Times Of India Nov 10, 2009
Perception vs reality
Abhishek Singhvi
Prior to my first live interaction with George W Bush, i thought of him
as an amiable, laidback guy with little in the top storey and the typical
Texan’s broad brush approach to life with a disdain for detail. I had always
rated Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, in that order, as the most cerebral US
presidents in a long time and Bush came way down in that pecking order. With
no intellectual pretensions and the hate legacy of Iraq, there was pretty
little to like about Bush. Except that, from a purely selfish Indian
perspective, no US president had reached out and done so much for our
country.
I reckon that a majority of Indians – if they ever thought of Bush –
thought the same way. Recently we were all proved wrong. For one hour, he
held a large audience in Delhi spellbound, cheering him wildly, eating out
of his hands and giving him a standing ovation. Not a word by Bush was out
of place, not a joke humourless, not a sentiment out of sync. And this was
no ordinary audience –it was articulate, sceptical, knowledgeable and ready
to tear apart any icon.
Bush came across as extremely wellinformed, competent, persuasive, a
great orator, a man who spoke from the heart, with a wry, self-deprecatory
outlook on life, and full of visible love for India and Indians.
The first thing this tells you about public life is the power of
perception. With all the education, information technology and power of
analytical scrutiny available to us, it is time democracies and the masses
who form their backbone start thinking and reacting more rationally than on
mere perception. The first i fault on this front is myself.
Second, it tells you the power of speaking from the heart more than the
head. Whenever one heard Bill Clinton – he is one of the most consummate
orators in English globally – one is dazzled by his brilliance but always
left with a lurking doubt about his sincerity. Bush comes across as someone
honourable, speaking honestly from the heart and even on issues where one
may violently disagree with him, one goes away with the feeling that he is
genuine about his convictions.
Third, while India and Indians have showered unconditional love upon
Clinton and Obama, the man who really loves India and all things Indian is
Bush. Forget the civil nuclear agreement, though that by itself exceeds what
any single previous US president has done for India. But Bush was the first
to meaningfully and in real terms de-hyphenate the Indo-Pak relationship. He
was the first to realise that US relations with each country stand on
independent and distinct foundations and that a country of the size,
diversity and depth of India can hardly be clubbed with Pakistan as far as
US foreign policy is concerned.
Additionally, it was the Bush administration, more than any other, which
sent a clear and unequivocal signal to China that the US was prepared to
reach out and support a countervailing power of the size and potential
comparable to China, in China’s own backyard.
His sincere support to women’s causes is self-evident and explodes the
myth about him being anti-Muslim. Apart from his telling repartee regarding
the four women in his life, it is clear that girl child education and in
particular that of the Muslim girl child is a theme very dear to Bush’s
heart. His educational initiatives in his own country are female-focused and
include a comprehensive project devoted to female education in the Middle
East, which will be physically located in that region.
The one abiding image of the Bush administration in my own mind was that
of lack of compassion and empathy, an absence of a human touch. Having heard
Bush, i can see how wrong i was. Perhaps it is the company Bush kept –
especially that of Dick Cheney, his former vicepresident – that was
responsible for part of that buccaneering, unemotional and heartless persona
we saw. Beware of perceptional politics.
The writer is an MP and national spokesperson of the Congress party.
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