NAM change, anyone?

Old Fidel is still there and while Mrs Gandhi is no more, her party is in power, and its prime minister will meet 8216;brother8217; Castro and there probably will be a hug. But what will matter to us, instead, will be another hug, or rather an old-fashioned Punjabi jhapi if Manmohan and Musharraf choose to go beyond a routine hand-shake. Also, now anti-Americanism will not be the ideological glue that once kept NAM together. There will be a lot of haggling over every word of the various operative resolutions, for example, the one on Iran. There will be a lot more questioning of anything overtly anti-American. To that extent, you might say that NAM has come of age, and emerged as more genuinely non-aligned, obviously because there is no Soviet Bloc, whose faithful, tail-wagging shadow it became for three embarrassing decades. We may not wish to be reminded of it now, but our voting record at the UN from 1971 onwards when we signed the treaty with the Soviets, from Kampuchea to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, is not something that any NCERT, whether under saffron, red or green control, should ever allow into our school textbooks. Or our grand-children8217;s self-esteem will be zilch.

Havana, 2006, will have a different flavour for another reason. The Cold War is still not back. It is still a very unipolar world, but one of the driving forces of the 8216;non-aligned8217; or pro-Soviet world of the Cold War era, anti-Americanism, is now back in vogue, thanks to Bush. During the Cold War America was not hated so unanimously even among its allies. So anti-Americanism now is an emotion that cuts across ideology, religion and geo-politics in today8217;s world. People of many NATO countries detest the Bush worldview, and so, of course, do those of Islamic states and those of the ideological/dynastic Left.

The fatal weakness or rather the most fascinating oddity in today8217;s NAM is that its two most important, powerful, populous 8212;and its only nuclear-armed 8212; members neither share that anti-Americanism, nor have any need for it. India and Pakistan, on the other hand, are both wooing the United States; the US considers both to be key allies in the war on terror. Both have sought, and readily accepted Washington8217;s good offices in helping bring them back from the brink of war, and to stabilise their relations. Both woo American investment and their left-liberal elites covet H1B visas for their children. The armed forces of both routinely carry out exercises jointly with those of the 8216;Great Satan8217;.

There are other factors that make these two strangers in this motley grouping. One is the world8217;s largest democracy, and one of the very few genuine, total democracies in a gang whose leading lights wear uniforms, skin their political rivals, declare holy war on 8216;secularism8217;, starve their populations, smuggle both in and out nuclear technologies, and do other cheap things, like smoke in public. The other 8212; and I know this will bring me so much more hate mail from the usual suspects who can8217;t hear one good thing about Pakistan 8212; is the fastest democratising Islamic nation in the world. It has the most free press, certainly freer than in Malaysia, and a civil society certainly more energetic than in Iran. Imagine Asma Jahangir in Teheran! It even has a constitution that gives 8212;howsoever limited and qualified 8212; representation to its Hindu, Sikh and Christian minorities in its parliament. Not perfect, but a far cry from the more old-fashioned dictators and despots Musharraf is going to be rubbing shoulders with in Havana.

In fact, the one thing Manmohan and Musharraf may privately share a laugh over 8212; if they have a one-on-one 8212; is what the two of them are doing in such a Kumbh mela of anti-Americanism. This, when both will get back to the real world immediately after this summit. Musharraf goes straight to Washington to check out his progress report, if not his political angiogram, with Bush.

Manmohan returns home to pick up the thread on the nuclear deal, the most important point on India8217;s foreign policy agenda. Then he waits to read the despatches from his embassy in Washington on how firmly Bush spoke with Musharraf on keeping his promise on infiltration, on shedding his uniform and taking the promised steps towards restoration of democracy next year. Domestically, he will be worrying about the increasing Al-Qaeda-isation of terrorism, with that organisation now having begun to find home-grown recruits. The last thing on mind will be the rhetoric of a Chavez, Castro or Ahmadinejad.

That is how much the world has changed. The Pakistanis will have their own view on it, but is it a good or bad thing for India that the Cold War is over and that, in a resultant unipolar world, it has a mutually beneficial relationship with the only superpower?

Everybody can probably agree that a unipolar world is a bad thing because it gives one nation too much power. But after that, you can choose one of the two different views of it. One, that it is a world that provides new opportunities for a country like India to rise as a middle-power, and fill some of the that vacuum, build our economic, diplomatic and military power, so that even if it remains a unipolar world, we rise to the stature we deserve by virtue of our size and stability. The other, that a unipolar world is unacceptable and we must unite to help another pole rise to balance it. That other pole can only be China. Like Soviet Union in the past, this second pole will also be the underdog of this new, post-post-Cold War world order. In this, therefore, it would be entirely virtuous 8212; and moral 8212; for a new NAM to rise and be to China what it was to the Soviet Union. And in that formulation, where does India end up logically, but to be to tomorrow8217;s China what Cuba was to yesterday8217;s Soviet Union? Now go, seek a referendum from the people of India on that. Then you know why the only thing anybody here notices about Havana is that Manmohan and Musharraf may meet there. Will they just shake hands, or hug? If you are meanwhile stuck in a traffic jam on Delhi8217;s Josip Broz Tito Marg, keep honking, and cursing Sheila Dikshit.