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In fact I went to a college in Kolkata, India, run by Catholics from Belgium. My high school was run by Methodists, and in my final year a pastor from Georgia took over as the new principal.
I told the American that despite the resurgent bigotry among Hindu fundamentalists, Hindus are supposed to believe in universality. My acquaintance, a white-collar worker in a midwestern town, said he had been taught to see the world in black and white.
There is nothing wrong with him. It is just that few Americans know much about the world outside, despite the United States' presence in nearly every corner of the globe.
He wouldn't have known that the U.S. Consul General in Kolkata tries to talk in the local Bengali language as much as circumstances and vocabulary permit. Or that he has taken care to restore historical monuments in a state ruled by a leftist government with a long anti-U.S. tradition.
The United States is sprucing up and restoring the history of nations where it lies in ruins, or where natural calamities have wreaked havoc and local funds are not available for repairs -- even though the necessary funds are pittances compared to those spent on defense and wars.
Nevertheless, despite India's opening up in recent years, U.S. investments still trigger debate in the country. At the same time, the brightest brains dream of a teaching assistantship in a U.S. university.
The United States has been the chief architect of major international laws and organizations since World War II. But U.S. presidents in recent years have undermined a number of multilateral agreements, such as those on climate change and the international criminal court.
Also, U.S. unilateralism in the invasion of Iraq has squandered away the sympathy the country earned when it was hit by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
U.S. society squarely blames an individual for his misery rather than any outside force. But does that explain why not all Americans have healthcare or why third world poverty still persists in some forsaken towns in the mainland United States, where in recent years the rich have grown richer and the poor poorer?
Many Americans may not know that poor farmers have been ruined in weaker nations due to the forced lifting of trade barriers to subsidize U.S. farmers.
Americans surely didn't bargain for the kind of seething anger and mistrust they face in most parts of the world. They have believed they are exporting democracy, and that it would benefit the people in places it has been denied. They never deserved to be so disliked in worlds they know so little about.
U.S. diplomacy has labored under the weight of the country's defense expenditures, which are many times higher than those of the next most powerful nations combined.
Americans have nobody else to blame but President George W. Bush for the groundswell of anti-Americanism around the world. They deserve a better president, who can represent the future and restore U.S. dignity in the eyes of the world.
The idea of change resonates with the American people, who have faced an absence of strong role models comparable to John F. Kennedy or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They have suffered through Watergate, Iran-gate, Monica-gate and now, Iraq-gate. Tired of politicians spouting the same jargon, they would like a leader who can think out of the box after listening to them, and not doggedly pursue policies crafted from mere hype or to prove a point.
My chance acquaintance on the Internet may have known that little Asias, Arabias and Africas dot the United States, and that people from all these areas practice their cultures and religions in the greatest free space on Earth. But perhaps he didn't realize that more and more Americans in future generations will have a father, mother or grandparent from one of these regions -- and they will be as American as anybody else. This will impact future U.S. foreign policy in these regions.
Along with the American people, many outside the United States are hopeful that the new leader of the world's only superpower will be someone who, though not in their world, is of it. Barrack Obama, son of a Kenyan father and American mother, partly raised in Indonesia, yet schooled at Columbia and Harvard Universities, represents the inclusive aspect of the United States that has made it the place so many dream of going to.
If he wins the presidency, the people of the world can expect that Obama will at least be sensitive to regional peculiarities and sensibilities in his foreign policy dealings. They can surely expect a change.
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(Susenjit Guha is a freelance writer living in Kolkata, India. He can be contacted at sguha60@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Susenjit Guha.)
