At the Telegraph debate in early March this year, the Calcutta Club audience voted overwhelmingly in favour of Jaswant Singh's policy of currying favour with the Americans. After the weekend visit to India and Pakistan of the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, I trust they are wiping the egg off their collective face. Exactly what 'Mani Talk' had warned about has happened. Instead of fighting terrorism in south Asia, the United States of America has used it as a ruse to insinuate itself as the arbiter of our destiny. We let the camel in - and it has taken over our tent. The American dilemma is that they are being asked to choose between a 'stalwart ally' and a 'natural ally'. They prefer instead to knock our heads together. As the Twin Towers are in New York not Kashmir, their war against terrorism ends at the Statue of Liberty. Here in our benighted subcontinent, they are not interested in ending terrorism, they are concerned with meddling in the India-Pakistan stand-off. This both confirms them as the world's sole super-power and reassures their ilk that the browns are not being left to play with their nuclear weapons. It is ironic that an American black should be laying down the law to the lesser breed. That is precisely what he has done. He has told us that we must hold free and fair elections. P.G. Wodehouse would have described this as 'the petrification of the implied opposite'. That is, what Powell really means is that elections in Jammu and Kashmir under Indian aegis are not likely to be free and fair and, therefore, it needs the American carrot and the American stick to make them free and fair. Further, Powell has made it clear that he does not trust the Election Commission to ensure free and fair elections. He thinks that this can only be certified by foreign observers. If, in fact, Powell had been the even-handed dispenser of justice he fancies himself to be, surely he should have had a quiet word in prime minister's ear about the need for 'free and fair' elections in Gujarat. But, no, he mentioned only Jammu and Kashmir because - and this is the bottomline - the US does not accept Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India; they do not regard the accession of the maharajah on October 26, 1947 as final; and, most important, they regard Pakistani-sponsored cross-border terrorism in 2002 as a side-show just as the British Commonwealth secretary, Philip Noel-Baker, led the West in the United Nations security council into treating the invasion of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 by Pakistan-sponsored raiders as a side-show. In acting in this fashion, Powell is no more than following the long-established American line on Jammu and Kashmir which Jaswant Singh has not been able to change at all. When the president, William Jefferson Clinton, made his imperial passage through India, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other courtiers fawning all over him (in disgust, I absented myself from his Central Hall address), Clinton abused our hospitality by describing Jammu and Kashmir as a 'disputed area', knowing full well that the core of the Indian position is that there is nothing 'disputed' about Jammu and Kashmir: it is an integral part of India and the only outstanding issue is the vacation of Jammu and Kashmir territory illegally occupied by force by Pakistan in 1947-48. Yet, so abject is the Vajpayee dispensation's dependence on the US pulling out our irons from the Pakistani fire that they kept an obsequious silence. For the first time since 1947, India did not protest a US assertion of an unresolved 'dispute' over the status of Jammu and Kashmir. No wonder Powell now regards us an easy push-over. Not that the West did not warn us of their intentions. In the aftermath of Pokhran-II, the UN security council resolution of June 1998 brought Kashmir back to the UN security council agenda for the first time in 33 years. Not since the 1965 war unleashed by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto on India, had the UN security council felt the need to rake up Jammu and Kashmir. While the country applauded the Bomb, 'Mani-Talk' in vain drew attention to the baleful consequences of the revival of Jammu and Kashmir in the UN security council. And there is now no Soviet Union to come to our rescue. For a while, Jaswant Singh was able to pretend he had wrought a miracle. An American official, junior to him in protocol terms but a genuine all-white American for all that, not only summoned Jaswant to meetings all over the world 10 times in a couple of years but also actually drove personally to the Watergate Hotel to take Jaswant Singh to lunch at home cooked by the good Mrs Talbott with her own pale hands. It was enough to send the Calcutta Club into a fever of self-congratulatory delight. At last, the Americans were on our side! Hurrah Jaswant Singh! Non-alignment murdabad! Well, it has now come to this. Jaswant sowed the wind; his successor is reaping the whirlwind. Yashwant Sinha is not Jaswant Singh. He is not committed to the 'Yankee Come Hither' line so assiduously pursued by his predecessor. He understands, as Jaswant did not, that the White House war on Osama bin Laden is not our war on Pakistani terrorism. The singular achievement of the Shimla agreement was that it kept the world out and set the stage for India and Pakistan to get together bilaterally to sort out their differences. That we ourselves are to blame for not taking advantage of that opening is true - but that is another matter. Now, after having invited the Americans in, even if we two do get together, Powell will be hovering above us like Banquo's ghost at Macbeth's banquet. The winner is Pakistan. It is the Pakistani line that elections in Jammu and Kashmir under India aegis cannot be free and fair; that is the Powell line. It is the Pakistani line that Indian observers cannot be trusted, only international observers can; that is the Powell line. It is the Pakistani line that there is an unresolved dispute in Jammu and Kashmir which needs to be resolved; that is the Powell line. It is the Pakistani line that talks must begin here and now; that, again, is the Powell line. It is the Pakistani line that US good offices are needed to keep the peace; that is the Powell line. True, it is Pervez Musharraf's line that infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir has stopped; and George W. Bush's line is that it has not quite. Yet, the joint Busharraf line is, ' But of course infiltration has come down.' In all this, the Jaswant Singh line lies quite buried. At the ministry of external affairs, Yashwant Sinha has made a good beginning after the disastrous Jaswant Singh years. In the finance ministry, Jaswant Singh has made a good beginning after the disastrous Yashwant Sinha years. If only the prime minister had not succumbed to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pressure and put Jaswant in finance, as he wanted to, and possibly Yashwant in the foreign office, perhaps this double disaster - domestic and international - would not have overtaken our unfortunate land quite as comprehensively as it has now.