Indian ambassador lauds growing
relationship with U.S.
By Sally Acharya
(From American Weekly, Oct. 24, 2006)

Ronan Sen, ambassador from India to the United States, speaks at the India Forum launched by SIS professor Shalini Venturelli. Photo by Jeff Watts

India's ambassador to the United States lauded the growing relationship of the two countries, describing them as natural partners because of their secular and democratic heritage and shared commitment to diversity and tolerance.

Ronen Sen spoke at the Abramson Family Recital Hall in the Katzen Arts Center as part of the India Forum, a newly launched series of programs that School of International Service (SIS) dean Louis Goodman described as a sign of the school’s renewed interest in India.

Democracy took strong root in India not because of the British legacy, but because it grew naturally from India’s own heritage of debate and dissent, Sen said. The village-based panchayat councils and lack of belief in the divine right of kings laid the foundations for a secular democracy that has remained healthy from its inception.

India has never been an expansionist or aggressive power, he said, but has had a vast impact on its neighbors across South and Southeast Asia through the “soft power” of cultural influence, which has extended even to the United States with the impact of Gandhi on Martin Luther King Jr.

While conventional wisdom has it that U.S.-Indian relations were frosty during the Cold War, when India emerged as the leader of the nonaligned movement, relations were never hostile and included technical assistance and instances of political support, he said.

But from the inception of the Bush administration, this relationship has been taken to a much higher level, he said, in part because of a reorientation of U.S. views. No longer is India being seen purely in the distorting context of its relations with Pakistan, but as an emerging power in its own right, he said.

Trade is being promoted in both countries, so that not only do U.S. firms outsource to India, but Indian investment is growing in the United States. India is now reclaiming its entrepreneurial heritage, Sen said.

Globalization, he said, “is a reality. You can accept it today, or you’ll have to accept it tomorrow.” Ultimately it will benefit all countries, he said, in part by promoting economic ties that give a strong motivation for maintaining peace.

But India’s peace and security is threatened by terrorism. It is already the “world’s biggest victim of terrorism,” he said, and the presence in India’s neighborhood of both the proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and destinations for WMDs has given it a strong shared interest with the United States. The combination of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction is the “world’s worst-case nightmare,” Sen said.

With that in mind, defense cooperation is being extended, with military exercises between the two countries, he said with a nod to Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees U.S. foreign military sales and international military training. Kohler was in attendance at the talk.

“We hope this will be the beginning of a very, very long conversation at AU about India,” said Professor Shalini Venturelli, SIS, organizer of the India Forum. The forum was instituted in part to stimulate discussion about the nation of India as a growing global power, rather than considering it only as part of the South Asian region as a whole.