AFTER TAJ WHAT?

Does anybody remember Hina Rabbani Khar?

You mean Hina Khan the TV actress from Kashmir?

No I mean Hina Khar the Pakistani politician.

Public memory is short indeed. She was Pakistan’s Foreign Minister from February 2011 to March 2013. When at the relatively young age of 33 she came India calling the country sat up, at least its male population did. They just couldn’t get over how good looking she was, and how elegantly she dressed.

Déjà vu. Now we Indians are breathless about what Melania and Ivanka Trump wore on their 36 hour whirlwind tour of India. We are still enamoured of the white skin, which is why we allowed a motley band of 200 traders to rule over us for over 200 years.

Enough now about the ladies and their apparel. What was so, or not so apparent to the discerning Indian about the Trumps visit? We were reminded that he had travelled 8000 miles, just to be with us. So sweet of him! Let us go through the fine print before drawing conclusions.

I made it a point to listen to his entire 30 minute speech at the Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad. The first 15 minutes of it was singularly devoted to expounding the achievements and merits of Prime Minister Modi. It was almost like a PR exercise of Doordarshan or the BJP IT cell. By this time I noticed people were beginning to leave the stadium. So how much of this was stage managed? Earlier the BJP had alleged that protesters at Shaheen Bagh had been paid Rs 500/- each to gather there. The question is now being thrown back at them. How much were these spectators paid for this spectacle?

While saying all the politically correct things about Bollywood and cricket Trump elicited a thunderous response from the fawning crowd (paid or otherwise). But when he referred to his visit to Gandhiji’s Sabarmati Ashram and his impending tryst with his Samadhi at Rajghat the next morning, there was not a murmur from the crowd. Had Gujarat forgotten its most illustrious son? As Jesus had said centuries ago, “No man is a prophet in his own home”.

In the second half of his speech Trump got down to trumpeting what he had travelled those 8000 miles for. Like the East India Company before him, he had come as a trader. Like the Kabuliwalla he too was here to sell his wares, or rather his military hardware. With much fanfare he announced his mega deal of 3 billion US dollars to sell his attack helicopters. Was he doing India a favour by doing so, or just promoting his own country’s business interests?

He also said the politically correct things about Islamic terrorism, his Rambo style surgical strikes on Iran and Syria, and his appreciation of our space technology programme. In passing he did also refer to India’s high tariffs on American imports, and the need to reduce red tape and bureaucratic delays. Do I recall somebody 6 years ago saying that he would give us more governance and less government? Just the opposite has happened, with India slipping further in the world index of the Ease of Doing Business. Let alone trade and commerce, ask the common man how many new laws and procedures Modi’s government has instituted since he assumed office. Is it any easier now to get a ration card or an old widow’s pension?

Let’s move to the second day, the business sessions in Delhi. It was a damp squib, because there was nothing substantive in the three agreements signed. Was it worth the 8000 mile trip or the crores of rupees that India spent on this high octane visit?

Remember that Howdy Modi in Houston last year was a private event organized by Modi bhakts in America, while the Namaste Trump here was an official event at tax payers’ expense.

Now to the sticky parts. Trump reiterated his willingness to be an “honest broker” between India and Pakistan, even though he has been repeatedly told that this was a bilateral issue that brooks no third party intervention. We know that Trump is due for re-election a few months from now. We also know that his predecessor in office, Barak Obama, was rather prematurely awarded the Nobel peace prize for his peace initiatives in Afghanistan that actually came to naught.

Now Trump is negotiating a peaceful withdrawal from Afghanistan with his bete noire the Taliban. The USA hasn’t learnt a thing from its Vietnam misadventure. So Trump is eying a huge success like an Indo-Pak peace accord that would automatically get him a Nobel nomination and a second term in the White House. Those 8000 miles would then have been well worth it.

Let’s move on. Why does Trump repeatedly refer to the high tariffs on Harley Davidson motorcycles that are but a small fraction of American exports to India? He didn’t shed tears when General Motors shut down operations in India. Trump also wanted to push dairy production, walnuts and chicken legs.

Thanks to Padmavibhushan Dr Verghese Kurien, India is the world’s largest producer of milk, largely from buffaloes. So why this push? Not so long ago BJP’s Bengal head, the vitriolic Dilip Ghosh had declared that only Indian cows were sacred. I have also heard devout Hindus say that they eat beef when they go to America because those cows are not sacred. This begs the question, “What kind of cattle is Trump trying to bring into India?” And what happens after they go dry? Will he hand them over to Yogi Adityanath’s gaushalas, or transport them without danger of lynching to Bengal and Kerala where slaughter is permitted? Without answers to these questions I reserve further comment on the cows, be they sacred or profane.

Almonds in India come from California, and our walnuts come from Kashmir. Would import of American walnuts be the last nail in the coffin of Kashmir’s economy? If so, I would say an emphatic “No” to them. Now to the chicken legs, not the chick’s legs. Westerners prefer white meat, like chicken breast, and discard the legs that are piling up in cold storages. In contrast, we Indians, especially Punjabis, love their tangri. So importing cheap American chicken legs could be a win-win situation.

From body parts to body language. There are both similarities and contrasts in Trump and Modi. For one, they are separated by the letter E. Trump’s favourite is HUGE, while Modi’s is HUG. Trump has unsmiling eyes and a set jaw. Modi has doting eyes and an open mouth. I would leave readers to interpret the body language accordingly. Then comes the signature. I have not seen Modi’s handwriting, but I do find something odd in Trump’s. He seems to use a thick nib, and does not use cursive writing. His signature is very jagged. How would a hand writing expert interpret this? I see him as thick headed, jagged edged and not a well rounded personality.

Lastly, to the title of this piece, “After Taj what?” It is the done thing to take world leaders to visit the Taj, lay a wreath at Rajghat and have a Presidential banquet at Rashtrapati Bhawan. What else does modern India have to showcase? We tom-tom our ancient culture but what unique, world class achievements do we have to showcase? Even Rashtrapati Bhawan and the Taj are vestiges of our now despised British or Mughal rulers.

There are three indigenous areas in which India is a world leader that could verily be showcased to visiting dignitaries. I have already mentioned milk production. Amul is a people’s co-operative that has left multi-national corporations gasping. We should showcase our space technology that even Trump referred to. We are doing it at a fraction of the cost of what NASA is doing. Thirdly, we Indians have emerged as world leaders in computer software. Can we not showcase this soft power? Isn’t it time that we looked beyond the Taj?

And beyond what Hina, Melania or Ivanka were wearing. Why wear our hearts on our sleeves when we have so much more up our sleeves?

FEBRUARY 2020