The News International, Pakistan
Only in America Friday, November 07, 2008 By Aakar Patel The world applauds America, but cannot emulate it. Before Wednesday, each of the 43 American presidents was Protestant, white and male, except one. Kennedy (elected 1960 and murdered 1963) was Catholic. It would be easy to see its 44th president, a black man with a Muslim name--Barack is the root of Mubarak--as an exception. But it would be wrong.
Barack Obama represents an American population that is in alignment with its great Constitution, the most important document in the world. One that represents the best values of the human race. The American Constitution took force in 1787. In 221 years, it has had only 27 amendments. Some of these amendments are the most significant additions to law in history, including the right to freedom of religion, the right to a speedy trial and the right against self-incrimination.
India's Constitution was adapted in 1950. It already has 94 amendments. America's First Amendment bans Congress from making any law that prohibits the exercise of free speech. India's First Amendment of 1951 does exactly the opposite: it empowers Parliament to make laws that prohibit free speech for any number of reasons. After his silly war with China, Nehru bludgeoned the right to free speech further with an additional amendment in 1963 aimed at protecting the "sovereignty and integrity of India." Pakistan, of course didn't, just need to amend its Constitution: it had to replace the whole thing. Many times.
Twelve American presidents were slave-owners, including Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the other far-seeing American document: the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln, the man from Obama's state Illinois, freed the slaves in 1865. This act, Lincoln said, also freed the white man--of his prejudice, his hatred and his racism. But America had a while to go before that happened.
During Kennedy's era, when Obama was a baby, the United States was in the middle of a civil rights movement aimed at trying to integrate a country divided by law and by culture. American cities had separate schools and restaurants and public places for blacks. Whites had reserved seats even on buses and marriage was not allowed between the two races. Blacks under Martin Luther King agitated with courage in the 1960s against this discrimination, but so did whites, without whom the laws would not have changed easily. White judges in the bigoted South enforced the Supreme Court's decision striking down segregation, with great courage.
Obama received 52 percent of the popular vote on Tuesday. Blacks are only 13 percent of America's population. The majority of Obama's supporters are white. He won states that have over 90 percent white populations and he won states like Virginia, heart of the old slave-owning culture.
Mayawati, India's own great leader of the downtrodden, is an Untouchable who is the chief minister of India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh. She rules a coalition of Dalits and Brahmins. But Mayawati's votaries are those of her community; Brahmins are allied with her in UP only as a means to secure power. No other country can produce a figure like Obama.
White Europe adores Obama. But Europeans have the vicarious satisfaction of applauding a black man's success in another white man's country.
Barack Obama's victory is our victory, the triumph of the human race. All of us can share it, all of us can exult in it. But only Americans own it; only Americans can actually understand it.
They have lifted the son of slaves to the most powerful position on earth. Do you think this is possible in India or Pakistan? Really? Can you imagine your servant's son as your prime minister?
The writer is a former editor who lives in Bombay.
Email: aakar.patel at gmail.com
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges