Washington has lost imperium but that hasn’t made it less of a moral imperialist. In a gratuitous display of paternalism, the US has decided to stand in judgement of certain issues that are animating India’s politics.
It began a few days back with India notifying the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019. A law that has been designed to expedite the citizenship of religious minorities living in India who have fled religious persecution in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Almost immediately after the CAA was notified, the US State Department preachily reminded the Indian government that “respect for religious freedom and equal treatment under the law for all communities are fundamental democratic principles”.
The advice was ironic as the US itself had operationalised versions of the CAA on its soil. And thankfully the Indian government had the nous to say so as also the gumption to tell the US where to get off.
One would have thought that disgraced as a hypocrite and summarily reminded of the basic rule of international diplomacy (that you don’t poke your nose into another country’s internal affairs), Uncle Sam would have sheepishly tucked its misfiring gun back into its holster. But no. Here we are back again confronted by another demonstration of Washington’s gauche censoriousness.
This time the US State Department has let it be known to India that it “expects fair, transparent, timely legal process in the case of Kejriwal’s arrest and the freezing of the Congress party’s bank accounts.” The US’ criticism is in line with the views of anti-Modi commentators who claim that the actions against Kejriwal and the Congress are denying the Opposition a level playing field ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. By roundaboutly echoing this view, it’s almost as if the pontiffs of the Potomac in Washington have bought into the propaganda that India has turned into a banana republic with a dysfunctional legal framework.
Once again India duly delivered a stern but sadly formulaic ticking off to the errant United States of America. It would have been infinitely better if India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had held the mirror up to Washington. After all, going by the logic America is seeking to apply to India, its own democracy must really be in the dumps too.
Remember the US is an essentially two-party system and it stands to reason that prosecuting cases against Trump effectively means that Biden’s only real opponent in the Presidential race scheduled for November this year starts on one leg. Surely, the Biden government “going after” its only political opponent doesn’t make for a level playing field either. But this fact is destined to be lost on the Biden administration.
The reason is that Anglo-Western powers, who were one-time imperialists, still, in the main, harbour illusions of moral superiority. That it is their burden to heroically take liberal democracy—with its added emphasis on individual freedom, self-determination, and property rights—to all the supposedly dark corners of the world. That only ‘Western values’ can illuminate the path to a rule-based global democratic order. This misplaced sense of moral duty makes the Anglo-Western bloc see the world in binaries: the liberal democratic West versus the uncivilised rest.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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