shiv wrote:
...
I think as a nation we behave in a schizophrenic manner. On the one hand we howl and rant crying "we are weak. We are fcued" etc - but on the other hand we demand that India behaves like the typical cowardly bully - simply bashing someone because he is nearby and imagining that by deposing that leader all would be well. All the while we are shitting brix about China but acting as if we are great supapowa with Maldives. This is laughably hypocritical and I think the Indian govt has done exactly the right thing.
The pisko foundations of this behaviour seem to derive in large part from something Shiv has referred to in this post:
viewtopic.php?p=2258334#p2258334
Many of us armchair analysts on BRF derive from the population of "G.K." prize-winning kids of the late 20th century, whose perception of the world was in turn shaped by the "G.K." of the day:
Now if you look at the body of literature that has come from that era - it is still considered true. You will find that the world is divided up into the "advanced west" (includes Japan), the Soviet Union and its bloc, a "rising China" and third world of developing nations India, Africa etc
This is the way Indian scholars look at the world. They have never learned that India too has a place in this world - but they simply cannot place India anywhere because the "academic theories of the world" have no place for India.
"Advanced West" was the paradigm, the US was the anchor-in-chief of the global security order. All-powerful and nobody could challenge it. Everything America did was brilliant and Machiavellian and planned to their own advantage and also fearless. Opening up to China in 1972, winking at Chinese nuke proliferation in the 1980s-90s, bringing China into WTO in the 2000s, making grand proposals for a "G-2" (US/China) co-dominium to run the world in the 2010s, etc. Every word they spoke was from a position of unshakeable strength; it HAD to be. They are America.
When hints slowly begin to emerge that America is getting taken for a ride by China on just about every economic and geopolitical level, this causes immense cognitive dissonance to the "G.K." prize-winners of yore. At some point it becomes impossible to pretend that everything with Pakistan, NoKo, Indo-China Sea, balance-of-trade, the Philippines, etc. is going exactly as America planned.
So the only alternative response, then, is to elevate China as an entity even godlier than god. Recursivity at its best! If America is baap (an axiom never to be questioned) then China must be mega-mai-baap, saar! If they breathe, they breathe fire, and our soldiers across from Dokalam get singed! If they glance at you, their narrow eyes siphon all the oxygen out of your lungs and all the thoughts out of your brain! If they trade, they do so with pure gold pulled out of their rectums at will, and bleddy Indian banias will never, ever have any chance in hell of competing with them!
Note that the people most ardently pushing this line are NOT, ironically, the BRF users who are openly pro-US in their outlook. In fact some of our most devout Russophiles have taken to advocating this point of view most vociferously of all.
It is the fault of the Limca Book of Records, the Bournvita Quiz Contest, the Competition Success Review, and all the source material you had to study to master them.