One of the great American foreign policy mistakes for the last fifty years has been the decision to keep India at arms length, while embracing Pakistan and China. It goes back to Cold War politics - India was suspiciously socialist and non-aligned, whereas Pakistan and China were willing to act as bulwarks against Soviet Communism. However, the West has far more in common culturally and economically with India than it ever will with Pakistan or China.
In strictly utilitarian terms, a strong India is far more to our advantage than an empowered China. Pakistan is a crucible for radical Islam and a haven for terrorism, while China is chronically autarchic and mercantilist. I fear that neither is ever likely to integrate well with the existing group of first-world nations. So far, India appears much more compatible.
Fortunately, it seems like attitudes have been changing in recent years. Liberalization and outsourcing (not without its own problems, obviously) have opened India to the west, while people are starting to realize the westernization of China and Pakistan isn't as inevitable as was once claimed.
As an Indian, I can tell you some fundamental differences between India and Pakistan:
- India is usually very open to debate, on just about anything.
- Radicalism, though exists in India in pockets and in different forms, is not a chronic national disease.
- People understand the language of development now (to a large extent)
- Knowledge and Education is very deeply valued. Its a part of how most Indians think.
- Corruption is rampant, but media is becoming extremely vigilant. We have a Right to Information, which has been used to great effect recently to curb corruption and malpractices.
- Lastly, we are a democracy in the true sense of the work. 80% of Indians are proud of it.
We are chaotic and corrupt and crippled with hundreds of problems, but at the same time, we're enterprising, hard-working, mostly ambitious, and mostly open-minded.
I'm Indian too (with ex-Pak immigrant parentage), and I can't say most of those things, except for the recent innovation of the Right to Information Act, are all that different here than in Pakistan.
Perhaps we shouldn't argue over what we cannot quantify.
True, I don't want to downplay the distinctiveness of Indian culture or its ties to Pakistan. But speaking from a western, utilitarian foreign policy perspective, the aspects that are desirable about India are the parts that are distinctive, or if they exist in Pakistan are undermined by the political realities there.
Agreed that India is not a single entity, and I'd add that Pakistan is not that integrated either. Those Pashtuns in the North-West Frontier Province do take great pains to distinguish themselves from the Punjabis in the East, and the Balochis and Sindhis in the South. I suppose I shouldn't leave out the Kashmiris.
Now as to not having things in common, I have to disagree. There is a distinctive desi-ness to our affairs, which in my eyes still binds 'Maula Jatt' and 'Endhiran' as belonging to more or less the same culture. Just my opinion.
The adoption of capitalism and participation in international institutions doesn't imply that China has westernized. By 'westernize', most people mean that they expect China to adopt democratic, individualistic consumer culture and a political system similar to Continental or Anglo-Saxon democracies. I believe this is extremely unlikely. Radically 'unwestern' states have always coexisted with industrialized capitalism: Tsarist Russia, 2nd Reich and Nazi Germany, etc. Not to mention that most Asian democracies like Japan would hardly be recogzable to a Briton or American. The best-case scenario for an emergent China is probably a state that looks a lot like Singapore, Taiwan, or Japan. IMO, China fifty years from now will probably fall far more toward the authoritarian end of the spectrum.
In strictly utilitarian terms, a strong India is far more to our advantage than an empowered China. Pakistan is a crucible for radical Islam and a haven for terrorism, while China is chronically autarchic and mercantilist. I fear that neither is ever likely to integrate well with the existing group of first-world nations. So far, India appears much more compatible.
Fortunately, it seems like attitudes have been changing in recent years. Liberalization and outsourcing (not without its own problems, obviously) have opened India to the west, while people are starting to realize the westernization of China and Pakistan isn't as inevitable as was once claimed.