Here are excerpts from India's far-right leader, Lal Krishna Advani, talking of his visit to the USA in January 2002. He was then the home minister in the coalition government under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

    "... I described India and the USA as the 'Twin Towers of democracy.' Pointing out that both were victims of terrorism, I said the common threat that we face has underscored the need for a strong and longer-term partnership between us."

    (and)

    "I conveyed to him [President George W. Bush], more forcefully than I have done in my talks with any other foreign leader, the menace that religiously inspired terrorism, emanating from Pakistan, posed to India, the United States and the rest of the world.... I emphasized that the US should not employ 'double standards' in its approach to fighting terrorism...."

    These excerpts from Advani's just-published autobiography, "My Country, My Life," are of interest not just as evidence of the lead the far right took in forging the US-India "strategic partnership," of which so much is spoken and heard these days. The section of the book dealing with this subject is important, also, as an indication of the direction India's foreign policy can take in a not-too-distant future, if there is an upswing in the far right's political fortunes.

    The BJP has named 80-year-old Advani as the prime minister-in-waiting, to lead the Party back to power in New Delhi in the general election due in 2009. Pundits may differ on the literary and other merits of the autobiography, but they are all agreed on its obvious political purpose. The volume is clearly meant to send out signals to the country, the region and the world about what they can expect from the shadow prime minister if he does come to occupy India's highest political office. The hardheaded politician, known as a hardliner even within the camp of forces hostile to the minorities and to Pakistan, must have weighed every one of his printed words, especially those speaking of India's official relations with the world's sole superpower.

    Advani was visiting the US, it must be noted, at a time when India and Pakistan were massing about a million troops all along their border, especially in Kashmir, causing worldwide consternation about the consequences of a major conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors. The standoff followed a never fully investigated incident on December 13, 2001, termed as an attack on India's Parliament House by Pakistan-backed terrorists. Advani says he was aware of the American "concerns" over the buildup on the border but he only asked for assistance from the US as part of its anti-terrorist campaign.

    The book reiterates, as Advani did in Washington, the basic perspective of India's far right on the "strategic partnership." In the view of the BJP and the Vajpayee regime, the partnership should have ideally meant an alliance against Pakistan. He says he told US Attorney General John Ashcroft: "... Indians were bemused when Pakistan effected a sudden U-turn in its policy towards the Taliban and decided to join the US-led coalition against terror in Afghanistan. We cannot understand how Pakistan can now claim to be opposed to terrorism on its west and continue to rationalize, justify and patronize it on its east."

    Advani, in fact, is strongly of the opinion the US should have offered India such anti-terror assistance in 1999, even before the start of the strategic partnership. Writing of the hijack of an Indian Airlines plane, IC814 on a Kathmandu-Delhi flight by Kashmir militants, he regrets the US reluctance to render such assistance then. When the hijackers took the plane to Dubai, says Advani, he spoke to US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, "seeking urgent American assistance."

    "I felt that the Americans, with their considerable military presence and diplomatic influence in the Gulf region, could have taken some effective pro-active steps to put the hijacked plane out of action so that Indian commandos could be sent there to rescue the hostages". Blackwill, talking to an Indian television channel the other day, pleaded guilty. The US "was unresponsive," he admitted, promising Advani perhaps he could hope for a more friendly response as a future prime minister.

    Currently, Advani is facing considerable flak over the way he handled the hijacking. He was part of the government that conceded the hijackers' demand for the release of militant Mohammad Masood Azhar and had a cabinet minister deliver him to the terrorists in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Advani may be talking of the unforthcoming US assistance as a diversionary ploy. But the book leaves no doubt that Advani's, the BJP's and the entire far right's basic idea of the anti-terror partnership remains unaltered.

    Talking of his second visit to the US, in June 2003, this time as India's deputy prime minister, Advani says he reiterated to President Bush his plea for a "partnership" of this kind. "As far as Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism was concerned, I explained to him at length how there was not much difference in the ground situation since my last visit to the USA." Many analysts see a significant difference in this situation over the recent period of dramatic political developments in Pakistan. Advani and the BJP, however, have indicated no agreement with such an assessment.

    Advani's second visit to Washington took place against the backdrop of the Iraq war, launched in March 2003. Recalling the Bush regime's repeated pleas for India's participation in the war to a dispatch of troops, the former deputy prime minister claims his government was opposed to the idea right from the outset. The facts were very different.

    The first reaction to the war from the far right, including several figures of the ruling establishment, was a strident demand for recognition of India's own "right of pre-emption." Then Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh even spoke about "every country" possessing this supposedly inalienable right.

    Then, on March 22, 2003, Vajpayee presented a prepared statement in a meeting with opposition leaders, called in order to work out a consensus on the issue. The statement specified three considerations for India to keep in mind in this regard.

    The first was, "India's attention should remain focused upon its immediate neighborhood." He added, "We should be careful that neither our internal debate nor our external actions deflect our attention, or that of the world, away from the real source of terrorism in our neighborhood."

    The second point Vajpayee made was, "the nexus between international terrorism, fundamentalism and weapons of mass destruction is now being strengthened". Thirdly, talking of the "very divisive" character of the Iraq crisis, he said, "The Security Council is itself divided. There are divisions within Europe and within NATO. Most importantly, the Arab world itself is divided. Indeed, many Arab countries are cooperating with the US and Britain." If they could, he seemed to ask, why not India?

    Vajpayee did not convince the opposition or India's peace movement. Under popular pressure, the country's Parliament adopted a resolution critical of the US aggression on Iraq, and that ruled out the dispatch of troops to help the Bush regime's designs.

    Iraq, of course, is now a nearly irrelevant issue for India. But Advani's autobiography does sound, in quite a few places, like an assurance to Washington he will play a more useful role than Vajpayee could, if his party returns to power.

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.