[ Timesofindia.com, SUNDAY, JULY 21, 2002 AMERICA CALLING, by Nikhat Kazmi]
India. Ah! Bombay Dreams…Bollywood…Lagaan… A.R. Rahman. Pakistan. Yeah! Musharraf aka Busharraf aka our man in Islamabad. This is the stock response you get from the average American when he learns you are from India.
While Broadway already bears posters of Bombay Dreams, the All American Indophile tells you he liked Lagaan but wants to know why there were so many songs, so much cricket in the Oscar nominee.
As for Pakistan, it’s easy to place, post-September 11 since the media catapulted it as the frontline state in America’s war against terror. But that’s that. The average American IQ conveniently transmutes the subcontinent into easy-to-digest synonyms and then blacks out.
Americans are an ignorant lot when it comes to looking beyond their nose. Beyond the Big Mac, French Fries, Oprah (Winfrey), Britney (Spears) and Arnie (Schwarzennegar). And this isn’t an Un-American view.
Instead, the indictment comes straight from within — a core finding of the National Commission on Asia in the Schools which published its finding recently.
“Our nation faces an international crisis….Yet, vast numbers of US citizens — particularly young Americans — remain dangerously uninformed about international matters,” indicts the report.
“They lack even the rudimentary knowledge of world affairs and cultures beyond our borders that is necessary to lead America in today’s global environment,” the survey reports. The lacuna is particularly glaring in the case of Asia, it says.
Some embarrassing truths after a general knowledge survey comprising 16 questions:
• More than 80 per cent of Americans did not know that India, with a population that is four times greater than that of the US, is the world’s largest democracy.
• Almost 30 per cent could not name the ocean that separates North America from Asia.
• Nearly 70 per cent did not know who Mao Zedong was.
• Despite the painful legacy of the US military involvement in Vietnam, half the adults and two-thirds of the students incorrectly identified Vietnam as an island. Some respondents even thought Vietnam wasn’t a country; just a war.
Tracing the origin of this ‘ignorance’ to the American school system, Vivien Stewart, vice president, education, Asia Society, tells you that teachers devote less than five per cent of the overall class time to Asian content in American schools.
Moreover, the textbooks are brimming over with deficiencies when it comes to Asian content. By and large, Asian cultures are portrayed as universally exotic or impoverished and frozen in time until European contact.
For example, in a high school textbook’s unit on South Asia, the short write-up on India states: “India is the largest country in South Asia. The British ruled much of the region until 1947.”
Needless to say, a reference that seems to say there isn’t any Indian history before the Raj.
Post-September 11, America is awash with the need to know Asia and it’s multi-hued drama. Officials in the South Asia office of the US State Department insist that America’s war on terror will not be complete unless all the Tora-Boraesque hide-outs in Asia are smoked out.
“We have realised that our political and economic interests lie in Central and South Asia,” proffers a spokesperson, even as he insists that “it is lazy thinking to look for a tilt in America’s relationship with India and Pakistan. We have independent interests with both.”
Richard Boucher, secretary of state for foreign affairs, envisages a three-pronged role for America in Asia: securing borders, building stable democracies and protecting human rights.
But America also realises that the flip side of the terror war must be a desire to build bridges and connect with nations that have begun to view the superpower with distrust and suspicion. Yo Yo Ma, noted cellist, tells you that America can no longer afford NOT to know Asia.
“We have to undertake all kinds of steps — political, economic, artistic — to ensure that the six degrees of separation between us is reduced to two degrees,” he says.
Statistics from the survey too articulate a similar desire.
Almost 82 per cent adults and 74 per cent students felt there is a connection between Asia and America’s future while 70 per cent students and 90 per cent adults felt it was expedient to study Asia — language, literature, art, music, history and politics — in school.
It is specifically for this purpose that American schools and colleges are planning to majorly introduce Asia in their syllabi and to increase the flow of students to and from Asian countries.
“We have realized that investing in foreign student exchange is an exchange in homeland security,” explains Patricia S. Harrison, assistant secretary of education and culture. Small wonder then, America today is willing to annually fund a $12 billion student exchange industry.
And why not. For not only does America’s trade with Asia more than double that with Europe, exceeding $870 billion annually, the 12 million Americans of Asian descent also constitute one of the fastest-growing and most affluent demographic groups. Welcome to Asia.
