Kashmir: What Next?

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0702/p01s02-wosc.html

from the July 02, 2002 edition

Al Qaeda thriving in Pakistani Kashmir

Sheltered by Pakistani intelligence, officially banned Islamic militants are moving freely near the Indian border.

By Philip Smucker | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

TARSHING, KASHMIR – Nasir Ali, a wiry jeep driver, says Al Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan have arrived here in large numbers. He should know, he says, because he was the one who gave them a lift in from northern Pakistan after their escape from Afghanistan. ``I, myself, drove three Arab fighters into the center of Kashmir,`` says Ali. ``I carried them only part way in and their own jeeps met us and drove them the rest of the way. Hundreds have entered Kashmir in the last several months.``

Mr. Ali, an employee for a private transport company, described in detail subsequent meetings with Middle Eastern fighters he admires. Ali`s account, and several others gathered this week, of how groups of Al Qaeda fighters have infiltrated Kashmir present a harrowing prospect for Washington. Strategic analysts have long warned that Osama bin Laden`s Al Qaeda network is keen to exploit tensions between the two nuclear powers of India and Pakistan, whose governments both claim full rights to divided Kashmir.

A setback for Pakistan`s position on Kashmir. It will extremely difficult for Pakistan to sponsor more terrorism in Indian Kashmir.

--

Hard-line Islamic political party in Kashmir breaks links with Pakistan, militants in political shock

Sun Jun 30, 1:41 PM ET

By MUJTABA ALI AHMAD, Associated Press Writer

SRINAGAR, India - The most influential and hardline Islamic political party in Indian-controlled Kashmir ( news - web sites) announced on Sunday it had severed ties with Muslim militants and Pakistan, into which it has long proposed a merger of the Himalayan region.



Analysts described the announcement as one of the most significant political developments in years in Kashmir — the cause of five decades of tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and two wars. It was also a major win for New Delhi.

The reason behind the dramatic turnaround by the Jama`at-e-Islami party was not immediately apparent.

``I want to make it clear that we have no connection with the militants or militancy, particularly with the Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen,`` Jama`at`s president, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, told The Associated Press.

The Hezb-ul Mujahedeen is the biggest of the dozen militant groups which have been fighting India`s military since 1989 to separate Kashmir, or merge it with Pakistan, which also controls part of Kashmir.

An Indian intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday that Jama`at has had close links in the past with the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, and was suspected of being the militant group`s political face. Many Jama`at members have been arrested or detained over the decade on the suspicion that they were working secretly for the Hezb, the official said.

Jama`at also expressed differences with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a group of 24 Muslim religious and political groups in Kashmir to which it belongs. The Conference, which opposes Indian control of the region, has boycotted the last elections in the Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir and called for voters to resist going to the polls.

Indian officials have for months asked Kashmiri separatist parties to take part in the elections planned for September or October if they want to prove that they are the true representatives of Kashmiris.

Hurriyat has said it will boycott the upcoming elections, and its leader was not available to comment on Bhat`s announcement.

Bhat said that ``right now`` Jama`at has ``no plans of participating in the polls, but anything can happen in the future.``

He added that his party would not call for a boycott of the elections, which he said would be ``unlawful.``

For five decades, Jama`at has struggled politically for a merger of Jammu-Kashmir, India`s only Muslim-majority state, into Islamic Pakistan.

The Jama`at is the only one of the hard-line Islamic parties in Jammu-Kashmir that has an organized, disciplined, region-wide network and thousands of members spread across the Kashmir Valley.

Its announcement Sunday appeared to reverse all that the party has stood for, for five decades.

One of the group`s longtime senior leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has publicly described himself as a ``proud Pakistani.``

However, on Sunday in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, Bhat seemed to dismiss the party`s links with Pakistan.

``There is no mention of Kashmir`s accession to Pakistan in our party constitution. We didn`t ever even pass a resolution demanding accession since we have been working here,`` he told reporters.

The ramifications of Bhat`s announcement were unclear. Geelani is in a prison in the eastern Indian city of Ranchi, charged under a tough anti-terrorism law.

In the past, groups or leaders in Kashmir have made announcements, only to reverse them later, sometime the next day. At other times, new factions have formed, or other leaders have said the announcement did not reflect the view of the whole organization.

If Jama`at holds to Bhat`s announcement, it would be a blow to militant groups in the Kashmir Valley, and raise the possibility of the participation by some separatists in the state elections — a huge public relations victory for India.

India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring the 12-year insurgency, which has left more than 60,000 people dead. Islamabad denies the allegation.

Referring to Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf`s regime, Bhat said: ``There is no dictatorship (allowed) in Islam. The people of Pakistan are trying to install a democratic government in the country.``

Musharraf recently proposed changing Pakistan`s constitution to grant himself sweeping additional powers.

Indian political scientist Haseeb Ahmad described the news as ``the biggest gain for the government of India since the onset of the militancy.``

``This is a clear indication that the Jama`at wants to reaccept ... the basic framework of the Indian democratic setup in Kashmir,`` he told The Associated Press. ``This has shaken the edifice on which the secessionist movement rests and is bound to cause more than ripples in the political scenario of Kashmir.``

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020630/ap_wo_en_po/kashmir_political_surprise_2

The lost tribe of India looks back in despair to its Kashmir home

By Peter Popham in Delhi

In the week that the Indian government decided to ``solve`` the Kashmir problem by throwing even more troops into a valley already saturated in khaki, the community with the deepest Kashmiri roots marked 10 years in exile.

The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, decided to raise ``specialised battalions`` of the paramilitary forces for ``waging counter-terrorist operations`` to defeat the ``proxy war`` in the state.

Commentators chastised the lack of imagination. ``Kashmir policy: old wine in new bottle,`` said the Times of India. The Hindu said that it showed ``the total exclusion of political solutions and political ideas``.

And this week the community whose sufferings are the starkest emblem of Kashmir`s running sore solemnly marked 10 years in exile with a silent demonstration in Delhi.

The Kashmiri Pandits are one of India`s most extraordinary communities. Claiming to be the aboriginals of Kashmir, with a calendar dating back 5,075 years, they also claim 100 per cent literacy: the word ``pundit`` - in Hindi either spelling is acceptable - entered English in recognition of their phenomenal learning.

``The Kashmir Pundits,`` wrote Sir Francis Younghusband, the British Resident in Kashmir, in 1908, ``are well known over India for their acuteness and subtlety of mind, their intelligence and quick-wittedness.

``They prefer priestly, literacy and clerical occupation, but ... many have had to take up agriculture, and become cooks, bakers, confectioners, and tailors, and indeed to follow any trade except ... cobbler, potter, corn-frier, porter, boatman, carpenter, mason, or fruit-seller.``

They reinforced their reputation for brains by providing India with its only political dynasty, the Nehru-Gandhis, three of whom, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, served as Prime Minister.

But for centuries, since an Afghan invasion in the 14th century, the Pandits have been intensely exposed as the only Hindus among an overwhelming majority of Muslims.

All Kashmir`s Hindus, except for the brahminical Pandits, were converted to Islam, mostly, it is said, by force. As a result, the Pandits were several times forced to flee the Kashmir Valley.

Each time, a benign ruler coaxed this avowedly pacifist community to return. But the events of January 1990 have left deep scars. As insurgency in the valley took hold, with militants fighting for Kashmir`s removal from the Indian state, the Pandits became an obvious target.

Already steps had been taken to erase signs of the Pandits` existence. The Hindu names of hundreds of villages were changed to Islamic names. Intellectuals, poets and writers of the community were killed or frightened into silence.

Mahesh Manvati, a refugee who has lived near Delhi since April 1990, said: ``The process culminated on 19 January when the clear call came that we should all leave.``

One refugee who did not want to be named said: ``Srinagar in January 1990 was a nightmare for the Pandits.Audio-cassettes were roaring about Islamic jihad in the mosques, calling for the liberation of the valley. The local press published warnings to the Pandits, asking them to leave the valley or face the consequences, posters were stuck up on poles and walls all over town with the same message.``

A Kashmiri Pandit housewife said: ``Day after day, the posters pasted on the walls in the city warned Kashmiri Pandits to leave. One morning we discovered that some of our close friends and relatives had fled without even whispering to anyone about it. At last our turn arrived. I left Srinagar by air and my husband followed by road.``

Nobody knows for sure how many fled Kashmir on 19 January and in subsequent weeks, but one exile group believes that 350,000 Pandits are living outside their homeland: 200,000 in cramped plastic shelters in camps around the city of Jammu, and another 100,000 dotted around Delhi.

One Delhi-based Pandit journalist, Omkar Razdan, estimates that there are now only 7,000 of his community left in the valley. One exile organisation, Panun Kashmir, claims that 5,000 Pandits have been killed in sectarian massacres in the past 10 years. Drowned out by the louder, more immediate horrors of Kashmir, the Pandits risk being forgotten by history. Yet they were an essential element in the traditional society of the Kashmir Valley, where Kashmiri identity outweighed any other factor or religion or caste. In 1947, when Hindus and Muslims were murdering each other in huge numbers after Partition, the Kashmir Valley remained peaceful.

But for the Kashmiri Pandits in exile, that is all ancient history. One Pandit in Delhi said: ``Islamic fundamentalism has turned Kashmiri society fanatical, a society which will not accept coexistence.`` Communal harmony of the old sort, exiled Pandits believe, is no longer possible.

A group called Panun Kashmir - Kashmir Homeland - is campaigning for a part of the valley to be designated their homeland, with special protection and status.

It is the sort of cause that you might expect to be dear to the heart of a government dominated by Hindu nationalists. But although Prime Minister Vajpayee received a delegation from the organisation on Wednesday, Panun Kashmir looks as if it is the lost tribe`s lost cause. ``We are too few,`` lamented one of the demonstrators. ``We don`t make a vote bank for any party. No parties are interested in us.``

Hindu minority refuses to bow out of Kashmir

By Sonia Jabbar

NEW DELHI - Adding to the complexity of the ``Kashmir Problem`` which has dogged India and Pakistan for more than 50 years has been the fate of the minority Hindu population of Kashmir, otherwise known as the Pandits.

If little is known about the 300,000 Pandits who fled the Kashmir Valley between 1989 and 1991, at a time of popular support for militancy, to become refugees in India, less is known about the tiny number of 17,860 Pandits who chose not to leave.

The mass exodus of the Pandits is still shrouded in mystery. Why they left is a question still levelled at them by the Muslims of the valley.

``Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims have died either at the hands of security forces or militants, but we are still here,`` says Shafi, an artist in Anantnag whose group of friends was almost entirely Pandit before the exodus. That there was a real, palpable fear among the Pandits of being exterminated is a fact dismissed by Shafi. He feels, like most Muslims, betrayed by them. They left without saying goodbye.

In Delhi, an old man`s sense of betrayal is of equal intensity. He was a government servant in Kashmir who trusted his Muslim neighbors. He feels they gave him no choice once the killings of the Pandits started in 1989, that they did nothing to allay his fears, that they drove him out of his homeland. ``I asked my Muslim friend why did you throw us out, why? Did we murder you? Did we rob you? Did we rape your women?`` he shouted, ``we taught you to read and write, we taught you . . . `` His friend, he said, had no answer.

The Pandits of Kashmir are all Brahmins, and pride themselves on being the only caste to have resisted conversion when Islam was introduced peacefully to the Kashmir Valley in the 14th century by the Sufis of Central Asia. They held considerable power, as they were the only people who had a tradition of being highly educated. But this also meant that they bore the brunt of the tyranny unleashed by certain ruthless invaders, particularly during the Afghan occupation of Kashmir in the mid-eighteenth century.

Even though the Kashmiri Pandits have had greater sympathies and links with the Indian Union than their Muslim counterparts, they bore severe economic losses after the Maharaja of Kashmir acceded to India when, in 1949, Kashmir`s leader Sheikh Abdullah introduced land reform measures, redistributing land largely held by the Pandits to the Muslim tiller.

``We have suffered at the hands of tyrants through history,`` says Yuvraj Raina, a Panun Kashmir activist in New Delhi. ``There have been four migrations of Pandits. This is the fifth, and the last.`` Panun Kashmir is an organization of Kashmiri Pandits formed in 1991 which believes that the only solution to the problems faced by Kashmiri Pandits is a separate homeland carved non-violently out of the Kashmir Valley.

This portion of the Valley, called Panun Kashmir, would be a secular state autonomous of Srinagar, and would abide by the Indian Constitution. They feel this is the only way to safeguard the interests, values and culture of the Kashmiri Pandit.

``Look, we told those who remained behind, it`s just a matter of time before they get you,`` says Raina. ``The Muslim fundamentalists want to ensure a pan-Islamic State from the Middle East and Central Asia to Kashmir and the world keeps quiet.`` He recounts the recent killings of the Pandits in the Valley - five last month, one more a couple of weeks later. ``We told them it is either homeland or perish.``

But this is not a sentiment shared by the Pandits who choose to remain in the Valley. In Mattan, south Kashmir, a young school teacher, Jyoti, continues to live with her family and extended family amongst her Muslim neighbors. ``This is the only home I`ve known. These are the only friends and neighbors I have ever had and they`ve been very good to us - so why should we leave?`` she asks.

``Yes, we do feel scared sometimes,`` she concedes. ``You see, no one knows anymore who the killers are. It`s not like the old days where everyone knew who belonged to which militant outfit. Now they are nameless, faceless.``

About the Pandit exodus she says, ``We never knew they were leaving. No one told us anything. In the evening they`d be chatting with us quite normally, perhaps a little afraid, and then the next morning we`d find a big lock on their front doors.``

The exodus of the Pandits has also meant that it becomes increasingly difficult for someone like Jyoti to find a suitable husband. In Srinagar there is a sizeable concentration of Pandits, but in rural areas there are barely a few families among the larger Muslim population. ``I really don`t know what I will do. My parents don`t want me to marry into a family who lives in some isolated hamlet. They`d worry for my safety. I suppose they`ll marry me off to someone in Jammu and I`d be forced to leave the Valley,`` she says quietly.

In Srinagar, the Hindu Welfare Forum, founded in 1991 to protect the interests of the Pandits who chose to remain behind, are an angry lot. They are visibly upset by the recent killings of the Pandits and fear another migration. ``Neither the state government nor the government of India has done anything to protect us. Nobody even knows we even exist. Neither the Indian media nor the international media has bothered to see how we live, highlighted our problems. Even our own community in India and abroad calls us traitors because we refused to leave,`` said a Forum member.

Apart from the myriad problems faced by this tiny community, they are a determined lot. Says Wanchoo, a businessman and a member of the Forum: ``We will never leave Kashmir, and we don`t believe in a separate homeland.

``This is our homeland and we wish to live in peace here. As for the killings, well it`s a problem faced by all Kashmiris, not just the Hindus. Everyday you read that 8-10 people have been killed and they`re usually Muslims. But the militants must realize that they only get discredited when they kill the minorities.``

His wife, who has lived through these terrible 12 years, witnessing much of the violence, experiencing much of the pain, relates a recent experience which makes her smile with delight and hope. ``At a wedding recently a whole lot of us had gathered after a long, long time - Muslim women as well as Sikh and Pandit women - and we really had fun, singing and dancing late into the night just as we used to before the militancy started.

``As I was turning in to sleep I heard the Muslim women whispering among themselves in the kitchen. `After so long,` they said, `after so many years all of us have come together`.

``It`s true, isn`t it, that a garden is most beautiful when there is a profusion of many kinds of flowers.``

Ref Bijli #: 19

[Gurv say kaho Hum Bharati hain.L O L

One can easily realize why stupid a$$ people likeYou, Jay tend to espouse anti-minority theories. They have a serious identity problem, as no one knows Bharat is a country that came into being in 1947. Let alone Pakistanis, even a Bangladeshi (with 30 years of history) have more recognition than a Bharati (who has some 5000 years old history). L O L

Gaurv se kaho ...........................]

Dionysus, I notice that you have updated yourself to the 19th century at last. Instead of an oil lamp, you now have electricity to search for the ``truth`` that you want to find.

Why don`t you blast off into space, Taikonaut?

Reply #: 18

jay

Bijli,

.``Wake up to an assertive india, the thistle hugging days are over.``........

Rotfl.........Ha Ha Ha

Gurv say kaho Hum Bharati hain.L O L

--

One can easily realize why stupid a$$ people likeYou, Jay tend to espouse anti-minority theories. They have a serious identity problem, as no one knows Bharat is a country that came into being in 1947. Let alone Pakistanis, even a Bangladeshi (with 30 years of history) have more recognition than a Bharati (who has some 5000 years old history). L O L

Gaurv se kaho ...........................

Bijli,

How many hindi chini bhai bhai, how many kargill invasion does it take for you all to realise that india is in a treacherous neighbourhood. The great mahatma is dead, these are the days of the jihadists, the ones seeking death just the same how others seek sustanence of life.

Wake up to an assertive india, the thistle hugging days are over.

Jay #16

Jay you represent the very essence of haegemony of Indian ulterior neferious & chanakya minset of bharat

Princley state was not part of INDIAN UNION ,Check the map of India & look what parts of sucontinent was made Indian Union & given to Indian representative.It was MINUS all 500 or so princely states.

Kashmir maharaja DID not acceded with India in 47 .And if later accession of Kashmir in 48 was attempted by Hari Singh ,Then why not Nizam of Hyderabads assent to join Pakistan ,REFUTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

asfand,

You are a true ripvanwinkle, now you have realised that india is not interested in solving kashmir proble, There is no kashmir problem, there is a pak problem, there is a jihadic frontier problem, there is a terrorism proble. No there is no kashmir problem, and it cannot be solved.

I found this on BJP website. This is an article by Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya who was a founding member of BJP. With thinking like this I do not think Indian leadership is willing to solve the Kashmir problem.

``Here in our country the situation in this regard is very much like old Hindu marriages where a married couple could not divorce even if both the parties wished. The principle was that their behavior should be regulated not by their sweet will but by Dharma. The same is case with the nation. If the four million people of Kashmir say that they want to secede, if the people of Goa say they want to secede, some say they want the Portuguese to return, all this is against Dharma. Of the 45 million people of India. even if 449,999,999 opt for something which is against Dharma, even then this does not become truth. On the other hand, even if a person stands for something which is according to Dharma, that constitutes truth because truth resides with Dharma. It is the duty of this one person that he tread the path of truth and change people. It is from this basis that persons drives the right to proceed according to Dharma.

Let us understand very clearly that Dharma is not necessarily with the majority or with the people. Dharma is eternal. Therefore. in the definition of democracy to say that it is a government of the people. It is not enough, it has to be for the good of the people. What constitutes the good of the people. Dharma alone can decide. Therefore, a democratic Government ``Jana Rajya`` must also be rooted in Dharma i.e. a ``Dharma Rajya``. In the definition of `Democracy` viz. ``government of the people, by the people and for the people``, of stands for independence, `by` stands for democracy and `for` Indicates Dharma. Therefore, the true democracy is only where there is freedom as well as Dharma encompasses all these concepts.``

Asfand Siddiqui

Sacramento CA

CONFLICT OF SOCIAL VALUES,

The conflict between india and pakistan has less to do with kashmir and more to do with the fundamental social values. In karach several doctors are killed, no one is arrested, there is sectarian killing , no one is arretsed, oh yeah one man was hung for killing the iranian diplomats after ten years of the event as a prelude to the gas pipe line, honour killing takes place in the office of a high profile human rights activist, no one is arrested, that is the social value in pakistan.

If the meeting has to make any progress, one out come has to be the arrest of the hijackers, intorrogation of asghar. If that is not the outcome, there is no indication of convergence of social values, this meeting and all others to come will be a total waste of time.

Kashmir is only a syptom of the fundamental conflict in social values, lawlessness as the dictate of a higher being.

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Reply #: 11

tahmed321.......Bapu #8 ``Dont worry,discussion,how bizzare ,may be ,never killed anybody ``

You are a wise man. As is written on Shakespeare`s tomb

Mr.tahmed,

you dont even know where real grave of Shakepeare is!! Yes,you should know that Shakespear was born in Kashmir .His kashmiri name was SHEIKH PEER Ali ,so with distortion of all non english names ,ppl. called him SHAKEsPEARE !!

His grave is in Kashmir actually ,& all that Tomb ,you visited is all fake ..haan

Bapu #8 ``Dont worry,discussion,how bizzare ,may be ,never killed anybody ``

You are a wise man. As is written on Shakespeare`s tomb:

Sticks and Stones

May Break my Bones

But Words will Never Bother Me

Call me a Jehadi

Call me an ignorant Paki, I mean Brit,

Your Words are Full of Sound and Fury

Signifying Nothing

(or something like that is written on his tomb)

Some very astute observations.

I think India is getting into a stronger position- Pakistan is on the defensive.

See the Wall Street Editorial at

http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB994726231917247455.htm

U.S.-India Ties Could

Herald a Strategic Shift

By Tunku Varadarajan. Mr. Varadarajan is the Journal`s deputy editorial features editor. His OpinionJournal.com column appears on Tuesdays.

Adamant adversaries will face each other on Thursday when Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan`s dictator, arrives in New Delhi for talks with the Indian government. Though the meeting is bilateral, its occurrence is evidence of an admirable, if unheralded, shift in U.S. foreign policy.

First the local facts. Gen. Musharraf was the architect of a small, brutal war two years ago, when he oversaw the infiltration of Indian territory in the Kargil sector of Kashmir by Pakistani soldiers and Islamic guerrillas. The war over, he seized political power, ousting, and then exiling, the elected prime minister. Last month, by personal fiat, he declared himself president. Also on his curriculum vitae is the stewardship of Pakistan`s terrorist-jihad complex, which orchestrates intrusions by mujahideen into Indian-run Kashmir and sponsors the Afghan Taliban.

India`s invitation to this disreputable man -- who will receive a guard of honor in Delhi from soldiers of some of the regiments which fought, and lost men, in the bloody battles to retake Kargil -- was made for obvious reasons. The Hindu nationalist government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee is sincere in its pursuit of peace with Pakistan and deeply concerned -- as any responsible administration should be -- about the strategic and economic cost of its sapping counterinsurgency campaign in Kashmir. It also hopes to exploit Pakistan`s enfeebled condition, caused by economic bankruptcy and its increasing isolation from the civilized poles of international relations. Pakistan`s involvement in Afghanistan and Kashmir, and its weapons dealings with North Korea, place it only a hair`s breadth away from classification as a ``rogue state`` by the State Department.

Underlying India`s decision to invite Gen. Musharraf is the unusual current of goodwill that now runs through its relations with Washington. There is, today, greater strategic congruence between the U.S. and India than there has ever been. The striking improvement in relations began under President Clinton (one of the few things he did absolutely right), and has, in the first months of the Bush administration, begun to assume all the qualities of a tectonic shift in policy. India will talk to Gen. Musharraf secure in the knowledge that he, unlike previous Pakistani heads of government, does not enjoy Washington`s support in any form. The Bush administration has abandoned a policy that was once set in stone -- to wit, the reflexive equation of India with Pakistan, and the insistence on viewing India always through a ``Pakistan`` prism.

If there were a pithy phrase that is the opposite of ``strange bedfellows`` -- perhaps ``the strangely bed-averse``? -- it would have served, until now, to describe relations between the U.S. and India. It is almost cliched to point out the many common features that should, at the very least, have inclined India and the U.S. toward each other in principle: These include entrenched democracy, ethnic and religious plurality, and an anti-colonial heritage, not to mention the English language and a shared interest in global stability. But the Cold War kept the two apart, as India -- the India of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi -- allied itself misguidedly with the Soviet Union.

That chapter is over. India`s diplomats and strategic planners, once hypnotized by Nehru`s sanctimonious anti-Americanism, his ``non-alignment`` and his socialist economic mantras, have grown wise to the ways of the real world.

That world is perilous, and both India and the U.S. have reason to fear, and to slay, the dragon of Islamic fundamentalism. The spread of Islamic absolutism in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia is not just a cultural question, or one of ``civilizations``: It has serious repercussions for the security of access to energy. Here, one cannot ignore the turmoil in Indonesia, as yet immune to the spread of fundamentalism but possibly ripe for the fall. India and the U.S. have a critical stake in the stability of the entire Indian Ocean region, from the straits of Hormuz to those of Malacca. India is the only country in the region that has the military potential -- as well as the independent economic and strategic incentive -- to be a reliable American partner.

Realism has replaced the old Nehruvian preachiness to such an extent that India has been one of the few countries to back President Bush`s plan for ballistic missile defense. Indeed, India`s mature endorsement of BMD is in telling contrast to the boorish reaction of America`s allies in Europe, some of whom have been as shrill as the Chinese in their condemnation. Of course, the strategic elegance of BMD suits India`s diplomacy to perfection, as it is now able to argue that its own modest nuclear arsenal is defensive too. That Washington is sympathetic to this position is clear from reports that sanctions on India, imposed after its nuclear tests in 1998, are soon to be lifted. (The Bush administration is also respectful of the argument that if China upgrades its arsenal in reaction to BMD, India would, more than ever, need its own nuclear shield.)

Once the nuclear question is addressed -- or finessed -- in this way, there will be no fundamental source of conflict between Washington and New Delhi. An increasing convergence on economic and political issues, especially those with their origins in Asia, should ensure that the two forge a mutually beneficial alliance, one akin, perhaps, to that between the U.S. and Israel. In return for U.S. support, India will need to embrace greater economic reform -- particularly a willingness to open up its economy fully to foreign investment.

This is a long-term project. But the Bush administration, committed to a realist foreign policy, shows every sign of having grasped India`s strategic worth. Deeper American engagement will reinforce positive trends within India, home to one-fifth of the world`s population. And in doing so, the U.S. will bolster its own national and security interests. Can there be a clearer ``win-win`` situation?