HYDERABAD, India -- Manmohan Singh leads the largest democracy on earth. But India's prime minister is gentle of manner and speaks in whispers. One struggles to imagine him professing love without shyness to his own wife. And so it meant something when he recently laid the L-word on a little-loved man: George W. Bush.
"This may be my last visit to you during your presidency," Mr. Singh told Mr. Bush in Washington in September, "and let me say, Thank you very much. The people of India deeply love you."
Laura Bush is not alone, after all.
"In 20 years I expect the Indo-U.S. relationship to resemble the Israel-U.S. relationship, and for many of the same reasons"
Shashi Tharoor, leading Indian writer |
Among the least coveted jobs in the world today, along with grave digging, is the task of burnishing President Bush's foreign legacy: the complex, competing challenges of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, North Korea, China and what many in Europe and the third world see as a tarnished national brand.
But love is an unpredictable thing, and it is possible that the love-fest stoked by Mr. Singh and Mr. Bush will, with time, come to be seen as President Bush's enduring overseas accomplishment: the cultivation of India, long prickly about empires, as a partner of the sole superpower.
|