The question was posed in perfect English. There was no confusion in its intent, no malice in its delivery. And yet I could not bring myself to respond.

The Indian gentleman with whom I had been conversing on the streets of New Delhi looked at me quizzically, and opened his mouth to begin again. "So, what do Americans think of India?" he repeated, unnecessarily elevating the volume of his voice and carefully enunciating every syllable to compensate for what he perceived to be my lack of understanding.

In the back of my mind emerged a response too shameful to be articulated, but yet too truthful to be suppressed by a quickly formulated lie.

"Americans," I said, in an uncharacteristically hushed tone, "don't think of India much at all."

The bluntness of my answer was unsettling to the gentleman, though not perhaps as unsettling as it was to me. Slapped in the face by the self-righteousness of my homeland, I was forced to accept the mediocrity of U.S. concern with Indo-American affairs.

Sustained by media generated sound bytes and oversimplifications, the American intellect is starved of any real knowledge of the Indian subcontinent. Pigeonholed into a single-issue agenda, Americans are left with a portrait of the country that is both inaccurate and ill-informed. To most Americans, India is a nation embroiled in a nuclear arms race with Pakistan and an ethnic battle over the state of Kashmir. The victim of news analyses too watered down and politicized to be of any real informational use, the depth and complexity of the country's social, political and economic condition are lost to the American public at large.

Two weeks ago Indian Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee spoke before the United States Congress, signaling what the New York Times called the beginning of an historic "'tilt' towards India." Marking the potential end of an era of hostile relations dating back to the Nixon administration, the visit opened the door for what many hope will be a new epoch of closer, and more hospitable, Indo-American affairs. However, while the visit showed a willingness of behalf of Americans to welcome the Indian government onto its soil, it did not demonstrate a willingness to genuinely refocus the lens through which the country is viewed. Politicians and the press alike evaluated the success of the visit based entirely on its potential effects with regard to nuclear non-proliferation. The wealth of other areas in which Indian and American interests are at odds or intersect were ushered to the background.

Ostensibly, grounding Indo-American affairs in a nuclear calculus is intended to create an international and domestic climate that nurtures the security and well being of Indian citizens. However, the paramount position that the U.S. affords to arms control actually shields our country from having to treat seriously other issues that potentially pose as great an immediate threat to the stability of the Indian state. Rampant overpopulation, judicial corruption and abuses of child labor, among numerous other domestic ills, are pressing concerns to the Indian people and arguably should inform, if not dictate, certain American foreign policy decisions.