By Brian Greenspun

Sun, Mar 16, 2008 (2 a.m.)

“God has so ordered this world that no one can keep his goodness or badness exclusively to himself. The whole world is like the human body with its various members. Pain in one member is felt in the whole body. Rot in one part must inevitably poison the whole system.

“Man should earnestly desire the well-being of all God’s creation and pray that we may have the strength to do so. In desiring the well-being of all lies his own welfare; he who desires only his own or his community’s welfare is selfish and it can never be well with him.

“It is open to both new States (India and Pakistan) to aim at a family of independent World States, which necessarily rules out internal armies. I cannot visualize a dog-in-manger policy for India today whereby it will become a menace to world peace.

“If by India’s effort such a world federation of free and independent states is brought into being, the hope of the Kingdom of God, otherwise called Ramarajya, may legitimately be entertained.”

— M.K. Ghandhi

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, BY WAY OF INDIA — As Dorothy said when she returned to her beloved Kansas, there is no place like home.

And so I was like Dorothy, having clicked my heels aboard a nonstop Continental flight and winged my way back to the good old USA. But I brought something with me from India, having spent more than two weeks traveling throughout the country on a study tour with the Brookings Institution that has convinced me that we cannot be the great country in this new century — as we were in the last — unless we do great things with a country like India.

What came home with us, and the only thing we didn’t declare to customs, was a much deeper understanding of the subcontinent of India and the 1 billion-plus population that inhabits the largest democracy on Earth. But to understand what we learned, you have to understand Mahatma Gandhi, because he is the man who led that country — by his example — to its independence and who continues to lead it through his words and the reverent thoughts of millions and millions of people who have come after him.

When Gandhi wrote the words above, his country was just coming out from under centuries of British, Muslim and Mogul rulers who had used India for her great wealth and who, for the most part, did nothing to advance the interests of her people. With the notable exception of the British, who gave India her rule of law, her passion for democracy, her left-side driving, a bureaucracy that just won’t quit, the English language and the most generous gift of all — afternoon tea time — India’s people have been pushed and shoved by invaders for most of her life.

It was Gandhi’s policy of nonviolent civil disobedience that brought the mighty British Empire to its knees and to its ships as it sailed back to England, leaving India independent, free and struggling to cope on its own.

Gandhi’s words, talking about the partition of Pakistan, a Muslim country, and the equal status of Hindu India, show a man far wiser than most and prescient in his understanding of the interdependence of nations. Today we call it globalization, but 60 years ago it was merely a common-sense approach to how countries — as neighbors sharing borders or as neighbors sharing the same planet — have to act toward one another.

To be sure, the father of democratic India was a bit off on his timing — Pakistan and India have, at best, a very rocky relationship and a rockier road ahead of them as they struggle to understand how they must live with one another — but he was, nevertheless, remarkable in his understanding that nations are connected.

One cannot survive in the long run without making sure its neighbor comes along for the ride. Gandhi didn’t have the examples we have today, but you don’t have to look far to realize just how right he was. How about the Middle East? The United States and Mexico? And, oh yes, India and Pakistan?

It was globalization in Gandhi’s time and it is globalization today that will define a world at peace. The only question is, how much longer will it take for all of us to get there?

So, with the knowledge that things do take time and, more often than not, do not occur on our time but against some other, more worldly clock, here are a few final impressions of India looking forward.

Like China, India’s greatest days are yet to come. With well more than a billion people — people who are used to being patient, who have a drive and intelligence that mirror those of our own country 50 years ago, and people who have the added benefit of believing the purposeful words of Gandhi — there is no reason to believe that she will not succeed in driving up the quality of life and the economic well-being of hundreds of millions of her people in a few short years. As that happens, she will be an economic force to be reckoned with and a vital part of the answers that confound the planet. Think global warming.

Like her Chinese neighbor, India has infrastructure problems that could delay her emergence for decades. Unlike China, India has a democracy that is messy, corrupt, slow and likely to delay those needed changes far longer than her neighbor’s “more efficient” form of government.

But, unlike in China, the democracy and the people’s passion for it will provide the ultimate buy-in by Indians that will force that country forward. With one-third of the world’s population in those two countries, it is folly to believe we can move ahead in our own world without paying attention to them. Besides, it is really not our decision to make. India is moving with or without us.

And as she does move — she already started inexorably down that path toward middle-class greatness just a few years ago — India will need some friends at her side. If the United States is smart — and we are even though we elect leaders at times who do really stupid things — we will partner with India so that her entry into the league of modernized, 21st-century nations will not only be solid but also will be substantial and sustainable. And our future will continue to be bright as a result.

We missed an opportunity four decades ago when our foreign policy pushed India toward the Soviet Union — a mistake she readily admits when no one is listening — so we shouldn’t miss it again. Those people live Gandhi’s words and his words about globalization couldn’t be more clear.

When Tom Friedman wrote about a child in India who is hungry for an American job, he wasn’t talking about the effects of illegal immigration on low-wage jobs for people trying to better their own lives. He was talking about a much greater movement in which knowledge, intelligence and ambition determine where the world’s great flow of ideas and commerce will take place.

I have been to one of those places. It is called India. We should figure out a way to reach across the world with a hand of friendship, of assistance and partnership. For that is the way of the future.

Gandhi saw it more than 60 years ago. Certainly, we should be able to see it clearly now.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.