Bharat Rakshak

[jagan to the rescue] nice one mr J - I am quite pleased to hear that the urban legend wasn't entirely fictitous! btw - what happened to Sikand, the gnat pilot who surrendered? (tringg tringg!!) [redlines] i don't think that the pak redlines will be crossed unless there is a serious land assault in ...

Discussions on this theme (off BR) has led to a request from someone connected to this article [chushul/13 kumaon] - will BR start to properly document all historic victories by Indian armies through history. there are many that are forgotten a la chushul. We should also start a movement to start na...

surely its time to put a GPS based auto-nav/pilot into the old airframes in storage (esp, gnats/ajeets if any left) and stick an RWR in the nose and send them on one way auto flights towards known radar stations... and not forgetting the special homing into source of radar signal function on the aut...

i vaguely recall an urban legend about a valiant sikh pilot flying his crippled hunter into a pakistani radar station in a kamikaze martyrdom operation... any truth to the story? or anywhere remotely close to it? perhaps it was in a movie - and we all know what movies do to the truth?! on a more ser...

Leonard - oily haired gentleman was Pakistani... a very good hypothesis, I had assumed he was a maoist, but even desi maosists have some deshbhakti - so actually the possibility of pakistani involvement is high wignall's account of PLA interrogation techniques is quite interesting - mock executions...

don't forget that the Jaguar was an anglo french programme and that all aircraft programmes have one (in this case two) prime contractor(s) and hundreds of tier one contractors and thousands of component suppliers. many of the suppliers would have been of necessity French in origin (or indeed Americ...

Raj Singh - Could it be, the perception India being a hegemon may have been reinforced by Goa/Sikkim/break up of Pakistan (creation of Bangladesh)? these are the types of situations that are often used to justify the claims. the bangladesh situation in particular was proof positive as far as the re...

Nitin - I wish it was just the revisionist lackeys we could be worried about.IMHO,its not.We should be wary of any linkage /usage and perpetuation of the hegemon myth as it allows the proliferators and destabilisers to make merry;namely China and perhaps Uncle Sam who still has Cold War warriors ru...

nitin - my previous post missed your response by seconds so does not include your observations! i think you have summarised the situation well. western and chinese writers are always happy to denigrate india and therefore must be resisted as the running dog lackeys of the revisionist cliques that th...

I say again - China is the long term strategic threat for india, not to be over or under estimated, but to be dealt with. [its only the journalists who keep our focus on our 'tactical' problem in pakistan]. the 62 war was a rational outcome of one dimension of that threat/conflict - from a chinese p...

R Nathan : Daulat, something about u makes my Troll alarm go off. not entirely sure what you mean by that, :) but - my point is pretty simple: India is a regional power with aspirations for great power status. our smaller neighbours accept that more or less. two of our neighbours do not. one will d...

Nitin - we seem to unintentionally cross swords on more than one thread! :) I don't disagree with your perspective, what I am saying is... 1. so what if india is a hegemon, we should be! 2. so what if we were aggressive to china, we should have been (but more prepared first!) 3. so what if we are vo...

a lot of readers on this thread are mightily perturbed about anyone claiming that India might have brought the 62 war on its own head. i too used to feel the same way... however, lets be practical, from the chinese perspective that is how they see things, we have to recognise that and understand wha...

Daulat, I havent read 'Protracted Conflict'. If its something you recommend do please do put up the author or editor. Protracted Contest, Sino-Indian rivalry in the twentieth century; john w garver; univ. of washington press, 2001, ISBN 0-295-98074-5 i found it to be a very good read, somewhat acad...

Johann - the text you quote sounds very similar to the synopsis in 'Protracted Conflict', the summary is that the IA's response at Nathu La was felt to be highly effective and demolished the PLA attack. This was later repeated in Chorbat La (Sikkim) if I remember correctly Khampa rebellion - again '...

Daulet The 65 war ended because there was a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire. it was in no way hastened by any chinese involvement anywhere. ""The IA senior leadership were not all incompetent - Gen. Thimayya was apparently very active in preparing "" While you are correct ...

The war in '62 was inevitable given the overall strategic positioning of India and China. The Chinese saw their position as fully justified and India as the aggressor, and felt they did the right thing - ofcourse this is all assuming that their version of 'traditional boundaries of Tibet' is accepta...