Winners still in denial

The big new idea on the other hand was about rising India and how it might change the world. In Tokyo and Berlin the talk was all about how India would fit into the Asian and global balance of power.

As it confronts a rising China in its neighbourhood, Japan is newly interested in India and its role in constructing a stable political equilibrium in Asia. In Berlin, despite the rampant football fever, there were enough intellectuals interested in the impact of India on the structure of the international system.

In Beijing at the very heart of the communist citadel, the Central Party School, the focus was on what China could learn from India in managing increasingly complex domestic politics. Notwithstanding the protests of the Indian participants, who insisted that it is India that must learn from China, the Chinese academics were determined to explore what the Indian political model meant for the future of China.

In New York, the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations had an event to mark the new issue of Foreign Affairs devoted to the “rise of India”. There was a room full New Yorkers wanting to know the meaning of India’s emergence as a great power.

In Washington last week, all my old liberal friends and arms controllers, who had campaigned for months against the Bush administration’s nuclear deal with India, were conceding defeat. They just did not have enough votes to block it.

They acknowledged grudgingly that many Congressmen and women who disagreed fundamentally with Bush’s nuclear deal were not willing to be seen to be opposing India. They were bitter that the administration had argued with some effectiveness that reneging on the deal now would have a devastating effect on the relationship with India.

The administration had also insisted that walking back from the deal would turn out to be worse than not having done the deal at all. The Congressmen, even the most sceptical ones, it is said, will hold their nose and vote for the deal.

For most of my interlocutors around the world, Mittal’s Arcelor bid and the Bush administration’s successful mobilisation of support to the nuclear deal are part of the same story — the rise of India.

But in India, few are willing to see them as part of the same story. Even as Mittal and other leading Indian businessmen take on the world with great relish, the brahminical political establishment in the capital is mourning amidst one of India’s greatest successes — the nuclear deal with America that has made big strides in the US Congress this week.

Both the left and the right are concerned that India is kow-towing to the United States. The BJP, which proclaimed the US as India’s “natural ally”, is having second thoughts. The communists, of course, are more consistent. They have accused every government since 1991 of selling out to the United States. It would be surprising if there is anything left to sell by now.

In any event, the left and right are now more concerned about what Iranians might think of India’s nuclear deal than whether the nation will break out of the nuclear isolation it had to suffer for three and a half decades. Forget the merits — if there are any — in the arguments of the BJP and the Left. It is well known that many Congressmen sympathise with these arguments.

The real problem lies in the emergence of two world views in India — speaking metaphorically — one of the “bania” and the other of the “brahmin”. The banias are revelling in India’s new prospects on the global stage; the brahmins are frightened at the likelihood of India emerging as a great power.

While the Indian businessmen are conquering markets around the world — whether in the North or in the South — the brahmins are dying to merge into the more familiar background of the talk shop called non-aligned movement. And who better than Fidel Castro to provide the comforting certitudes of the past in Havana this September.

The brahmins are afraid of strategising for India’s new role in the world. If there is any serious strategy in India it is now visible only in the boardrooms of Infosys, Tatas and the Ambanis.

The banias have rediscovered their centuries-old trans-border trading traditions and are demonstrating the depth and breadth of India’s management capital.

While the banias are focused on outcomes, such as buying up Arcelor, the armies of our nuclear experts are weighed down by the brahminical obsession with the text. While the bania is acquiring assets around the world, the brahmin is defending rhetorical positions. While the bania is playing on the front foot, the brahmin is on the defensive.

If India’s recent nuclear debate is any guide, the lag between India’s potential and its ability to take advantage of it would only grow in the coming years. But the moment will come, sooner than later, when the weight of bania pragmatism will prevail over brahminical inertia.

Indo-pessimism, an intellectual fashion that has reigned for so long, is no longer sustainable amidst the unfolding economic successes of the nation.