Mandela 'N The Hood

Jailed Burmese Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kui turns sixty today.

This Asian Mandela, schooled in Delhi, rots in India's backyard and seemingly no one cares. These days, we're more interested in pipelines, even if via anarchic Bangladesh & tyrannical Burma, than in evangelizing -- & where necessary, enforcing -- the Indian values of pluralism & freedom.

Our friends tell us that Indian values will spread on the wings of cross-border commerce & the consequent mutual prosperity. To us, a prosperity built on the chains of our neighborhood people is morally bankrupt.

Afterall, when apartheid South Africa had Nelson Mandela in chains, did India -- & the world -- clamor for cross-border trade with Pretoria, or did we isolate that evil regime? Was it not global scorn & isolation that prompted the release of Nelson Mandela? Was India's firm stance there not a shining moment for our diplomacy?

Regrettably, in modern India, we've swung much too far from morality to pragmatism. This is a tragedy.

We really need to find ways for reconciling our necessary pragmatism with our defining morality. We will likely never fully succeed in this, but if we don't even try, lest we upset, for example, our energy suppliers, we might as well run our internal combustion engines on the blood of their victims. Conversely, if we are at all successful, we would blaze a new trail with a worthy idea for fellow democracies to emulate.