Artist Anjolie Ela Menon, left, with her husband, Raja Menon, a retired Indian Navy officer and strategist, at theng of an exhibition of her paintings at Gallery ArtsIndia in New York. (Photo: Courtesy, Gallery ArtsIndia)

Q: Do you have any comment about the U.S. elections?

ANJOLIE ELA MENON: We were all very disappointed. We arrived here on the election day. Then the news started coming in. I was particularly devastated.

Q: Was it the international perspective that Senator John Kerry would bring that you were supporting?

AEM: No. I was just hoping that Bush would not get re-elected. It is not that I was pro-Kerry, I was anti-Bush. I don’t know anything about Kerry

Q: But your disappointment comes from (sitting in India) India-U.S. relations.

AEM: Purely on human rights. On the fact of Bush having gone into Iraq without any justification.

Q: Do you think the man on the street in India shares your perspective?

AEM: No. From what I read in the papers the man on the street is very happy.

Q: Because of outsourcing.

AEM: So I read that people are very pleased that Bush has come back. I think all liberal thinking people would be anti-Bush.

Q: In the Indian context were you anti-BJP government?

AEM: I think all artists and liberal people are deadly against religious fundamentalism. It is the scourge of the world today. I was as much anti-Hindu fundamentalism and what it is doing to our society.

Q: But how much has India changed from the time I first met you in the 1980s? I see a very different India.

AEM: The man on the street is not particularly interested in religious discord. Look at Kerala. In Kerala, three religions which have been very dominant lived perfectly peacefully. They lived in perfect harmony. When I went to Calicut I saw Muslim women going around in burqas. What any kind of fundamentalism does is to reinforce the worst in any religion. Most backward retrogressive tendencies come to the fore. Because some of my Muslim friends, Pakistani friends have had such an awful time being set aside, subjected to searches, being questioned and being made to register.

Q: You were, I believe, involved in rehabilitation work after the 2001 Gujarat riots.

AEM: The center that we started in Ahmedabad was trying to help people to receive their grants. Just for example if an illiterate person was given 200,000 rupees, they would cut out one or two zeros and give 20,000 rupees or 2,000 rupees instead. There was huge corruption.

Q: Was it specifically directed against the Muslims?

AEM: I don’t know because the center we were running was for people in Ahmedabad and not people in Godhra. They were mostly Muslims. I will give you an example of my role. Suddenly we would see newspaper reports that refugee camps are being closed down. I would try to get someone to move parliament not to get the camps closed down because a lot of these people feared if they went back to their homes they would be butchered again.

Q: Have you given up on that?

AEM: Now that there is a new government, people are getting justice.

Q: Do you have any comments on the outcome of the U.S. election?

RAJA MENON: I think too many Indians are confusing between the individual popularity of Bush and the policies of the party. I mean Indians in India. Not many of them are aware that since India exploded the nuclear weapons in 1998 India’s foreign policy has been struggling against this attempt to corral India with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and that has been primarily an initiative of the Democratic Party. When the Republicans came to power they were genuinely offering to India a way out, albeit it a very nebulous way out. Appreciating that requires a very sophisticated understanding of security and foreign policy and most Indians don’t have that.

Q: But as far as outsourcing goes it is very clear.

RM: Yes, but again outsourcing is what the Punjabis call a hauva (an exaggerated issue or concern). I don’t think (Senator John) Kerry was in a position to be able to affect that at all.

Q: To a certain extent government contracts may have been affected. In terms of his fiscal policies he is a centrist. His message was perhaps not clear. Can I interpret this to say that you favor the Republicans?

RM: Yes, I would go even further...

Q: That’s where the divide is between your wife Anjolie and you. She is very clear that it is about human rights and multilateralism.

RM: She does not understand those kinds of issues. Not many Indians do either, but I do a lot of work for instance..

Q: No, but her point was very clear. It was on human rights, multilateralism and Iraq, three things... she said she was not pro-Kerry but was anti-Bush.

RM: Everybody is unilateral when it comes to national security interests.

Q: I am not sure.

RM: What is the Monroe Doctrine? The Monroe Doctrine is unilateral. It says you leave everybody in America alone. You consult us first.

Q: But I don’t think in today’s world any administration, even Bush senior, would have gone to war without the United Nations.

RM: I am not sure. I don’t think France and Germany have demonstrated that their policies were driven by their interests in Iraq. Their policies were driven by their determination to make the world multilateralist.

Q: How do you feel about Iraq? India has never been pro-preemptive strikes.

RM: At the time when the Americans went in there the evidence at that time pointed to the distinct possibility of Saddam having WMDs. The problem at that time was that the Congress Party was uncomfortable with it. And Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not going to move...

Q: That discomfort came from genuine difference in ideology or...

RM: I think at that it was really driven by people who had been in the Congress-led government who were there during the Cold War. It was full of polemics and ideology. It was not looking at the world as it is today.