Why doesn't America love us anymore?

try as we might, we cannot overlook the fact that the united states of america does not have a special relationship with us. our foreign affairs ministry might make all the right noises, our ministers may queue up in washington to be received, president bush may drop in on l k advani in a pre-publicised, well-rehearsed, surprise move, but this fact remains immutable: the world's most powerful democracy has no special feelings for the world's most populous democracy.this is hardly new. india has not mattered to the united states at any time in the past and it won't matter for the foreseeable future. this makes our attempts to win american affections by bending over backwards not only futile, but pathetic, (for example, india offered over flying facilities to the us, plus the use of its airbases, long before anyone else did. on 9/12, infact). part of the reason why india is unimportant to the us has to do with the past. to start with, there is no shared history between the countries as there is between the usa and china or the usa and japan. we also have no resources which are vital to the united states, and there has been no significant trade between the two countries in the past. even more important than that, india hasn't been of any strategic interest to the us. this was especially so because of the 20th century american obsession with the soviet block and with china. other countries were more strategically placed (notably pakistan) and they received preferential treatment. even the collapse of the soviet union hasn't changed those equations too much, as the recent afghanistan war has shown. as a result, there wasn't any significant attempt by united states politicians (and hence governments), to get to know india. a survey in the mid-80s, in fact, showed, that only five per cent of us congressmen had any knowledge, or interest, in this country. any polls who did have anything to say, were negative. lyndon johnson, for example, thought of indians as weak and indecisive, while daniel patrick moynihan, who served a term as the american ambassador to india, said, "what does india export but communicable diseases?" this public ignorance was more than matched by what was being taught in american schools: an 80s, review of 300 school text-books by the asia society showed that india's depiction was the most negative of all countries. all this was compounded by india's own political alignments. in world war ii, even though millions of indians troops were part of the allied forces, what was remembered was that the indian national congress had passed resolutions opposing india's support, while subhash chandra bose actively pursued an alliance with japan. later, during the cold war, india was seen as a soviet ally, while the moral posturing of its non-alignment was not only an irritant to the usa but often found to be strongly tilted to socialistic countries. nothing, of course, is static in relationships, either between two humans or between two peoples. what you need are catalysts to bring about change. the catalysts in indo-usa relations are two: the increasing clout of 1.2 million indian-american professionals living in the us and their possible political contribution (both in terms of money and numbers). the second is the opening of the indian market for american goods and services, whose pace may be slow, but whose potential is immense. these catalysts have acted surprisingly quickly, so much so that the india-caucus in the us congress has 108 members, which is a quarter of the house.jingoists will, of course, say "why should it bother us whether we have a special relationship with the us or not?" but they overlook the fact that the world is now more and more interdependent, that the united states is the world's only remaining superpower and that it is also the world's biggest market. how can you ignore these fundamentally important points? so while we might be upset that colin powell gave us a warm hand-shake, but then went on to pakistan to give a warm hug, it's a situation of several decades making. and it's not likely to change for a while. what you cannot change, you have to live with. that's another definition of living happily ever after.