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An authority on political equations
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Prof. McHenry is known for his expertise in political affairs in African and South Asian countries. He talks at length on his pet subject, federalism, to J. Ajith Kumar.
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Indians have given more to America than America has given to India. The U.S. is tapping India's rich resources and potential for its own benefit. India is helping America's economy by lending its highly qualified professionals, especially from the IT sector,'' observes Dean E. McHenry Jr., Professor, Department of Politics and Policy, at the Claremont Graduate University, of California in the U.S.
Pakistan, as a nation, did not mean anything much to the U.S. In the long run, the U.S. would increasingly recognise the significance of India. However, most Americans were simply disinterested or blissfully ignorant of the political developments in the rest of the world, said Prof. McHenry, who was in town recently to deliver a lecture at the Department of Political Science of the University of Kerala.
His association with India began way back in 1954, on his very first visit to the country, with his father McHenry Senior, who too was a professor in Political Science and also the Founder Chancellor of the University of California at Santacruz. Since then, he has travelled to India off and on and has become an expert on Indian politics and polity.
Educated in some of the best institutions in his country, Prof. McHenry has had varied experience in teaching, research and educational administration in several American, Australian and African universities.
A widely travelled man, Prof. McHenry is known for his expertise in the political affairs in several African countries as well as in South Asia. Particularly interested in analysing the demand for political separatism, he has completed several research projects in the field of federalism, political separatism and the demand for new States. And this extends to his interest in national as well as State politics in India.
According to Prof. McHenry, coalition politics in India at the national level, is still in some sort of a fluid state. "In Kerala, it took years for such a system to take deep roots. Coalition politics has given the constituent parties more of a bargaining power as is evident in the case of Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh, who has been making the best use of the system for the greater interests of his State,'' he said. Most of the European Governments were run under a coalition set-up and there was nothing wrong in such a system if it worked effectively.
Critical of what he terms arrogance on the part of America and its self-assumed role of `world policeman', Prof. McHenry maintains that the presumption of omniscience and superiority was appalling and substantiates his argument by pointing out that the U.S. State Department had recently `advised' India to settle the Gujarat issue peacefully.
"America has not experienced terrorism to the extent that India has," he says, referring to the Kashmir issue. "Of course, September 11 has made a great difference. Even that incident can be described as the price the U.S. had to pay for decades of American arrogance,'' he adds.
The concept of federalism has been Prof. McHenry's pet subject. "To be embedded in federalism is a challenge to arrogance and such a challenge is beneficial to both politics and political science'', he argues.
Indian States have made use of the federal form to assume, over the years, greater and greater authority relative to that of the Centre. Although there are many causes, it is, in part a recognition of the fact that the Centre's assumption that its knowledge as well as importance is vastly greater than that of the States, is an arrogant one.
``Globalisation works both ways.
However, certain elements of globalisation undermine the values respected in India. '', he says. Prof.
McHenry was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Kerala in 1994. He returned recently as a Visiting Scholar at the Southern Regional Centre of the Indian Council of Social Science Research in Hyderabad.
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
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Thiruvananthapuram
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