Humility, not humiliation
THE Gandhi Peace Foundation once published a compilation, which included an essay from famous economist Kenneth E. Boulding. In Why Did Gandhi Fail, he argued that it was a fatal mistake for a weak nation to behave as if it were a strong one, which was precisely what India was doing. That was way back in 1964, when the country was still finding its feet on the ground. If alive, Boulding would have wanted to eat his words. India is a strong nation today.
Forty-four years later Boulding's words are still valid though, if not for India but for Bangladesh. Let us accept that we are a weak nation compared to India. So, how should David behave with Goliath? No sooner than next week that question will be put to test, when the Indian external affairs minister comes to town.
Rewind history by roughly a month. In the week after the December election, talkshow guests argued on television, probably more inexorably than any other week before, that improvement of our relationship with India was a national imperative. While it should be common sense to anyone who wants to think, having it heard so many times within such a short time had an odious ring of irony to it. Some people, it seemed, were going pedal to the metal to push that point in a hurry.
I say it because in that very week this nation had come through a rude awakening. We had a national election in which people overwhelmingly showed their outrage. They scoffed at a particular brand of politicians, some of whom were perhaps more responsible than others, for fanning the paranoia of Indian hegemony. The question is why should those talkshow guests radiate ripples of arguments to convince us of what we were already convinced?
If I would like to believe that it was not an expression of comprador interest, I would also like to believe that people in this country fully appreciate that India is a strong neighbour and we must learn to respect it. Haven't we all faced that reality growing up as children? Big brothers are bullies. If you mess with them, your face gets bloodied.
So, how do we deal with India? What do we tell the Indian minister next week? Of course, a great deal of it depends on what he likes to tell us. Will he tell about trade imbalance and tariff barriers? Is he going to talk about border delimitation and transit? Will he ask for our help to fight terrorism? Will he reiterate his government's earlier claims that illegal Bangladeshis are living in India?
No matter what, we are going to have to take a position of our own. Now, what will that position be? Will it be a weak position, or will it be a strong one? Do we need to worry because we are a weak nation, or get overly concerned because India is strong? In the end, lasting relationships are built on mutual respect. It may be humility to admit that one is weak, but it's humiliating when that admission is forced by fear of the strong.
In his inaugural address in 1961, John F. Kennedy laid down the ground rules for how his country should behave with rest of the world. "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate," he said. Kennedy spoke on behalf of the strongest nation in the world.
This is where those who wish to spread the scare of India are equally as bad as those who wish to spread hatred against it. One side wants us to negotiate out of fear. Another wants us to fear to negotiate. The reality is that we should do neither. We shouldn't underestimate India for the same reason India shouldn't overestimate us.
In his book, From Wealth to Power, Fareed Zakaria argues that if rich nations were to routinely become great powers, then why didn't the United States try to extend its political influence abroad in the late nineteenth century? The answer is that it wanted to do it whenever it experienced an increase in its economic power. But it was restricted by the lack of a strong central government that could harness that economic power for the purposes of foreign policy. America was an unusual power, a strong nation with a weak state.
We are also an unusual power of a kind, a weak country with fluid politics and fledgling economy. India achieved a strong government first, economic success followed afterwards. Do we always have to think either of fighting, or sucking up to, India? Not really. What we need is our rightful place, and we are going to have to earn it. Neither for hatred nor out of fear, if anything we should negotiate for dignity.
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