February 27, 2006 ☼ Foreign Affairs

Of course, when celebrated novelists worry that a country is melting into the darkness, its prospects are probably bright — The Economist

It’s not in our power to stop Arundhati Roy from ranting. It is in our power to ridicule it, and we will. The Left, the Terrorist-sympathising Activist Brigade and their Captive Press will do everything they can to minimise the extent of our outrage. Nothing the Badnews Papers say can change the fact that all over India from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private home can hardly understand why US President Bush’s visit is anything to be so disturbed about.

“We’re natural allies,” says an American official, “We should have been closer much earlier.” The feeling, by and large, is reciprocated in India, if not among the chattering classes; Arundhati Roy, a novelist, argues that to seek an alliance with America “would be like inviting a brick to drop through your windshield”. But a poll of 15 countries last year by the Pew Research Centre found that 71% of Indians had a favourable view of America, the highest proportion of all. [The Economist]

In a survey published this week in the Indian newsweekly Outlook, two-thirds of Indians “strongly” or “somewhat” regarded Mr. Bush as “a friend of India,” even as 72 percent called the United States “a bully. [NYT]

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