AS the US celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump has temporarily replaced Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath on Delhi’s roads.
The US President’s visage has been on the city roads’ autorickshaws since the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, announced his visit to India in May. Officially, the 250th anniversary falls on July 4, but in India, the celebrations noticeably began with fanfare in May and will continue throughout the year.
Trump’s face – curiously unsmiling – has “Happy Birthday America!” emblazoned above it and “250 Years Old” set against the Stars and Stripes in the background on autorickshaws. The weather-resistant rexine advertisements which cover the entire back panels of three-wheelers are an initiative of the US Embassy in the national Capitol. They have had a mixed reception from the public, which is used to such posters showing PM Modi celebrating some “achievement” with some BJP Chief Minister or the other. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister has been the most prominent face beside the Prime Minister’s before Trump displaced them. Before Modi, when Delhi’s autorickshaw drivers were solid backers of the Aam Aadmi Party, it was then Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal whose image was on the rear of three-wheelers.
According to Paul M Nichols, the Embassy’s Contracting Officer, tender documents issued for this campaign were for 8,000 autorickshaws to have Trump on their back panels. A second set of posters display the Statue of Liberty over the American flag and the words “Freedom 250” at both ends. Simultaneously, the Embassy compound – in particular, Roosevelt House, the residence of Ambassador Sergio Gor – is illuminated every night in the national colours of red, white and blue. The illumination gives the impression of Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights spectacle to which lakhs of tourists flock to view in Nordic countries throughout the winter every year. One imagines neighbouring embassies may envy the nightly attention that the US Mission is getting from Delhiites for Freedom 250.
The Declaration of Independence had a profound impact on India and its struggle for freedom from British rule. This was partly because the US also won its freedom from Britain. Thus, it was a model for India’s own freedom struggle against British rule. Perhaps because the appeal of the 1776 Declaration was so deep on the Western-educated Jawaharlal Nehru and on a member of the UK’s House of Commons, Dadabhai Naoroji – although a fighter for India’s freedom – its overpowering impact was confined to the ‘elite’ among the foot soldiers for Indian independence. Even after BR Ambedkar incorporated elements of the American Declaration in his authorship of India’s Constitution, this did not change. Like the 1787 US Constitution, India’s Constitution, adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1949, begins with the Preamble, “WE, THE PEOPLE …”.
I have frequently been intrigued during my years as a foreign correspondent in the US that Indian visitors – especially history buffs – want to go to Gettysburg and often spend an entire day at the National Military Park, where President Abraham Lincoln delivered his memorable Gettysburg Address. When the US State Department organised a media tour of Washington’s Museum of American History in 2013 for the sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg Address, almost the entire complement of the foreign media which turned up comprised Indian correspondents.
On the contrary, not many Indians visit the Independence Hall in Philadelphia, America’s first capital, where both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were adopted by the Founding Fathers of what is today’s US. Nor do Indians constitute even a fraction of one million visitors annually who go to the National Archives in Washington, where the Declaration is enshrined in its rotunda.
A cynical view is that the Gettysburg Address is easier for Indians to absorb and digest because the speech is a surprisingly brief 272 words – one word less in some historical texts. A more generous explanation is that ordinary Indians can relate more to Lincoln’s words, which have greater resonance for them even to this day. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” In my high school, students had to deliver the Gettysburg Address from memory. And Toastmasters there received accolades for the best delivery. For many Indians, the contents of the Gettysburg Address are still a work in progress in their country. Not so with the Declaration of Independence.
For a journalist, unlike for historians or political scientists, a newspaper column on America’s 250th birthday cannot be fulfilling without an analysis of the present state of India-US relations. For policymakers in New Delhi who do not want to rock the boat, everything is hunky-dory. But the relationship’s potential is far from realised. Atal Bihari Vajpayee once told me as Prime Minister that whenever an American met him, Vajpayee had the feeling that his interlocutor was reading out from an invisible list of demands. Nobody gave me a list to read out to Bill Clinton or George W Bush, Vajpayee lamented.
Almost every initiative on the bilateral agenda in Indo-US relations has come from the American side: The nuclear deal, high-technology cooperation, the diaspora influx through the H1-B route, etc. It is to India’s credit that official negotiators have skillfully turned their negotiations on these initiatives to India’s benefit, most pronouncedly in the bilateral nuclear deal.
On the 250th birthday of the most powerful country, there is a crying need for more original ideas to emanate from New Delhi if the oldest democracy and the most populous democracy are to foster one of the most important global relations in this millennium.
Right from 1947, the US always knew what it wanted from India. Of course, it did not get what it tried for, most of the time. But it never gave up. The problem with the Trump administration is that it does not know what it wants from India. Nothing comparable to the nuclear agreement is coming out of the White House nowadays. And the right hand in Washington’s power circle does not know what its left hand is doing. Unless this problem sorts itself out, India-US relations will remain on the current plateau.
The Tribune, now published from Chandigarh, started publication on February 2, 1881, in Lahore (now in Pakistan). It was started by Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia, a public-spirited philanthropist, and is run by a trust comprising five eminent persons as trustees.
The Tribune, the largest selling English daily in North India, publishes news and views without any bias or prejudice of any kind. Restraint and moderation, rather than agitational language and partisanship, are the hallmarks of the newspaper. It is an independent newspaper in the real sense of the term.
The Tribune has two sister publications, Punjabi Tribune (in Punjabi) and Dainik Tribune (in Hindi).
Remembering Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia
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