How Gandhi’s dream is being realized

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, March 9, 2008 | 3 a.m.

New Delhi

The seat of Indian government. The home of the largest and messiest democracy in the world.

“I shall work for an India, in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country in whose making they have an effective voice; an India in which there shall be no high class and low class of people; an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony. There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability or the curse of the intoxicating drinks and drugs. Women will enjoy the same rights as men. Since we shall be at peace with all the rest of the world, neither exploiting, nor being exploited, we should have the smallest army imaginable. This is the India of my dreams.”

Mahatma Gandhi, born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, wrote those words and many others to inspire a country of a few hundred million people to reach beyond themselves toward a freedom that it had not known for practically forever.

Their history is about being ruled by others — whether they were the Mogul emperors, the self-indulgent and free-spending maharajahs or the British, who gave them a new language and some much-needed order in a most disorderly place.

So the idea of a democracy, of self-rule, of hundreds of millions of illiterate and tribally backward people coming together for one India, was a quantum leap of faith in the thinking of man.

Of course, Gandhi was that man and he had it right. He had that “vision thing” and gave his life so that Indians could have productive and free lives of their own. And now, 60 years after Gandhi was gunned down while preaching nonviolence, the country he loved is starting, just starting, to live like the land of his dreams.

It is easy for me to be optimistic about the subcontinent called India. We showed up for 2 1/2 weeks as part of the Brookings Institution’s Study Tour and had a whirlwind visit, going to the business hub of Mumbai, the technological capital of Bangalore, the interior villages surrounding Udaipur, the splendor of the land of the maharajahs like Jaipur and, of course, the place where all the shots are called, New Delhi.

At least that’s where the government would like the shots to be called, but India is a lot like the United States with regard to its fledgling democracy, and it is apparent the people have a different idea. And as in the United States, that presents its own set of democratic challenges.

Before I get to my observations from New Delhi, a brief but very important warning: We had the pleasure and enlightened honor of having dinner with Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri. As you might know, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Al Gore, for his extraordinary work on global warming.

He is not a kook or an alarmist. He is a very serious man on a most serious mission. His message, not unlike Mr. Gore’s and that of every knowledgeable and honest scientist around the world, is simple. Man is making a mess of the planet and we have to stop — now. He is optimistic that we can stop the madness, but he is adamant that we have to act now.

We don’t have the 20 or 30 years that some would want us to believe we have so they can continue their wanton ways. No, according to Dr. Pachauri, we need to do something dramatic in the next few years.

He is very clear about what we can do and that it can get done. But it will take the Western world and the developing world working together. And, most important, it demands leadership from the only country on the planet that can make it happen: the United States of America.

His was not a political message. For sure, when the seas rise and the heat waves grow hotter, they don’t much care that the people they consume and the ways of life they destroy for tens of millions of people around the planet are Democrats or Republicans or even independents.

So, for a country that is having a debate in 2008 about an absence of leadership for the past eight years, it should come as no surprise that the same “lack” has been evident regarding global warming.

In short, Indians and others believe strongly that they have the right to pursue better lives, which means larger carbon footprints for developing nations. They don’t begrudge the United States and other developed nations the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed; they just want us to recognize that we began piling up the bad stuff in our atmosphere long before Indians ever thought of trading in their bicycles for gasoline-powered automobiles.

Somewhere there has to be a recognition that those who don’t have are entitled to pursue things and those who have so much must be prepared to sacrifice a bit of what they have. Otherwise we will all be in a world of hurt — and soon. That equation also contains incredible opportunities for a country like ours.

For that understanding to be reached, though, requires leadership from the one country on the planet capable of providing leadership and the technological advances that will help us all through this mess. So far, our country has been missing in action. The Indians say they are prepared to do their part. This is where you refer to Gandhi’s dream, above.

Back to New Delhi. Under the rules — we call them Chatham House rules — we are allowed to discuss what we have seen and heard but cannot share from whom we learned what. The reasons are obvious.

We cannot get the straight scoop if leaders are concerned that the truth they speak will get out prematurely, be misquoted or be shared in a way that compromises their ongoing negotiations with friend and foe. So I will tell you with whom we met for dinners, tea and just good, in-depth conversation and you can draw your own conclusions about the substance of what I report.

Thanks to the incredible good will that the Brookings Institution enjoys throughout the world, and especially in India because of that country’s respect for the institution’s president, former Assistant Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, we were able to meet with the prime minister, the foreign secretary, the national security adviser, numerous secretaries of commerce, communications, health and other agencies — try doing any of that as an American citizen in your own country. They were free with their thoughts and candid in their assessments — I repeat, try doing that in our own country.

The hottest topic in India right now is the nuclear deal President Bush negotiated that will give the Indians control over their military nuclear pursuits but ensure they work with the United States in their civilian nuclear aspirations.

Since India is not a signatory to the nuclear agreements to which most other nations — Iran, North Korea, as examples — have agreed, she has always taken the position that her nuclear goals are her own business. India lives in a rather challenging neighborhood — China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, to name a few neighbors — so she has felt it wise to keep her own counsel regarding her defensive positions, especially with regard to her nuclear deterrent abilities.

The real question is what do reasonable men and women consider India’s intentions to be. For this you have to refer — again — to Gandhi’s dream for India as well as the words and intentions of her leaders. I found their words and deeds to be entirely consistent with defensive capabilities as well as consistent with Gandhi’s dream.

I cannot overestimate the power of Gandhi on Indian culture. He set the tone with his life at the beginning of the Indian democracy, and there is no reason to believe that the leadership has changed in its own goals and aspirations. As one of our hosts put it — in answering a question about what India would do if the United States finally came to its senses and renewed or renegotiated a nonproliferation agreement with the rest of the nuclearized world — India would gladly get rid of its pathetic nuclear stockpile in favor of a nuke-free world.

As anywhere — and more so in India’s case — people here, 1.2 billion of them, have dreams and aspirations of their own and the country, as prosperous as its future looks from here, needs every penny it can get to help fulfill those dreams. Indians don’t need an arms race to deter them from a better quality of life.

What is interesting about the nuke deal is that in the United States, the far-right anti-communist contingent is opposed, while in India the far-left Communist Party is opposed. Probably just a coincidence, right?

What seems apparent from this whole exercise is that the paradigm for nuclear nonproliferation is changing from the Cold War calculations of the past to something very different. What that something is can be anybody’s guess, but we will soon find out what it will be.

I found no reason, though, not to believe the leaders when they said India will never use such weapons in a first-strike mode. I wonder whether Pakistan or Iran or North Korea will say and allow us to believe as much?

There is much more about India that I can and should discuss. So yes, dear readers, there will be more.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.