Democracy To Democracy

Seven bombs exploded in the Indian city of Jaipur on the evening of May 13. An eighth was placed outside a Hindu temple just outside the city. At least 63 people were killed, more than 200 wounded. Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but Indian media and police take for granted that the atrocity was the work of Islamic extremists.

More than 60 people dead in a single evening. That's serious, or so you would think. The July 7, 2005, subway bombings in London killed 52 commuters and commanded the attention of the world. Yet Jaipur? Not so much.

Not so much either for the six bombings that targeted law courts in the northern state of Uttar Prades in November, 2007, killing 13. Or for the attack on the southern Indian city of Hyderabad in August, 2007, in which two bombs killed 43 -- and 19 unexploded bombs were later found and disarmed by police.

It's not only media attention that has been lacking in the West. U. S. President George W. Bush has spoken personally about the London attacks (and also about such red-letter attacks on India as the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament and the 2006 Bombay train bombings that killed some 209 people and wounded over 700). The job of condemning these latest Indian attacks has been left to the State Department's official spokespeople. That's diplomatically correct, but it lacks emotional oomph.

America keeps quiet in part because the present Indian government prefers it that way. India is home to a large Muslim minority, at least the third largest Muslim population on Earth and very possibly the second. Indian authorities fear anything that might provoke intergroup antagonism. Their first instinct is to soothe and palliate:Hindu-majority India was the first country on earth to ban Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.

This instinct is felt especially strongly when (as now) India's Congress Party holds office in India. The Congress Party depends heavily on Muslim votes. Its rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), draws its support from Indians with a strong Hindu identity. Congress fears that too forceful a response to terrorism might alienate potential Muslim supporters -- and galvanize BJP voters.

So Congress usually prefers a softly, softly approach. This week's U. S. diplomatic response defers to that preference.

So far, so reasonable. But at some point, the United States (and the Western world more generally) needs to integrate into its diplomacy a recognition that India is a democracy. The developing U. S.-India relationship is not only a government-to-government relationship: It is a people-to-people relationship. And effective management of a people-to-people relationship requires attention and sensitivity to natural human feeling.

Former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee attended in person the memorial service on the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. No senior American official has done the equivalent in India during the past decade of terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The mourning stops at the assistant secretary level. That may be protocol -- but the construction of a true alliance calls for stepping beyond protocol.

The U. S.-India relationship may grow into the most important bilateral strategic alliance on Earth in the 21st century. Yet the growth of this relationship repeatedly stumbles against misperceptions and misinterpretations. Indian sensibilities are easily offended, as President Bush discovered last week when a stray remark about Indian grain purchases triggered outrage in New Delhi. It would help to nurture this emerging relationship if the United States would bank some emotional credit when it was appropriate to do so.

When India bleeds, the U. S. president should join the mourning, even if it is not immediately convenient to the party that happens to hold power in New Delhi at the time.

A generous word can sometimes do more good than whole volumes of diplomatic etiquette. The U. S. and India are both media democracies. When leaders speak, they do not speak only to each other. They speak to whole nations. And when they fail to speak when speech is called for -- that too is heard loud and clear.

True friends share more than interests. They exchange more than investments. They feel each other's griefs and mourn each other's losses. The Indians themselves showed the way in 2001. The U. S. should emulate their example -- starting with Jaipur and continuing through the main losses that sadly may lie ahead for both nations and all the democracies.