SCENE one: A few days after the Pokhran tests on May 11 and 13, two influential Democratic lawmakers from Capitol Hill were hosted by the wealthy Indian American community at a fund-raiser in Edison, New Jersey.
They got an earful. Representatives Frank Pallone and Richard Gephardt, who is also the party's leader in the House of Representatives, were bombarded with sharp questions as to why US Congress was being so hostile towards India's nuclear tests. President Bill Clinton also came under fire from Indian campaign money donors.
The lawmakers, who are normally showered with much affection and bonhomie—besides hot samosas and tangy chutneys—by the Indian community, could sense the deep feelings of the community, but they had no straight answers, with Gephardt simply managing to say: "We (US and India) need to talk on the issue."
Scene Two: Two days after India concluded its tests, Dr Mukund Mody was taking a call from New Delhi at his Brooklyn clinic. India's prime minister was on the line talking to his best friend in the US. Mody recalls Vajpayee telling him: "People will have to accept we are a nuclear power now." Says he: "Atalji wanted all of us in the Indian American community to understand why India did what it did and sought our assistance in explaining India's position to mainstream America—and that includes the US political establishment."
The Indian American community is now viewed with respect for what they have accomplished professionally and economically in their adopted homeland by the US political establishment.And it is seen as a major asset by the Indian government in its diplomatic efforts to repair the damage in ties with the US.
In effect, the community has emerged as a huge component in the equation between the world's two largest democracies—somewhat akin to the powerful Jewish American community that plays a central role in shaping US-Israeli relations. And like the US Jewry, Indian Americans are divided in myriad ways, but when it comes to the well-being and national security of India, they tend to rally behind the homeland—just as US Jews always stand up for their promised land.
"There are no ifs and buts about it," says Kamal Dandona, chairman of the Indian National Congress of America (INCA) and a personal friend of the late Rajiv Gandhi, "The Congress and the BJP may have nuanced differences over the nuclear issue inside India, but here in America we are all nationalist Indians. Period. We at INCA are launching a campaign to explain India's security problems to our friends in US Congress and the media."
An overwhelming majority of Indians—with the exception of the tiny left-wing fringe groups—support the nuclear tests and assert that the US policy to impose sanctions on India reeks of hypocrisy. Even sceptics like economist Jagdish Bhagwati have had a shift in their views. Says Narpat Bhandari, co-founder of the influential TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur), an elite grouping of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs: "This (nuclear) technology cannot be governed by any one person or any one nation. We as Indians are as good technologists as anywhere in the world. These sanctions, I believe, will make no iota of difference to India." Bhandari is consulting with friends to fiure out a mechanism to mount a campaign to explain the Indian position to lawmakers from California who form the largest delegation in US Congress.
ACROSS the US, on the East Coast, Swadesh Chatterjee, president-elect of the Indian American Forum for Political Education (an on-again, off-again outfit), says he's waiting for the "heat and dust" of the controversy to settle before he makes his move: "The Indian explosions have totally upset our (Indian American) calculations and we are back to square one and have to start all over again. I do understand the rationale for the Indian tests, but the people in Washington are furious, and I don't think there's any point talking to people who are furious. Once the temperature cools down, we in the community should move to mellow down our lawmaker friends. We have a huge challenge ahead of us."
Left-wing political activist Chandana Mathur is among those who vehemently oppose the tests. She organised a small group of people to protest against the nuclear tests last week near the Indian Consulate in New York's fashionable Fifth Avenue. Says the soft-spoken Mathur: "The rickety coalition government currently ruling India was moved by the basest of motives: short-term political gain internally, and the wish to strut around self-importantly on the international stage. Their jingoism has uprooted the lines of communication that had only recently opened up between India and Pakistan, and severely damaged India's relationship with China."
She also adds: "We are also appalled by the hypocritical posturing of the five nuclear nations, when all these nations have blocked every international move towards a nuclear-free world by retaining their own arsenals."
Twenty-seven years ago, when Richard Milhous Nixon ordered the Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal to threaten India during the emancipation of Bangladesh, there was no real Indian constituency in the US to oppose the move. Today, however, when President William Jefferson Clinton calls for sanctions against New Delhi, the situation is vastly different. There's an authentic Indian American constituency in place, and that constituency is deeply upset with the US sanctions. And they are poised to act.
Just as a defining moment in US-India relations has just about arrived with the Indian nuclear tests, the Indian American community has reached its own Rubicon in its political awakening and empowerment in the US.
