Indian Americans will remember the Democratic Party’s national convention, which concluded in Denver last week, as the first significant political event in the United States of America at which the possibility was aired in public of a person of Indian descent occupying the White House some day. This possibility is still very, very distant, and there is no Indian American politician yet who jumps to anyone’s mind when such an idea is mentioned.

But US citizens of Indian origin can now dream of this vision, because it was mentioned in Denver by the topmost official of the Democratic Party and not by an Indian American. Howard Dean shook things up among the one hundred or so Indian Americans who were on the floor of his party convention when he went on record about one of their ilk getting the nomination that African Americans had dreamt of for many decades: that African-American dream was realized in Denver last week when Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee for president .

Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a former governor of Vermont and a presidential aspirant in 2004, made the statement to mark the release of the first “almanac” of Indian American Democrats on the sidelines of the Democratic national convention. He stated on that occasion that the 108-page almanac is a compilation of Indian Americans who “are leading the charge to strengthen our party, elect our candidates and ensure that we build a government that lives up to the ideals that inspired generations of Indian immigrants to make America their home”.

The party chairman added: “Perhaps they include the first Indian American who will manage a presidential campaign. Perhaps they include a future Democratic president of the US.” To disabuse his audience of the idea that he was saying things that Indian Americans wanted to hear because they were his constituency of the moment, Dean gave his reasons for planting in their minds the seeds of a seemingly far-fetched idea of an Indian in the White House.

“The rise of Indian American Democrats did not happen by accident,” he argued. “It is not a fortuitous anomaly. It is the direct result of a shared set of values that connect the community and our party.” It is tempting to dismiss all this as hyperbole during poll season in a country where citizens of Indian origin have emerged in recent years as a community which can contribute much to the election coffers of political parties.

But consider this. Until Harry Truman as president signed into law the Luce-Celler Act in 1946 — just six decades ago — the right of Indians to emigrate to the US was restricted and they could not become naturalized American citizens. The tragic stories of race riots against Indian workers on America’s west coast in the early 1900s, and the way some Indians who eventually managed to own some property were deprived of their precious possessions are heart-rending. When this sordid chapter in the not- too-distant history of the US is recalled, Dean’s statement in Denver assumes proportions of being historic.

The Indian American Leadership Initiative was the most active among Indian community organizations at last week’s Democratic convention. It was set up in 2000 to support the election of Indian Americans to public office, high and low, from coast to coast in the US. In 2005, IALI’s leaders revised its mission: “To support, promote and invest in Indian American Democrats and progressives.”

Now, three years later into that effort, there are more Americans of Indian origin who are running for political office in 2008 than at any other time in history and there are more of them as political appointees in the federal government and in states across the US than ever before.

While all this may gladden the hearts of people in India who take pride in the success of their compatriots abroad, a victory for Obama in November may turn out to be a challenge for the Indian government, notwithstanding the presence on the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden, a long-time reliable friend of Indians.

In the weeks running up to the convention in Denver, it was clear that in an Obama presidency, even with Biden in the vice-president’s office, there will be policy areas where the writ of non-politicians who man the bureaucracy will firmly run. Key policies will be decided solely with US interests in mind, interests that are permanent, never mind the rise of a community or a particular constituency within the US.

Four weeks before the Democrats nominated him as their presidential candidate, Obama, on his way back from Afghanistan, told a press conference in Jordan that he was convinced during the trip of “the importance of our diplomatic efforts in Pakistan, which, by the way, may include having a conversation with India and seeing if we can lessen some of the tensions between those two countries. A lot of what drives, it appears, motivations on the Pakistan side of the border, still has to do with their concerns and suspicions about India. And I think that’s an example of aggressive, creative diplomacy.”

He added, in words that ought to cause extreme unease in South Block at a time when Jammu and Kashmir is again on the boil, that “we haven’t had a conversation between the Indians and the Pakistanis that has been sustained and meaningful about how they can arrive at a more sensible arrangement between the two countries. That could relieve some of the pressure and help us go after some of the — some of these forces along the border regions”.

This is a throwback to the decades-old policy of successive American administrations that equated India and Pakistan and sought balance and parity in Washington’s dealings with the two south Asian neighbours. Flowing from such a premise was the long-held misconception in Washington that the US could do something to resolve Indo-Pakistan disputes.

It was only in Bill Clinton’s second term in the White House that he buried this notion. George W. Bush truly got out of this straitjacket only in his second term. The state department’s bureaucracy still believes in that moribund line although, in deference to Bush as president, it takes public positions that echo his views in this regard. A future president Obama would easily go back to this Cold War-era policy prescription at the urging of his foreign policy advisers, many of whom have served either in the state department or in the National Security Council under previous Democratic presidents.

A few days after his Jordan press conference, Obama told Meet the Press, a widely-watched Sunday talk show programme in the US that “we have provided significant amounts of military aid, but much of it has been conventional military aid that is used by Pakistan because they are worried about India or they are involved in disputes about Kashmir”.

These are statements that should sensitize South Block to the possibility that much more than Bush, Obama is willing to be influenced by the ‘system’. Perhaps it is on account of his lack of any experience in government. Perhaps he will change with time and with exposure to the way the executive functions in the US. Either way, the Indian government has its task cut out.

It cannot take any chance of a slide back in the US position on Indo-Pakistan relations that was official policy until the new millennium. New Delhi must right away roll out a comprehensive contingency plan that aims to change Obama’s conceptions on India-Pakistan relations. It cannot wait till November to see whether the Democrats capture the White House.

The rise of Indian Americans in the Democratic Party has a feel good element to it, but many Indians will be disappointed when they find that on issues such as an Obama administration’s south Asia policy, there are obvious limits to how much Indian Americans can do to influence the executive. For that matter, if Dean’s idea of an Indian American in the White House is ever realized, he too will weigh US interests in Pakistan before deciding how to deal with India.