Why a President Bobby Jindal would be dangerous to India

In the wake of Barack Obama's victory on November 4, the Republican party was in a soul searching mode, looking for ways to win back both the Congress and the White House they lost to Democrats. All that is needed was for a GOP's own Obama - someone young and fresh and not a Washington insider (Obama spent two years in the US Senate before running for the White House). It did not take the Republicans long to find one in Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Governor.

The prospect of Jindal running for President in 2012 is stirring the battered Republican base, not to mention the Indian diaspora living and working in America, and across the globe. Many among the community believe that an American President of Indian origin would be beneficial to a country already battered by the brazen attacks on Mumbai last week.

With all due respect, I beg to differ. I believe that a President Jindal would be a disaster for India for several reasons.

First and foremost, it is his religion that would cause great concern for an Indian, not that I'm saying that there's something wrong with being a Christian. Rather the brand of Christianity that he practices could raise eyebrows among any sane minds. His unequivocal support for teaching creationism is one. Abortion is another issue in which he has shown a strain of infamous right wing Republicans. All this while still supporting a war on a nation inflicted with pain and suffering for the better part of two decades. This is what Friedrich Nietzsche would call a slave morality complex.

In his work Daybreak: Reflections on Moral Prejudices, Nietzsche proposed that Christianity presents itself as slaves, exhibiting and promoting values such as charity, piety, meekness, restrain and subservience to overrun their masters (i.e., the Romans of the biblical times), thus gaining power and promoting the above mentioned values to the broader society. The problem with Christianity, according to Nietzsche, is that it preaches the above values yet at the same time, condemning and punishing others for pursuing their free will.

In that respect, the Republicans in general and Bobby Jindal specifically with regards to this discussion, the latter worked hard to pass legislation that has consistently persecuted individuals for exercising their individual rights rather than the beliefs of certain groups (or rather, the Evangelicals, in particular). For give me for saying so, but did not the forefathers of the United States of America promoted the separation of Church and State as a concept for a new nation, where individuals are free from the rigorous persecution by the Church?

Yet, the Republicans since Richard Nixon has consistently persecuted individuals for the asserting their rights as enshrined in the constitution of the US.

Indian-Americans, and their fellow Indians from across the globe should beware of such a man as Jindal, for, in his eagerness to attain political power, he would not hesitate to please the right-wing elements in the US by abolishing the basic human rights of those who does not share his Christian values.

As with Bush, a President Jindal would pursue with zeal, a faith based foreign policies, such as the misguided War on Terror against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and their allies around the globe. Another example would be Bush's delusion in which he proclaims that God has spoken to him, instructing him to create a Palestinian state for the Palestine living under the brutal occupation of the Israeli regime, Bobby Jindal would no doubt will implement such policy in the name of God. He would not hesitate to preach Christianity to India's Hindu majority, through any means necessary. Such controversial move would inflame the right wing elements in the Hindu community to act against any perceived threat to their cultural and religious existence (what those responses would be, I do not dare to speculate).

At a time when the Hindus in India should remove the shackles of discrimination that binds minorities in the country to poverty - which promotes hatred towards the Hindu majority that is being exploited by Al-Qaeda and its Pakistani allies for their own means - the election of Bobby Jindal to the most powerful office in the world would prevent such reforms India desperately needs in an era where non-state terrorism presents the greatest threat to its existence.

In essence, such a man would bring the downfall of India, which I am sure the Indian Americans would not want to be responsible for.