I found it disturbing to read in Jim Hoagland's column that the Bharatiya Janata Party's leadership "implement[ed] India's belated and rapid opening to the world." When was India supposedly closed to the world? When it fostered Buddhism, the first religion to spread across a continent? When it traded with China, Africa and Europe thousands of years ago? Or more recently, when its nonviolent and faith-based struggle for independence inspired Martin Luther King and Lech Walesa? Perhaps when it was one of the first nations to try to challenge the Cold War stalemate, a half-century ago?
The reality is that India has been more "open to the world" than most nations. The BJP only opened India to foreign capital, and to theocratic rule. Jim Hoagland may feel, apparently unlike India's majority, that these are beneficial forces. But they are hardly the sum of "the world."
Larry Yates, May 2004