ABSTRACT
Compared with other areas of the world, India, with one of the world’s largest populations, most powerful military establishments, and most dynamic economies, has been neglected by Washington1-perhaps because until the 1980s only a few thousand people of Indian origin resided in the United States.2 Until relatively recently, Indians in the United States were denied citizenship and subjected to restrictive immigration quotas and racial discrimination. As Harold Isaacs suggested, India was little more than a “scratch on our mind,” since interaction prior to the Second World War-except for missionary activity-with the entity that would become India was much less intense than that with other Asian states, such as China and Japan.3 Political and economic relations were sporadic. This lack of contact was responsible for uninformed perceptions of India and Indians formulated and transmitted by Christian missionaries that had profound and lasting implications for American foreign policy. Images of India in the United States were highly derogatory and were reinforced by school textbooks, the media, and academic writings. As a consequence, public opinion surveys have consistently documented that most Americans have misconceptions about India and Indians.4 A, 1979 academic survey, indicated that scholars continued to perceive South Asian countries as exclusively backward societies, neglecting the foreign trade and industrial economies of the region.5 The Asia Society, in a review of some 300 American textbooks, found that the presentation of India was the most negative of all Asian countries,6 while the State Department found that the American media focused on disease, death, and illiteracy more for India than for any other place.7
