It is symptomatic of the perversity of the relationship between India and the United States of America that one of the most successful periods in our bilateral relations was at a time when US policy and modus operandi were subject to worldwide criticism, not least from influential circles in India, and when the incumbent at the White House was either ridiculed or demonized in most parts of the world. It is for psychoanalysts to unravel the mysteries of a love-hate relationship, with the attendant emotions of obsession, expectation, disillusion and bitter recrimination. But in truth, a love-hate description does not begin to do justice to the complications of the ties between the US and India.

The liberties we enjoy, or aspire to enjoy, would not have come about if Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt had not championed the cause of decolonization, and if the US had not entered World War II in the Pacific. After the war, when the Cold War and the supposed Indian tilt towards the Soviet Union were at their height, the American food supplies under PL 480 fed large sections of our people from ship to mouth. The amount due to the US was written off and a facsimile was on prominent display at the Empire State Building as the biggest amount ever written on a cheque. In the US in the 1970s, Indian representatives used to be asked at public meetings why India was ostentatiously ungrateful for this help. Fortunately, nobody talks about these awkward passages any more in either country.

Nevertheless, a predominant image of the US in India is the unit of the 7th fleet led by the aircraft carrier, Enterprise, which was sent to the Bay of Bengal during the war leading to the creation of Bangladesh. This bogey image begs the fact that the nuclear-capable weapons were unusable, and their effect as a restraint on India was zero — like the grand old Duke of York who marched his troops up the hill and down again.

If an Indian goes to China, which was excluded by the US from the United Nations from 1949 to 1971, or to Vietnam, which was ravaged in every possible way by the US from 1959 to 1975, he will be surprised to find there nothing like the hostility and suspicion of the US that exists in India — in fact, exactly the reverse. Indians love speaking about the ‘Ugly American’, without realizing that this person is the hero of the 1958 novel and not the villain. This is the kind of misunderstanding that bedevils the relationship.

The degree of reciprocal hostility from the US towards India is far less, even non-existent, though there is a bemused curiosity among aware circles in that country about India’s economic progress, democracy and civilization, in spite of the apparent anarchy that attends every human activity here. We cannot assume that India can ever feature prominently in the public consciousness in the US, in which the population, by and large, knows even its big neighbours, Mexico, only through the Latino working class, and Canada as a part of the frozen northern waste. When Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house in Alaska, that said it all.

Is the relationship especially difficult because we are too much alike? Two big democracies that gained independence from the same colonial power, though nearly 200 years apart, should have more in common. M.K. Gandhi gleaned many strategies of non-cooperation from Henry David Thoreau, and, in turn, influenced the non-violent civil rights movement under Martin Luther King. What we share with the US is a love of obscure team games that few other countries take seriously — baseball and American football on the one hand, and cricket and kho kho on the other. The Americans invented records — faster, higher, stronger; and it takes a heavy dose of materialism to do that. The Guinness Book of Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not became the yardstick of earthly success.

Big countries usually differ on big issues, like security and arms control, the environment or access to trade. But between India and the US, the small matters are blown out of all proportion and it seems, at times, as if India is searching for matters on which to take offence. Whereas the US is supremely confident about its nationhood, which was evident from the very start and well-entrenched by the time of de Toqueville’s visit in the 19th century, India appears still to be groping for a definition of itself as a nation. This, perhaps, is one of many reasons why it is so prickly and reactive to America. In a country where a proposed national health service is branded as socialism, it is hardly surprising that Nehru’s and Indira Gandhi’s socialistic policies and non-alignment were regarded as immoral and found few sympathizers, in the same way that the US’s cold and proxy wars against the USSR had no appeal for India. The subtlety of the Indian intellect, which means Maybe when it says Yes and No when it says No Problem, found the direct approach of American Manicheanism offensive.

The T-shirt slogan coined during the Vietnam War, “Yankee Go Home — and take me with you!” somehow gets near the heart of the Indo-US complications. An Indian actor, feeling rebuffed in the US, swore never again to set foot on American soil — except for work, to see friends and relatives, and for holiday recreation. His angst may have been profound, but he knew his dilemma would leave the Americans unmoved. Would the Delhi establishment have reacted in the way it did to the Shah Rukh Khan episode if the actor had been detained at Tokyo, Madrid or Burkina Fasso? Perhaps, as Bernard Shaw could have said, the US and India are two countries divided by a common language.

The Indian political leader sees no contradiction whatever in fulminating against American policies but resorting to by-pass surgery in Houston or an American education for his children in order to enhance their prospects, usually by staying on in the US itself. One prominent personage from India led a party delegation to Disneyland with the stated justification of studying crowd control. Those who pour scorn on America’s alleged lack of civilization, culture and morals are fully aware that there is a great Indian popular appetite, despite the negative rhetoric, for all things American; that Bollywood shamelessly plagiarizes American movie plots and filmscores, and that a green card is a star on the CV— “Green-card-holding Saraswat bachelor seeks same-caste soulmate, horoscopes welcome.”

The same contradiction appears in more serious aspects, such as the multiple joint armed forces exercises nowadays performed by the military people of both countries without sharing any stated or presumed joint strategy in the Asian, let alone South Asian, theatre.

What of the near future? Irrespective of the diatribes of certain political circles against everything American, admittedly more muted after the arrival of President Obama, and emotional reactions against any outsiders who dare to interpose themselves in Indo-Pakistan bilateral relations, there is nothing the government of India would like more than Washington’s benevolent attention and sympathetic understanding. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the US has treated India with caution and a minimal pressing of its point of view. In other words, it has been largely accommodating.

Various anxieties arise nevertheless. Does the US under Obama share the same preoccupation with China’s rise to world power as it did under George W. Bush? Why is it that from the American side, the only senior politician to visit India so far has been Hillary Clinton, and that too after seven months? Is the US devoting thought and time to Pakistan at the expense of India — a Pakistan where, incidentally, anti-Americanism is even stronger than it is in India, despite it being a client state in nearly every respect? Have the matters of nuclear-waste enrichment, reprocessing and dual-use technology access been settled in India’s favour or will mutual recrimination fly thick and fast? Will the implications of K. Santhanam’s allegations of a fizzle thermonuclear explosion stir another hornet’s nest? Will carbon emission controls, Iran, CTBT, fissile material freeze and protectionism, all of which Obama strongly cares about, sour relations?

In the next few years, Indian attitudes to the US, irrational as they usually are and locked in the mind-set of a bygone age, will not change. Anti-American attitudes will always find willing audiences, and not only among the Left-leaning, because inherited obsessions cannot be shaken off without self-examination and a thorough mental purging. Nothing like that is likely to happen, and those who know better do not attempt to shape public opinion. American attitudes to India, on the part of the Washington apparatus, will depend on what role is envisaged for India to further the AfPak strategy, and whether India will be compliant. The chances for this to happen are very poor. Both India and Pakistan will be unreliable allies in any US regional strategy. In the longer prospect, even by 2050, the US will be among the world’s three biggest economies, and still by far the strongest military power. India and the US will never go to war, but neither will there ever be harmony. India should show greater self-confidence and concentrate on building itself economically. At present, we have no other choice. As the world emerges from the present recession, India will be stronger than most countries, and will loom large in the plans of every other big economy.