WASHINGTON: India-US relations are headed for disappointment because they are based on high expectations and not reality, says a leading South Asia scholar.
"Indo-American relations have always been based on false expectations on both sides," Professor Ainsley Embree, who was adviser to former ambassador to India Frank Wisner, said.
Even when Enron Corporation entered India and most Americans thought this was a great breakthrough, he and other Indophiles had warned about the dangers of a complicated relationship, Embree said.
Americans initially believed Enron was a great breakthrough. But because of US businesses' lack of understanding of India, its culture and politics, the whole thing was a disaster and changed the attitudes of American investors, he said.
"Some of us had warned that Enron was likely to become very unpopular," said the author of several tracts on India.
"The other thing most Americans haven't understood fully is the reason that India joined the anti-terror war. Much of it from the (ruling) BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is because of anti-Muslim feelings," Embree, professor emeritus at Columbia University, New York, maintained.
"I am sure the BJP welcomed Americans because they saw it (the US war against terrorism) not as a war against terrorists, but as a war against Muslim terrorists seen in the light of Kashmir."
Even with all the interchange post-September 11, "both India and the US are going to be disenchanted when Indians realise our interest is in terrorism and in Iraq," according to Embree, who has travelled to India almost every year in his academic life.
He said New Delhi is still counting on the US playing a bigger role in Kashmir and pressuring Pakistan.
"I think there are going to be great difficulties as we push Pakistan and go into Iraq. It's going to create problems in Pakistan where there is tremendous hostility against President Pervez Musharraf both within the right wing and liberals."
On the other side, he contended, "the US will face the disappointment of discovering that India is interested in our support on Kashmir but not (in agreement) on Iraq. India can't become too anti-Arab.
"I think the Indo-American thing - the idea of being two great democracies -is not going to hold into next year."
Embree lived with his family in India from 1948 to 1958, and then returned to the US to take up a position at Columbia.
He will be teaching a course on South Asia this fall at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.
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