Commentary/Rajeev Srinivasan

A Love Letter to the 'Resident Non-Indian'

The short, unhappy tenure of Bhabani Sengupta in India's foreign ministry reminded me of the entire clan of 'Resident Non-Indians'. A curious sort, this RNI animal. Urbane sometimes, Marxist frequently, Nehruvian almost always, his/her disdain for the very notion of India is the prime characteristic of the RNI. The RNI is the epitome of the 'Man Without a Country'.

The selection of Bhabani Sengupta to essentially run Indian foreign policy was -- how shall I put it -- quirky? It is somewhat like Bill Clinton choosing a known maverick, say Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader, to run US foreign policy. Clever chaps, these, but really, you can't take them anywhere!

Chomsky is an intellectual heavyweight, but given his trenchant criticism of US policy, it is utterly risible to imagine him in the establishment. He would last about two seconds in the senate confirmation proceedings -- Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond would hand him his head on a platter.

Quite honestly, I am not familiar enough with Bhabani Sengupta to know if he is Chomsky's intellectual equal; nor his foreign policy credentials. However, I understand he would withdraw unilaterally from Siachen, stop nuclear development, cave into CTBT bullying, and once invited world censure on India for the 1974 Pokhran peaceful nuclear explosion. Maybe I am mistaken, but all this does seem against India's national interest.

Writing in Daedalus in 1989, an eminent Indian social critic suggested that there were three types of Indians today, who offer three entirely different perspectives of India: the 'beleaguered-little-India' type; the 'India-as-centralised-bully-state' type, and the 'baffled-Gandhian' type. These are paraphrases from memory, any errors are mine.

The first type is predominant amongst my peer group of overseas Indians -- we view with alarm what we perceive as the many efforts of aliens with ill-intent to destroy and damage India: Pakistan with its hatred of India because it can only define itself as 'not-India'; China with its cold calculation to dominate Asia; America with its general animosity to any country that could challenge its hegemony; and sundry others.

The second type seems to embody RNIs -- for they view the Indian state as some sort of monstrous excrescence that has no redeeming value whatsoever. As far as they are concerned, the sooner the Indian nation is dissolved the better. I remember a particularly odious specimen on the Internet newsgroup soc.culture.indian -- his bilious hatred for the Indian state was relentless and inexhaustible. But we all know many such.

The third type is practically extinct, as Gandhism has been reduced to sloganeering, and his ideas perverted. I do know some very decent, well-meaning people who keep alive the ideals of Gandhian 'small-is-beautiful', for example Mr Viswanathan of the Mitraniketan Ashram near Trivandrum; but, alas, their tribe decreases daily.

But back to our dear RNI. What is the salient characteristic of this beast? He is not so easy to identify, because he is usually clever and educated, and disguises himself well. But it is a good bet that anybody who supported the Chinese invasion of India in 1962 is one; those who wish to give up on Agni or the CTBT on the basis that 'India cannot afford defense' are probably RNIs. Treason, rajyadroham, they might call it in less polite circles.

But to make a positive identification of the species, it is best to wait for incontrovertible evidence. There are two archetypal statements an RNI will make at the drop of a hat, both of which are entirely foolish and insupportable. If you hear these, you need have no further doubts.

The first, often said with an extravagant wave of the arms, is: "India was never a nation -- it is a conglomeration of nations." Sometimes he adds, charitably, "Until the British came." Whenever I hear this utter idiocy, I despair of the Indian educational system that (thanks to dear old Dead White Male Macaulay) still fills the heads of youngsters with this lunacy.

One could play semantic games here and ask what a nation is. Is the US one? Is China one? Russia? Britain? Who knows? Really, India is a nation because Indians say so. Period. End of story. But that is rather too dry and unsatisfying.

So I usually prefer to say: "Rubbish!" India as a single cultural unit has existed from time immemorial. As a contemporary of the great civilisations of Mesopotamia and China, India as an entity goes as far back as recorded history, say circa 3000 to 4000 BC. The great good fortune that India has had -- and that is anathema to the RNI -- is that it has had a continuous, unbroken culture based on Vedic and Dravidian Hinduism.

That is the crux of the matter. Hinduism has refused to die, despite the best efforts of the Semitic types to eradicate it: Islam, Christianity, Marxism, (and Capitalism?), monotheistic religions all, have encircled, demonised and vilified it. Hinduism has evolved continuously to survive: Darwinism in action in religion?

The RNI finds this distressing. It somehow doesn't fit into his world-view which is Semitic, courtesy Macaulay or Marx. Therefore he would rather stick his head deep in the sand and pretend to not see any evidence to the contrary. It does not occur to him -- after all, it must be true, he read it in a book -- that his world-view might be wrong.

The second grandiloquent statement -- or question really -- that the Resident Non-Indian emits is targeted towards the poor NRI (Non-Resident Indian). "Well, if you are so patriotic about India, how come you live overseas?"

On the face of it, a fair question. However, there are several logical flaws: first, it presumes that only residents of India are allowed to care about India. Says who? It may well be that exposure to the wide world has made overseas Indians much more conscious of the value of India. We now see that India has a great deal to offer the world and, frankly, to offer us: so we support India.

Besides, it is clear this RNI hasn't heard of Voltaire who suggested that he would disagree with his opponent, but would defend to the death the opponent's right to have an opinion. The RNI is clearly trying to force his opponent to self-censor. Naughty, naughty RNI!

Further, there is the implication that if you were a resident of India, you would ipso facto be patriotic about India. This is clearly untrue, as the RNI himself demonstrates -- there are many resident non-patriots.

I have often wondered what the Resident Non-Indian would say if I replied, "You know, you have convinced me: I am moving back to India next month. Now, in return, given your animosity towards India, would you please vacate the country?"

Aha, but therein lies the rub. Where, exactly, would the RNI go? China, Russia, America? Who would take on such a character? Sadly, nobody. He has no place to go. I hate to sound like an American redneck, but really, baby, "Love India or leave it!" The RNI seldom realises that India is his only home of last resort. If he did, he perhaps would trash it less.

The Resident Non-Indian would rather believe that every problem that India has today is the fault of Indians, and that the only way to get ahead is to remove Indian-ness from Indians. He refuses to see the major environmental factors that need to be taken into account.

There is no gainsaying the fact that much is wrong in Indian society; a lot of it is based on lack of leadership and lack of cohesive focus; the nefarious effects of caste and concomitant lack of self-image; institutionalised corruption and nepotism; disdain for the public good, so on and so forth. It is also true that the zealous NRI seems to overlook some of these blots on our national character.

However, what the RNI clearly does not understand is the Maslovian hierarchy of needs. The first order of business is pure physical security: food, shelter, etc. Then come intellectual needs and finally self-realisation. Without the fundamental benefit of physical security, which in the case of nations means secure borders and territorial integrity, all else is moot.

It is not that I haven't read Thoreau's Civil Disobedience; nor that I disagree with the right of the individual to differ with an unfair government. However, Thoreau had the luxury of knowing that his nation was not under threat of dismemberment -- therefore he could afford to move up Maslov's hierarchy. Indians, alas, cannot afford that great luxury.

Consider, for example, a Tibetan opposed to the Dalai Lama's rule in 1958. Perhaps he demonstrated, and perhaps he got the system to change. All well and good. But did it matter? In 1959, the Chinese walked in and destroyed their entire culture. Just as invaders destroyed India's fractious little kingdoms. Security and safe borders are primary. Without national security, we might as well forget everything else.

The external factors in India's case have been crucial: As a result of invasions, our cultural fabric has been damaged; the self-sufficient village economy of old has been utterly destroyed; and through outright theft of capital, we have been impoverished beyond measure. It is at best naive and at worst criminal to ignore these ground realities: foreigners have not been good for India.

At the end of the day, the Resident Non-Indian is often simply muddled and ill-informed: he is not a bad sort, excepting those who are in extreme ideological stasis. The problem really is that instead of seeing a half-full glass, he persists in seeing it half-empty.

Not surprisingly, it is the NRIs who, with nostalgia, see the half-fullness. An editorial by Arvind Kumar in India Currents recently spoke nostalgically about mom's cooking; to wit, that which we have left behind. There is common ground that can be forged between the NRI and the Resident Non-Indian, if the latter is merely naive and not malicious.

It is possible for a Resident Non-Indian to reform. I know; I probably was one. I used to devour Time and Newsweek as a student in India, intent on the US, God's Own Country. Now, older and wiser, I find India altogether more interesting. "And this above all, to thine own self be true", according to Shakespeare; if you are an Indian, be true to that, my dear RNI.

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