New Delhi: Brookings Institution senior fellow of foreign policy Stephen P. Cohen embarked upon a serious study of South Asia in 1963, much before it was fashionable to do so.
In the decades since, he has written on both India and Pakistan, nuclear non-proliferation issues and the changing social context in both countries, and is considered closer to the Democrats than the Republicans. Cohen’s
Idea of Pakistan, published in 2005, was an intellectual tour de force on the Pakistan army, a state within the state.
In an interview in Delhi around the time the Indo-US nuclear deal finally cleared its last hurdles in the US Congress and was signed into law by US President George Bush last week, Cohen dwells on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the China context around the deal, and how precarious he thinks the Pakistani democracy is. Edited excerpts:
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You’ve been coming to India for several years now. Can you tell us how it was then and now?I first came to Delhi in 1963. We’re sitting in the India International Centre and not too far from us there were wild leopards running around. So I’ve seen Delhi grow, India being transformed. Till about 1992-93, there wasn’t much change, everything seemed familiar. From 1992-93 onward, the change accelerated and India entered into a series of revolutions.
This coincided with the economic reform?
Yes, also social reform, social and economic transformation. The Congress party lost power. The way I characterize it, India was undergoing five or six revolutions at the same time. One was the economic revolution, another in foreign policy, no longer non-alignment, a class transformation, a caste revolution... Mayawati is the chief minister (of Uttar Pradesh), something I would have never expected or understood when I was here in 1963.
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You’ve overseen in a sense the transformation of the Indo-US relationship. Two countries which barely spoke to each other in the 1960s, to a very strong and vibrant relationship today…I go back a little before that. In 1962-63, there was a US military aid programme to India and we were backing India against China. The Americans were very gung-ho about India, but the Indians were somewhat lukewarm about America and both of us were undecided about China. In a sense, history is repeating itself. Both of us are united strategically today, concerned about China’s rise, ambivalent about a growing China, but in both countries I think there’s a more mature understanding of the possibilities of cooperating as well as competing with China.
Two incidents that defined the Indo-US relationship in the 1960s: the first was the “ship-to-mouth” import of grain under PL 480 and the second, the infamous tilt against India and towards Pakistan. Can you tell us a little about that?