I will tell you about it. In Nepal, where I had gone to attend an AIDS conference, an Afghan minister invited me to his country and I told him I would do so after all the Americans had left. He was impressed. You see, beneath the surface there was anger and disgust at the American carpet bombing of Afghanistan in Kabul, Pakistan and Bangladesh. But these feelings were not displayed at the diplomatic level. It was then that I decided not to be a part of the White House meeting. Imagine the hypocrisy, US leaders kneeling and praying while planning mass murder. It was like the last scene in the movie Godfather where Michael Corleone presided over the christening of his nephew in the church while his men were slaughtering the rival mafia leaders!

Oh, I could not bear the appalling silence in India. Why didn’t this Mother of Civilisation speak out against the US aggression? Didn’t you read and watch how the US bullied the smaller nations to support it? It used Iraqi oil and massive rebuilding contracts as blackmail. It is also true India did not count much, we were a nobody on the international scene. To the USA, Pakistan and its President meant a lot more.

The government only symbolised our slavish attitude towards the West. We are gullible, we lapped up the US propaganda on Islamic fundamentalism. The government believed the US stand that the primary threat to both the nations came from Islamic fundamentalism. It ignored the major threat posed by Right-wing Hindu fundamentalism.

Of course not. The West had never helped us to combat terrorism which claimed two of our Prime Ministers. What was the USA doing during the Kargil incidents and the frequent incursions over the Line of Control ? Yet men like the VHP’s Togadia echoed the call to go to war against Islamic fundamentalism. Do the Togadias know that the word ‘Hindu’ originated from Persian?

The majority of the media reacted like US slaves. Where was the coverage of the protest marches in Mumbai? There was hardly any harsh criticism of the US perfidy and tyranny. There was more table thumping over our cricket victory against Pakistan in the World Cup. The media repeatedly stressed how we scored over our ‘enemy’. We simply copied the US media and the Hollywood projection of that country. Remember how the white Americans ‘conquered’ the Red Indians?

To deal with a bully, act like one. Look at China and North Korea. Are there any American threats against North Korea, which is flaunting its nuclear strength? That was why I was happy when India became a nuclear power. Why should only the USA and its allies have nuclear arms? The USA possessed 26 per cent of the world resources but hands out crumbs to other nations and acts as though it owns the world. That is why the war cry over Iraq. Thank God, we have nations like China and North Korea which refused to be bullied.

It is enough to whip up war hysteria. For George Bush, 9/11 was a godsend. Suddenly, a mediocre, shaky leader began to think of himself as a John Wayne. If the Iraqi ‘dictatorship’ was repugnant, what about Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and a host of Latin American nations? The US economy is bolstered by huge Saudi arms purchases with the guarantee they will never be used against Israel. It is an economy bloated by war efforts and the USA had benefited because no war had ever been fought on its own territory.

It is a dream world insulated from reality. There is no awareness of any kind. And everything was lost in the din over cricket, ‘Sachin is God’, ‘I hate Pak’ and so on. This was the level of patriotism in most of India, including Bollywood. We do hold elections regularly, but what is the meaning of our democracy? Questioning the loyalty of other communities, particularly Muslims? Why go on repeating ‘I love my country’? Are we going to tell our children that a nation of one billion people sat on its backside while a small nation was attacked and possibly destroyed?