India & the United States: two responses to a nuclear threat. (Of Several Minds).

The recent crisis between India and Pakistan which, at its height, prompted the governments of the United States, England, Japan, and several other nations to urge their citizens in both countries to leave, provided an eerie glimpse into the world that a nuclear war would engender.

Here in Dehra Doon, though just a hundred miles north of Delhi and five hundred southeast of Pakistan, we felt relatively safe. Indeed, calm was so much the prevailing mood that it took me a few moments to register what my sister was so upset about when she called from the United States to urge me to grab the kids and flee. E-mails and phone calls from other siblings, my parents, and my friends reinforced the idea that perhaps we were being too complacent. A British colleague, responding to pressures from family in the United Kingdom, actually did leave.

One morning, my husband woke me with the news that even as diplomats' families and nonessential embassy staff were leaving the country in such unprecedented numbers that the airlines were hard-pressed to find them all seats, war correspondents from all over the world were pouring into Delhi and Islamabad. "Maybe," he said, "they know something we don't."

The night before, there had been a fierce windstorm and the power had already been off for ten hours. Our water supply is linked to electricity, so our rooftop tanks were soon empty and we were unable to wash either dishes or clothes. In addition to the inevitable guests in the house (three on that day), our garden was full of laborers picking the fruit from our landlord's trees. What water we had managed to store in bottles had to be shared with them. The temperature was in the high nineties and as the long, hot day dragged on, I couldn't but think in the most vivid way about what a nuclear war would be like.

India is a country ill-prepared for even the smallest divergence from the normal. A sudden storm, even though predictable and expected at this time of year, can create total chaos in a matter of minutes. A truck overturned on the "highway" coming into our town a few weeks ago and snarled traffic for days. Even now, when there is no particular problem or breakdown in services, I usually have to go to at least three pharmacies before I can get the medicines my daughter and my mother-in-law require daily.

What would become of us in a nuclear war? War, by its nature, means disruption, hardship, and strife. But a country that already exists on the verge of disorder and confusion, even now in relative peace, risks, in war, a breakdown from which it may take generations to recover. Indeed, a significant amount of the violence that occurs daily in India is a direct result of the unhealed wounds of the Partition, an event fifty years in the past but still vivid in the minds of Indians and Pakistanis, most of whom did not live through it.

Why, then, were these same Indians so calm in the face of what would surely be a national calamity the likes of which they had never seen? And why were so many Americans so frantic? I think it has to do with the characters of both nations, as far as it is possible to characterize.

Americans tend to believe, to the point of arrogance, some would say, in their capacity to shape their own lives. They have achieved astonishing things in many areas that were traditionally seen as beyond anyone but God's province: space, for one example; climate, for another. Political and economic affairs, then, even if those of other countries, were hardly viewed as beyond their scope. The events of September 11 made clear, in a few shattering hours, just how illusory that control really is, and Americans could not but be shaken by the realization that, in fact, not everything can be managed. The overreaction to the tensions between Pakistan and India was perhaps to be expected, then, but it was no less embarrassing to watch.

Striking was the contrast: India's sphinx-like calmness in the face of a nuclear threat so serious that Washington was moved to evacuate its personnel. The fatalism for which India is known ("whatever will be, will be") was everywhere on display, and it was no easier to swallow than America's fluttering panic. India's grip on even mundane background realities (electricity, water supply, traffic) is tenuous. People here are accustomed to a great deal of personal insecurity on a day-to-day level. To just get through the basic chores of life it is necessary not to see things as they are, as to do otherwise would invite collapse. So the nuclear threat is largely ignored. Of course, there are those who take the threat seriously: there were protests in all major cities, and the inevitable hoarding of essential supplies. But by and large, we all agree not to think too much about it.

Both approaches reveal an essential immaturity of vision, but each one has real strengths, and the two nations would do well to study and learn from each other: America must understand that there are limits to power and that not everything in the world can be controlled; India must accept that destiny is not written in stone by some remote god, but that it is largely in our hands to shape.