession. Calls to freeze theLoC by none other than Pakistan's old friend and ally, the US, New Delhifeels, could be the greatest achievement of the Clinton visit to thesub-continent. It would begin the process of laying the ghosts of thepast.Islamabad would be under public scrutiny not to commit aggression again,which could escalate into war as it did in Kargil as well as stopcross-border terrorism in peacetime.Two days after Albright spoke, US national security adviser Samuel Bergerlaid the blame for Kargil at Pakistan's door. ``Kargil,'' he said, ``wassomething Pakistan bore responsibility for.hopefully, conditions can becreated in which a dialogue can resume as was started in Lahore.''Clearly, the Americans continue to be nervous over Kashmir being a nuclearflashpoint and want both neighbours to begin talks on confidence-buildingmeasures to eliminate the possibility of such an outcome.But over the last year, at least since Kargil and through Kandahar, bothIndia and the US are said to have shared significant information garneredthrough satellite imagery on Pakistani aggression of the LoC and later themovements of the hijackers of IC-814 in Afghanistan-Pakistan.But both Albright and Berger also made it clear that the goal of aqualitatively better Indo-US relationship would depend upon the distanceIndia was willing to travel on the nuclear issue: sign the CTBT, engage intalks on export controls, join in the fissile material convention talks andexercise restraint.``Proliferation is our number one concern,'' Albright said in the samespeech, ``significant progress in this area is necessary before India andthe US can realise fully the vast potential of this relationship.''Berger was even more blunt. ``The President will make plain (during thetrip) that India and Pakistan cannot be secure unless they engage indialogue to resolve tensions between them.''With the Americans prescribing the limits of cooperation, at least in theimmediate future, the sense, nevertheless, of the overall relationship is,that so much more for example, the computer and software business isfalling through the cracks. Both sides know that it is too soon for concretedeliverables, so bilateral contracts in trade, defence and commerce may notbe light up the eastern sky this week.With the US in election mode and the Vajpayee government not able to assertitself fully at home, the ``common spirit'' of the largest and oldestdemocracies has become the key for the visit. As one longtime US-watcherremarked acerbically, ``This is only the first round. It is not as if thetrain is leaving the station and we haven't been able to jump into it.''Clearly, as Clinton mania reaches incredible proportions right here, the USpresident remains in the driver's seat of this train. India's leverage liesin its ability to detach some key wagons, since no one really wants asituation where no one, not even a Third World country, is following theengine-driver.The Americans needn't be terribly worried on this score. The growth of theIndian middleclass in the last decade has pushed the Indian government toundertake an unprecedented pas-de-deux with Washington. The natural,rightwing inclinations of the BJP makes the dance far easier, eveninteresting, at times.It is under these bittersweet circumstances that Wiliam Jefferson Clintonvisits India this week the first US president in 22 years to have done so.
