August/September 1992, Page 38

Diplomacy

Indian Ambassador Dr. Abid Husain

By M. M. Ali

Indian Ambassador to the United States Abid Husain is scheduled to return to New Delhi in August. There is press speculation in India that he is under consideration for any of three vacant positions in his government: vice president, foreign minister or commerce minister. He has no indication that there is substance to any of these rumors, but they illustrate an unusual aspect of his country's political life.

A Muslim, Dr. Husain belongs to a select group within his country's bureaucracy that gives credence to India's claim that it is a secular democracy, despite the disproportion between the more than 700 million Hindus and slightly over 100 million Muslims in the country's total population of 880 million. Certainly in the minds of such political leaders as L.K. Advani of the Bharathiya Janata Party (BJP), an organization whose program is Hinduvta (Land of the Hindus), the soul of India is Hindu while secularism is merely an international necessity.

Abid Husain serves less in the tradition of Muslim political leaders Abul Kalam Azad and Rafi Ahmed Qidwai, who remained loyal to Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru during India's struggle against British rule, and more in that of Humayun Kabir and Ghulam Syedain, Muslims who branched out from the civil service into India's political arena.

A former member of India's Planning Commission and a former secretary of commerce, Abid Husain's many speeches in the U.S. have advocated a much reduced role for India's government and more freedom for private enterprise. He believes the government should concentrate on human resource development and allow the private sector to build the economy. Although this approach made him a popular speaker with American audiences, he did not minimize the difficulties facing the Indian government in shifting from a highly controlled system to a market economy. He repeatedly cited the large middle class that has emerged in recent years as India's best insurance against economic and political instability.

Abid Husain originally was appointed as India's envoy to the United States by the Janata Dal Prime Minister V.P. Singh, whose government collapsed on the issue of the underprivileged castes. He was retained by the short-lived administration of Chandra Shekar and by the present Indian prime minister, Narasimha Rao, to the completion of his two-year term.

Articulate, cultured and endowed with a keen intellect, Abid Husain and his Hindu wife, Carkey, have been great assets for the government of India in their high-profile position. In Washington, the husband-and-wife team project a picture of Indian religious harmony that may still be more aspiration than reality. Nevertheless, as a diplomat fond of quoting from Urdu or Persian poetry and a diplomatic wife who enjoys the role of a perfect Eastern hostess, they have been a popular and lively addition to Washington's diplomatic circuit for the last two years.

India first was represented by a Muslim ambassador in the diplomatically sensitive Washington post in the 1960s. Although India's 100 million-plus Muslims are geographically scattered, historically they are a prominent minority with a distinct culture, held tightly together by their religious orientation. The Hindu majority still grapples with the question of whether to assimilate the Muslim minority into the mainstream, or just to accomodate it as a physical reality.

 

Either option presents serious problems, as the history of India's Hindu-Muslim riots attests. The unresolved Kashmir issue serves as an ongoing catalyst for communal problems, and neighboring Muslim Pakistan, which has several problems of its own, sits as a watchdog over Indian Muslim affairs.

With their long history, and in the absence of the political will in India to give Kashmiris the right of self-determination they so ardently desire, these problems may remain unsolved for a long time to come. India's assignment of Dr. Husain to Washington, however, and his tireless efforts to serve his country well, demonstrate that if there is a will, there is a way.

M. M. Ali is a professor at the University of the District of Columbia.

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