The ten day “crucial period”, the long petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures, and worldwide media coverage have failed to budge the American President from the recent US stand of putting “American Interests” first. As a columnist remarked, the people have been barking up the wrong tree! The greatest misfortune for the people of the sub-continent has been their looking towards the West for sorting out problems which have in the first instance been created by the West itself! The President is leaving the shores of India with a money bag of $ 10 billion generating 50,000 jobs for his people back home. While considering Gandhi one of his heroes, President Obama has no remorse either for selling defence related equipment or being the Chief Executive of a country which has wrought mayhem in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is typically American. The height of hypocrisy! The US attitude throughout history has been to put the American interest first.

The days of Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are long past. Americans like the British have now become what Napoleon called a “Nation of Shopkeepers!” All their interventions have been for material and monetary gains. They virtually destroyed Iraq not because it was a terrorist country or had weapons of mass destruction but simply to capture the energy sources. Similarly, their intervention in Afghanistan has been to get a foothold in the Central Asian Region very rich in energy sources. Both places they have got a good beating and are now trying to extricate themselves from Afghanistan which may prove for them something worse than Vietnam. The tragedy of India is the jubilation on compromising with a colonial power in preference to its own neighbours. It is simply an exchange between the American Corporates dominated by Jews and the Indian Upper Caste Corporates.

It is an irony that the Star of David has been shaking hands with the followers of Swastika, an important Hindu symbol adopted by Hitler to emphasize his pure Aryan blood! It is a stark fact that the entire Capital and Media in USA is totally dominated by Jews to whom anything with a Muslim tag is anathema. It is unfortunate that the Indian authorities always compare their country with Pakistan and totally forget the giant next door, the Peoples Republic of China. In fact, India should have been taking China as a role model for development of infrastructure and provision of basic amenities for its teeming millions below the poverty line. Instead they are suffering from the Paki-bashing phobia which only reduces their stature all over the world. Had India decided only to invest one tenth of what they have offered to American Shopkeepers, they would have revolutionised the situation in the sub-continent. Again the Indian emphasis should have been on collaborating with USA for ameliorating the living conditions of the majority of its population especially the agriculturalists.

350 million Indians do not get even a single meal per day. 60% of Indians do not have proper toilet facilities. Bulk of the rural population does not have access to cured drinking water facilities. India may have emerged as an economic power and may be aiming to get elected to the UN Security Council to gain global political clout but it surely has failed to become a welfare state for its over 1.2 billion people. It is rather a bundle of contradictions. The corporate media had created a tremendous hype about the Obama visit. It was like some divine personality visiting India that had a magic wand to remove all the ills and turn India into a real super power and a welfare state. Unfortunately, the agenda of the visit was selling and buying only. The media debates were around his body language, reading between the lines, and giving suitable meaning to the words uttered by him. His skirting the Kashmir issue and a strong demarche to Pakistan to stop the terrorist havens sent waves of jubilation throughout the media and their expert commentators.

It was another hypocritical but a clever move. He promised to back the Indian candidature for the permanent membership of the UN Security Council but kept it tied to overall reforms of UN and India’s behaviour as a non-permanent member for next two years. Similarly, he castigated Indians for not raising the issue of Human Rights violations in Burma. In fact, he mentioned that the Indians were shying away from such issues in world fora! While advising the Indian Parliamentarians for taking up the Human Rights issue in Burma, he very conveniently forgot the massive violations being indulged in Kashmir by the Indian security forces! Of course, not forgetting what the Americans themselves have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan!

Another instance of American hypocrisy. During the joint press conference an American journalist from Washington Post asked him the first question which was about the Human Rights violations in Kashmir. This appeared to make him somewhat uncomfortable but he very diplomatically evaded a positive reply and took refuge by praising the initiative of Dr. Manmohan Singh in his attempts to sort out the issues with Pakistan. It is an irony of history that USA which has been the main supporter of Kashmiris’ right to self-determination right from 1948 is now totally washing hands from the same simply for economic reasons. Money has a higher value these days than all other finer values of morality, fair play, and justice.

Interestingly, the Kashmiri leaders appear to be satisfied simply because he mentioned that Kashmir is a dispute of long standing. Many had high hopes that the American President will intervene for accelerating the solution of Kashmir dispute. On the contrary he totally excused himself by saying that the USA cannot impose a solution from the top. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Kashmir’s movement seem to be either ignorant about the changed scenario after 9/11 or due to the typical Cat’s Paw Syndrome they are hoping against hope that some one else will pull their chestnuts out of the fire. They need to revisit their strategy and be honest in the first instance. If they want sincerely and genuinely to sort out the problems and emancipate the suffering masses, they have to do so on their own. Obama or any one else is not going to come here to sort out these problems for them. Let us hope that the busting of the “Obama Bubble” will start a serious thinking process among one and all!