04 February,2011 06:39 AM IST | | Arindam Chaudhuri
In the past, America has supported dictatorship and authoritarian rule in strategic countries to meet its own selfish motives. India lost a huge amount of goodwill in the Arab and the Muslim world, by refusing to condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan exploited this situation brilliantly.
Now, the pendulum is swinging the other way and India is taking a public stance against Iran just because our new strategic partner America is pressurising us to do so. If India needs to earn brownie points in the global image race, India must openly support the process that will throw out the dictators of the Arab world ufffd sooner or later. If not, it would have lost many friends and friendships in the Arab world when new regimes inevitably take over.
To me, the uprising in Cairo is nothing short of a civil revolution. It has the potential to not only transform the political scenario of the Middle East region but also every other region wherein anarchy and dictatorship have been the mainstay! For example, China's has blocked the usage of the Chinese word for "Egypt" for its internet users.
Although India might not have gone to the extent of China, but our national mediau00a0 had been conspicuously silent over the entire issue for a good 10 days. Even now, it is not giving the kind of importance that it should be to the behemoth socio-political upheaval in progress.
On the other hand, if we were to benchmark media's ideal role, then one should look up to the Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera, which has been giving rock solid support to people's causes, inspiring Tunisians who ended Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year rule, and also going the full distance to support Egyptians. In fact, one needs to admire Al Jazeera's stand of aggressive and independent journalism.
What is important now is how Tunisia's revolution and Egypt's uprising are interpreted and implemented, within the country and outside it. All I can conclude is that the Arab world has for far too long suffered from religious extremism and dictatorship. In today's world, where every one has similar access to what's happening across the world, it's tough to have any repressive religious viewpoint or regime attempting to tie people down for too long!
This current wave of revolution will not only remove the American backed dictators, but hopefully replace religious extremism by much more moderate values of the kind that will help the Arab world to integrate in a democratic manner.
