A mischievous friend of mine said that if a black man were to enter the White House then pigs would fly, and swine flu (flew)! It is a witty ditty to which I trust nobody will take offence, as none is intended.
Do you know who the S.O.B. in the White House is? This could be offensive. We know what S.O.B. normally stands for, so I need not elaborate. But I am not “normal”, so I have another connotation for S.O.B. It stands for two guys whose names begin with O, where an S is replaced by a B. Got it? Yes I am talking about Obama and Osama. Is a B or an S all that distinguishes the two Os? O stands for something else as well – Oil. That is why I am concerned, and want to enter the White House, though I am neither white nor black, just plain brown.
Mr President, I wish to enter the White House, neither to bomb it, nor to be a fly on the wall to see what Monica Lewinsky did with that cigar; but because what is decided in the White House gravely affects the rest of the world, be they white, black, brown or yellow. Samuel Huntington may call it a “Clash of Civilisations”, but many of us brownies would rather believe that it is a “Clash over Oil”; over which the Middle East (which incidentally is Islamic dominated) seems to have the hegemony. There is a loud whisper worldwide that your country has the largest oil reserves, but you would rather exhaust the oil in the Middle East first, and then dictate terms later when everybody else’s wells have run dry. This isn’t quite cricket (or should I say baseball) Mr President?
Our two countries are purportedly the world’s largest democracies. We should therefore be the best of friends. Yet we look at each other with suspicion, and you Mr President, spare no opportunity to shout yourself hoarse that “the injuns are coming”, but brown not red. There is more to our democracies than our Indian roots. As you have rightly and repeatedly observed, India has emerged as a neo-economic power. What you don’t know is that India is a threat to nobody, least of all the U.S. Why? Because our gigantic economic strides have been consumed by corruption. In your country the order is reversed. You are corrupted by consumption. See how close we are?
Five centuries ago White European settlers were the pioneers on the lonely prairie. Texan cowboys were as tough as their leather stirrups. Prospectors lived and loved for gold. That was long ago. You have now become a soft state like India. Your people are now accustomed to leisure and pleasure. Your wife’s main concern is obesity in children, while the other half of the world starves. Your per capita consumption of oil, food, water and timber is the highest in the world. Do you not also see the irony of the opium fields of Afghanistan being the opiate of the asses (oops masses) in your country? Who should you blame, if not yourselves?
Your children don’t want to study maths. They are happy doing waiters’ jobs in McDonalds or Pizza Hut; something we brownies did not so long ago. The roles have been reversed. Now you feel threatened by the brown and yellow guys.
Mr President, while the rest of the world was embroiled in World War II your people were relatively unscathed. Pearl Harbour was an aberration. Flanked by two vast oceans your country was insulated and isolated from the rest of the world. It made you feel invincible. You thought you were the world’s policeman. You thought that the US was bigger than the UN. You attacked Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya. You burnt more than your fingers in Vietnam, while burning children with napalm bombs. You could fire missiles from aircraft carriers to subdue Iraq. In ground fighting, that requires raw courage, your GIs were no match for tenacious freedom fighters. After World War II you entered into a cold war in a bi-polar world. You would dare to say, “Those who are not with us are against us”. Now you face a more complex multi-polar world.
You in the West belong to the First World. We Asian tigers and dragons, whom you once called the third world, are now the Second World. The Third World is the Islamic and oil-rich Middle East, North Africa and Indonesia/ Malaysia thrown in for good measure. The Fourth World is the rest of Africa, Asia, and South America. So you are now confused.
Yes you were insulated and isolated till 9/11 happened. You were then rudely jolted from your reverie. From the reel world of superman and batman you entered the real world. What you now saw scared you. You became paranoid. It is symbolised in the picture of you and your advisors sitting in the White House, waiting to be told that Geronimo was EKIA (enemy killed in action). Mr President, you were slouched in your chair, fear and anxiety written all over your face. Hilary, your Secretary of State, held her hand to her mouth horror-struck, eventhough nobody was striking you.
Mr President, I have never been to America. Unlike you, I was not born there. So I cannot be the President of the USA. But I am a world citizen, so I am concerned, not just for America, but for the world we all inhabit.
Mr President, you once said that if you had a choice of a dinner date, it would be Mahatma Gandhi, eventhough you would not have much to eat. The Father of our Nation once said that there is enough to satisfy man’s need, but not enough to satisfy man’s greed. That goes for every man, American or Indian. But given the reality that you are the biggest per capita consumer, you must seriously consider curtailing greed and consumption, lest you be gradually overtaken by the other three worlds, and be corrupted entirely.
Mr President, some years ago I attended an international meeting in Vienna, Austria, where we visited the headquarters of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Present was a delegate from the United Kingdom, the empire on which the sun never set, for it was spread throughout the world, and at any given point of time the sun was shining somewhere. This Britisher was now bemoaning the fact that they had lost their car building industry to Japan, their shipbuilding to South Korea, and their doctors to your country, America. The sun had well and truly set. That is why they now went gaga about their son William getting married. At last they had something to cheer about!
Mr President, my wife visited your country, for two months, 15 years ago. She told me that the people of America are very hospitable and friendly. A die-hard communist friend of mine, who happens to be Muslim, and visited his daughter in America, said that your country is the best in the world. A Sikh classmate of mine, whose son has migrated to your country, says that there is no racial discrimination there. This is good news, and a rich heritage that must be preserved.
For that Mr President, I have through this column, entered the White House to humbly whisper to you that you must stop being the world’s policeman, otherwise you will be the biggest threat to world peace. You have no moral right to don that mantle. The days of colonialism and expansionism are over. Tell your wife that the kids are obese because they and their parents consume too much. As I said, you are corrupted by consumption.
Do read the writing on the wall in the White House, written by a fly that fell in my inkpot. If not, history will be witness to who is the S.O.B. in the White House. “God bless America”. No, God bless us all, and keep us in peace.
* The writer is a former National President of the All India Catholic Union
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