Obama confirmed his initial impression of Manmohan Singh as a man of “unusual wisdom and decency.”
New Delhi:
Barack Obama’s comments on Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi in their memoir “A Promised Land,” widely publicized last week, drew reactions from both sides of the spectrum with members of the ruling BJP pointing to the former US president’s critical remarks about the former president of Congress. .
However, Obama’s account of his visit to India in the book, which covers his campaign for the White House and his first term between 2008 and 2012, also underscores his concern over “divisive nationalism promoted by the BJP.”
He also wonders whether impulses such as violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance are “too strong” for any democracy to permanently contain.
Noting India’s transition to a more market-based economy in the 1990s, which he claimed led to skyrocketing growth, a technology boom, and a rising middle class, Obama writes: “As the chief architect of the India’s economic transformation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed a fitting emblem of this progress: a member of the tiny, often persecuted Sikh religious minority who had risen to the country’s highest office, and a modest technocrat who had won the trust of the people without appealing to their passions, but by achieving higher standards of living and maintaining a well-earned reputation for not being corrupt.
She says her time with Manmohan Singh confirmed her initial impression of him as a man of “uncommon wisdom and decency.”
Obama writes that Dr. Singh had resisted calls for retaliation against Pakistan after the attacks, but his restraint had cost him politically. “He feared that growing anti-Muslim sentiment had strengthened the influence of India’s main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). ‘In times of uncertainty, Mr. President,’ the prime minister said, ‘the call of religious and ethnic solidarity can be intoxicating. And it’s not that difficult for politicians to exploit that, in India or elsewhere, “he writes, quoting Dr. Singh.
The former president of the United States says that at that moment he recalled the conversation he had with Václav Havel on his visit to Prague and his warning about the growing wave of anti-liberalism in Europe. “If globalization and a historic economic crisis fueled these trends in relatively wealthy nations, if you were seeing it even in the United States with the Tea Party, how could India be immune? Because the truth is that despite the resistance of its democracy and With its impressive recent economic performance, India still bore little resemblance to the egalitarian, peaceful and sustainable society that Gandhi had envisioned, “he says.
Indian politics, he notes, still revolved around religion, clan, and caste. Dr. Singh’s rise as prime minister, sometimes heralded as a hallmark of the country’s progress in overcoming sectarian divisions, was somewhat misleading, he says.
“… More than one political observer believed that she (Sonia Gandhi) had chosen Singh precisely because, as an elderly Sikh with no national political base, he posed no threat to her forty-year-old son, Rahul, for whom she was preparing to take over the Congress Party, “Obama writes.
Describes a dinner he had at Dr. Singh’s home, where Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were also present.
On Sonia Gandhi, he says she “listened more than she spoke, careful to give in to Singh when political issues arose, and often directed the conversation toward her son.”
He continues: “However, it was clear to me that his power was attributable to a cunning and energetic intelligence. As for Rahul, he seemed intelligent and serious, his good looks resembling that of his mother. He offered his thoughts on the future of progressive politics. , stopping occasionally to probe me on the details of my 2008 campaign. But there was an edgy, reportless quality to him, as if he were a student who had done coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down he was lacking already. be it the aptitude or the passion to master the subject. “
Later, as he walked away, Obama writes, he wondered what would happen when Dr. Singh left office: “Would the baton be successfully passed to Rahul, fulfilling the destiny set by his mother and preserving the congressional Party’s dominance over the divisive nationalism that was promoted? by the BJP? “
“In a way, he had doubts. It was not Singh’s fault. He had done his part, following the playbook of liberal democracies in the post-Cold War world: uphold constitutional order; tend to day-to-day work, often technical, of boosting GDP, and expanding the social safety net.Like myself, I had come to believe that this was all that any of us could hope for from democracy, especially in large, multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies like India and It was not about revolutionary leaps or great cultural changes. revisions; not a solution for all social pathologies or lasting answers for those who seek a purpose and meaning in their lives. Only the observance of the rules that allowed us to solve or at least tolerate our differences, and government policies that raised living standards and improved education enough to moderate impulses more bottoms of humanity. “
Obama says he wondered if the impulses of “violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, racism and religious intolerance, the all too human desire to overcome our own uncertainty and mortality and sense of insignificance by subordinating others” were too strong for any democracy to contain. permanently. “Because they seemed to lurk everywhere, ready to resurface whenever growth rates stagnated or demographics changed or a charismatic leader chose to ride the wave of people’s fears and resentments,” he writes.
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