(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha.)
During Cold War I between the US and the USSR in the 20th century, the US co-opted Pakistan as its "most reliable ally". With the onset of Cold War II in the 21st century, now between the US and China, Barack Obama made his Republic Day visit to India to woo Narendra Modi to become the US's most reliable ally. Modi doubled over backwards to oblige.
We are being rapidly dragged into the abyss of confrontation, abandoning the signature tune of Gandhiji and Nehru - peaceful coexistence. We are on the edge of becoming America's Pakistan at the brink of Cold War II. History must serve as our guide as Modi takes the plunge.
On decolonization, India's was the first and last word. We were the first to boycott racist South Africa and the first to rejoice when half a century later Nelson Mandela joined with Willem de Klerk in Africa's Gandhi moment. From Algeria to Namibia, over three long decades, India was the acknowledged champion of the End of Empire. On disarmament, India gave the lead. On mobilizing the world to regard development as a global responsibility, India again led the rest in securing global trade concessions for developing countries in GATT and establishing the Group of 77 in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Pakistan, by the turn of the century, was left a client State of an increasingly disenchanted patron. Since Clinton, it has been downgraded as the preferred partner for the 21st century, cast aside like a used glove. Today, its most sturdy patron is China.
In the years that followed, the US led Pakistan by the nose into the mess of Afghanistan. The Mujahideen, transported from the Arab world and Central Asia to the Pak-Af border, and trained and supplied by the US on the soil of its most reliable partner, has now become the Frankenstein that has rendered Pakistan both the hub of global terrorism and its biggest victim. Meanwhile, the people of Pakistan have been denied the democracy that had come so readily to India because India eschewed military engagement with the US while the Pakistani armed forces became the US's principal client and, therefore, the rulers of Pakistan or in between the puppeteers of civil governments. Seventy years of servitude to America has ended in America becoming the most hated, if most desired, country in Pakistan.
One final warning and I am done. Cold War I was a far-away war, the potential battle-field being Europe. Cold War II is much nearer. It is burgeoning on our doorstep. If it comes to hot war, the most likely battle-field will be India. Is that how we wish to transmogrify the India of Mahatma Gandhi by the time we reach the centenary of our Independence?
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