Superpower India!

It is not only power that corrupts men and women. Even its absence, and yearning for it, has a corrupting influence. Almost every second day...

It is not only power that corrupts men and women. Even its absence, and yearning for it, has a corrupting influence. Almost every second day we in India are informed about some study or estimate showing that by 2015, 2020, or some other year, we would become a superpower. The result is an orgy of self-congratulatory inanities.

In this patriotic hysteria, a few facts are cavalierly ignored. First, America is the sole superpower today in spite of itself and not because it wanted to be one. The Americans always wanted to remain in isolation; they wanted to shield their country from the corruptions, enthusiasms, and bigotry of the Old World. Hence the Monroe Doctrine. Hence the Senate8217;s veto on joining the League of Nations. Hence America8217;s refusal to join the World Wars as original belligerent. Not that this isolationism was without exceptions, but the idea was never to conquer the world, notwithstanding the leftist clamor of 8220;neo-imperialism.8221;

Second, it is not America that calls itself a superpower; it is the rest of the world that does so, often despairingly. Owing to its economic might, military muscle, technological prowess and cultural dominance, America is seen as a country whose presence cannot be ignored by any people on this planet. The third important fact that is ignored is this: achieving superpower status is not a tangible target. India, or any other country, can fix a target to double its per capita income in five or eight years; it8217;s a measurable target. But achieving superpower status or building an Indian century is not a measurable target.

The most important fact that is overlooked in the jingoistic frenzy is that in India there is a lack of almost every prerequisite that has made America a superpower. America believes in a free economy and open society; both are under threat in India. The Left8217;s opposition to free economy needs no elaboration. Worse, such is the intellectual hegemony of the Left that even the Sangh Parivar, the so-called Right, ends up echoing socialist shibboleths.

The threat to open society, too, could scarcely be over-emphasised. There is the Sangh Parivar that wants society to be controlled and regulated; its opposition to Valentine8217;s Day is an example. The attempts of the Left to destroy open society are no less frightening. Its political front bans Tasleema Nasreen8217;s book; it brazenly placates the rabid mullahs by joining in the persecution of the brave author.

It is time we gave up vainglorious pretensions of moral power or global superpower. In any case, who would gain from superpower status? The politician. But it is restraint on the powers of the politician that should be the objective of all decent citizens.