India's complex love affair with US

Key to deepening that relationship will be average Indians, whose notions of America may be less sophisticated than their urban counterparts represented in the Outlook survey. Many of them love American culture, but that doesn't mean they buy everything America has to sell - especially its foreign policy.

"Indians have always felt close to America on a popular level, to American films, to clothes, to music," says Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "But at the same time, many Indians see America as too domineering. It's like a wife who wishes her husband ... would give her more room to grow."

But though the Indo-US relationship may be bumpy at times, it has become strong enough to serve as a pillar for US policy in the region. Though it's the second largest Muslim country, India is largely free from the Islamist-driven unrest its rival, Pakistan, has experienced.

On Thursday morning, after weeks of violent protests against the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammad, bomb blasts killed a US diplomat and several others outside the US Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan.

Mr. Bush told reporters Thursday he would continue his travel plans to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, saying, "terrorists or killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan."

Though fundamentalist messages popular among Pakistanis fall flat in India, the country's 150 million Muslims find any partnership with America to be a frightening prospect.

"Look at what the US has done in Iraq, is it not terrorism?" asks Javed Akhtar, a liberal social activist and top Indian filmmaker in Bombay. "The problem of the world is not Muslim fundamentalism. It is American fundamentalism, and the American greed for power."

"The US needs to do some introspection, very soon," says Mr. Akhtar, whose group, Muslims for a Secular Democracy, confronts Islamic fundamentalism. "Here I am pushing an organization that fights tooth and nail with fanatics."

But when the US props up countries like Saudi Arabia and launches preemptive wars against Iraq, he says, "the US is in fact damaging our cause. They are providing the rationale and logic to the fundamentalists."

Yet Bush's signature on foreign policy - the war on terror - also strikes a strong chord with many Indians who feel that India itself should take a more forceful stand against Islamic militants, both in the troubled state of Kashmir, and increasingly on its long border with Bangladesh.

"Mr. Bush is a good friend and he fights against the Muslims," says A.K. Misra, a rickshaw driver in Delhi and an observant Hindu. "The Muslims always come here and create problems for India, and now they are giving problems to you."

"I don't think Bush is a bad man or a bully," he says. "Of course he should think of ways to protect his country."

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