NEW DELHI: A new book on India written by Ms. Barbara Crossette a senior was till recently based in New Delhi as the newspaper’s South Asia bureau Excerpts from the book are being freely used to substantiate allegations against India ( No other country as enjoyed India’s mexplicable immunity to censure and action. A nation wrapped for half a century in the aura of Mahatma Gandhi and the glamor of the Raj was always able to demonstrate is essentially democratic nature. Those days arc fast disappearing as democratic governments take hold in puth Asia and a less glamorous India Is being discovered is how Ms. Crosette sets the tone for her 141book India: Facing the 21st Century. It has been published by Indiana University Press Indianapolis US. The book is being marketed as an introduction to India ‘What has made the book extremely popular is Ms.Crosette’s description of India as * regional bully out to suppress its neighbors on the subcontinent seen from a closer vantage point from the smaller nations that must live perennially in India’s shadows this mammoth land is not a gallery of glories but a source of insecurity and a massive stumbling block to regional development. ‘She goes to declare Every one of India’s smaller neighbors has been the victim of Kautilyan intrigues since the death of Nehru in 1964 and the subsequent consolidation of power by his daughter Indian policy-making on Sri Lanka Bangladesh Nepal Bhutan and to some extent Maldives and Pakistan was a game for iniclligence agents schemers in the Ministry of External Affairs and vice regal diplomats in imperial cloaks Ms.Crosette’s main theme is that India has not yet recovered from the collapse at the Soviet Union and finds itself rudderless and lost in the new world order According to her this is reflected in India’s foreign policy which shows that the country is today all alone and does not know whom to flint with in the absence of the USSR.
India has failed to come to grips with the new global realities. ‘Accusing Mrs Indira Gandhi of causing the greatest damage to India she says that history will hear out her contention. Ms Crosette feels that Indians are to0 overwhelmed by the Nehru-Gandhi family to recognize the truth and goes on to say: The legacy of four decades of Congress party Nehru-Gandhi family Government has begun to haunt and torment India making victims of its own leaders Prime Minister Indira Gandhi whose administrations in 1965-1977 and 1980-1984 left democratic institutions substantially weakened demonstrated during the Emergency of 1975-1977..that her political survival was more important than the system. ‘Therefore the author says the impression foisted by India that it is the world’s largest democracy with institutions which Western countries can relate to is highly flawed. She justifies this by suggesting that India is wracked by contradictions which have become the hallmark of Third World countries Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv lived long enough to sow the seeds of another rebellion in Kashmir.. Farooq Abdullah was forced into an electoral alliance with Rajiv Gandhi in a State poll so corrupted by vote-rigging and other irregularities that it completed the alienation of a generation of young Muslim Kashmiris already venting other grievances. Through years of civil strife under several governments Indian leaders have failed to recognize (or learn from their erstwhile Soviet friends) that force alone cannot hold the nation together editor of The New York Times thief is being widely quoted.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 11, 1994
