When the Outsourcing nation meets the exceptional nation

The two countries that regularly score well over others in terms of positive attitude towards Uncle Sam are Israel and India. Yet the popular American attitude towards Israel and India has been of very contrasting nature indeed. To the average American the land of Israel represents the holy land of milk and honey and the people of Israel represents as “God’s chosen people”. A majority of Americans continue to believe that the second return of Jesus will take place and Israel is the necessary catalyst to it. No American politician can afford to anger the very powerful groups promoting Israeli positions in America and America must risk her own reputation, moral and enmity of the rest of the World in order to shield Israel from the retributions of the rest of the World.

Now let us contrast the attitude of Uncle Sam towards Israel and to that of India. Indian corporations are regularly accused of violating US visa procedures though there may be some justifications to it, Indians are seen as “job-thieves” in the eyes of the average American, Indian leaders and policy makers are regularly slapped with paternalistic advises on how to run affairs in India by American policy makers whereas those very same American policy makers must listen to everything that rulers from Israel offers to them in terms of edicts and dictates.

The question remains what exactly the Israelis do right and what exactly the Indian communities are not doing right. Having a look at the number of political thinkers from Jewish background in the US and comparing them to the number of political and strategic thinkers from Indian background in the US will be enough. The main issue is that thinkers from Jewish background regularly think and present their agendas to the American scene. They can do the same since they have an agenda, a plan, a worldview as well as the conviction to convince others about the righteousness of their cause. And they are regularly able to convince others about the righteousness of their causes thanks to their successes in American context. The American neo-conservative thinkers are a prominent example of the same. Mostly from Jewish backgrounds these people did the ideological groundwork for much of the foreign policy objectives of the Bush administration including the now infamous war in Iraq.

It is true that the Indian communities also have achieved a high level of material success in America but these successes have stayed mostly within the realm of material and business fields. There have been very few Indian Americans who are willing to come out with a unique worldview as well as a plan of action that will set the agenda America in terms of American foreign policy or wider social policies. Fareed Zakaria may be an exception in this regard but exception only proves the normal. Also compared to prominent Jewish thinkers like Norman Podhoretz, Henry Kissinger, Richard Pearl, and Daniel Pipes and so on the contribution to the course of thinking behind US policy making, the Indian American contributions come up way short.

In the end, the major difference between the Jewish communities in America (and elsewhere) and their Indian counterparts ultimately is that the Jewish communities are not happy with only material success but they have got their own unique agenda as well as a vision and they have turned out to be the ones who have made their vision largely America’s vision, too. The Indian communities at this point of history seem to be too much bothered about their personal material pursuits and are unwilling or unable to present a clear-cut vision and Worldview in America. The Jewish communities think and make America think on their terms whereas Indian communities simply care about their material pursuits.


As a consequence, many prominent Americans campaign for the release of someone like Jonathan Pollard who is serving Jail terms for stealing America’s secrets and selling them to Israel whereas there are very few influential voices present in the United States who can cry out in favor of the Indian companies whenever they are accused of either “job-stealing” or immigration procedural violations.