RajeshA wrote:Rudradev wrote:
It is a 400% empty threat as long as Pakistan is illegally sitting on nearly 100,000 square kilometers of our land, and we aren't able to do a goddamn thing about that. What "land" of theirs are we going to confiscate, when for 63 years we have not been able to take back even the land that is our own?
Rudradev ji,
You are comparing apples to oranges in this case, or let's say apples to apple-orange-hybrids.
Rajesh A-ji,
Not at all. You are recommending the punitive seizure of Pakistani land, to which Pakistan has legal rights under international law. I am pointing out that we are not even capable of reclaiming Indian land currently under the illegal occupation of Pakistan, to which India has legal rights under international law.
Very much the same fruit, albeit on different trees.
However, you propose confiscating the high-hanging fruit from the tree in our neighbour's yard... when we cannot even enforce our claim to the lower-hanging fruit from the tree in our own yard, to which the neighbour has been helping himself with impunity all these years. This is simply not practicable.
If we are to seize any land from Pakistan it must first be our own land that they illegally occupy... then at the very least, we will have a case under international law to back up our intent to possess that land in perpetuity.
- Apples: Compensation for damages, due to Pakistan's current state policy of terrorism
- Oranges: Historical issue in cryostasis
The political class, and I guess, the majority of the people, in India has already come to terms with living in State with a birth defect (PoK), for a number of reasons. The people are however not happy with the ongoing terrorism campaign coming from next door.
I would say this is inaccurate. If the political class and the people of India were content with the idea of POK and NA belonging to Pakistan, we wouldn't have parliamentary resolutions affirming that these are parts of India. We wouldn't maintain an expensive and difficult troop deployment in Siachen which is nowhere near the LOC. The establishment in New Delhi very well recognizes the strategic value of the parts of J&K under illegal Pakistani occupation.
No GOI has
publicly offered Pakistan a permanent settlement based on LOC=IB, and with good reason... it's against the law, against the Indian Constitution, and if any government openly took the position that they were willing to cede 97,000 sq. km. of Indian land to Pakistan in perpetuity, they would not last very long. It also flouts the Instrument of Accession, on which basis the WHOLE of J&K (as it was before October 1947) acceded to India. If we are now going to say "ok ok, you Pakis can keep 1/3 of the state" does it not undermine the legal basis for our claim on any part of the state?
Only IG in the immediate aftermath of Bangladesh liberation had amassed enough political capital to survive offering a permanent LOC=IB solution to Pakistan; and that one chance was blown by the Pakistanis themselves.
The prevailing situation is that Indian political classes have determined that reclaiming POK and NA is too potentially expensive an option to actively pursue at the moment, that our resources are best spent elsewhere at this time; and the people of India largely agree with this.
This is a far cry from either the political classes or the Indian people coming to terms with the permanent Pakistani occupation of one-third of J&K.
J&K is anything but unrelated to the current policy of Pakistani stat terrorism in India. It is anything but a historical issue in cryostasis; it is
the single most effective rallying cry for ALL Pakistani jihadi groups engaging in terrorism against India. The people and political class of India know this as well as anybody.
Land grab in Pakistan for every terror attack in India is to serve as a form of compensation/retribution/justice. It is supposed to hurt the terror perpetrators, where it hurts them the most, in the loss of H&D. It is not primarily for the sake of land itself.
Honestly, I believe the over-emphasis on H&D is often a case of us BRF-ites getting carried away with our own rhetoric.
Just because the TSPA and RAPE constantly mount soapboxes and claim H&D as a rationale for their demands, does *not* mean that a loss of H&D is actually something that could actually harm them. It isn't. We think, that because they talk about "H&D-Vech&D" all the time, it must be an important determinant of their policies and a force to reckon with in their internal political structure. It isn't.
If it were, the Pakis would never have rolled over for Armitage on 9/12/2001. They would not allow Predators to refuel in Pakistan, take off from Pakistani airbases and bomb Pakistani citizens. They would not have allowed themselves to be a condom for the United States during the Cold War. They would not be the rentier state that they have been throughout their history. No nation which is
actually concerned with its Honor and Dignity would have done these things.
H&D isn't a genuine political commodity at all, but a tool for the TSPA to brandish about for a number of other purposes (detailed below.)
Why do I say this? Because
loss of H&D has never, ever hurt the leadership of TSPA, or compromised its political power. Tikka Khan lost Bangladesh and went on to become Minister of Defense. Musharraf lost Kargil and went on to become President. No TSPA jernail has ever suffered for the loss of H&D inflicted on Pakistan by India, because the TSPA looks after its own and the RAPE collaborate willingly in this.
No, H&D is nothing more than a pretext, an excuse, a contrived fabrication that the Pakis (mainly TSPA) use for various other purposes. Such as:
1) Begging: Like Bhutto at Simla "please jee, don't force us to make a commitment on Kashmir jee, what about our H&D jee."
2) Making a case to depose inconvenient civilian leaders: like Nawaz Sharif getting blamed for Pakistan's H&D loss in Kargil when in fact it was entirely a TSPA operation.
3) More begging: Like Kiyani and co. to the US today. "See we have spent so much on your war of terror, we are doing so much for you, we have angered our own people. Let us airlift our assets out of Kunduz no. Get the Indians out of Afghanistan no. Give us F-16s no. Make the Indians negotiate on Kashmir no. It will help our H&D."
4) Conjuring up a justification to do something they wanted to do anyway: "What! The Dirty Kaffirs of India have conducted a nuclear test of five bums! Now we will conduct a nuclear test of six bums! For our H&D onlee!" (Also note "We will eat grass but we will build a nuclear bomb." That was also a use of H&D as a political pretext. The TSPA/RAPE themselves would never have to eat grass, and it didn't matter to them if the Mango Abdul had to eat grass, so H&D was used as the pretext for asking the Mango Abdul to eat grass while TSPA/RAPE developed the bums they wanted.)
Every new day, India holds on to this piece of land in Pakistan, be it even a couple of hundred square kilometers, conquered in response to a terror act in India, would be a day, when the Pakistani Army would be hauled over the coals. By the right-wing for losing a fight to the kafirs, and by the people and media for precipitating a clash leading to a loss of land.
I am deeply skeptical about this. If H&D were a genuine political commodity, a factual determinant of anything about Pakistani policy or internal politics... like the Bushido code of Imperial Japan for example... then I might believe it. But it isn't.
Loss of H&D has never, ever been used to harm or erode the power of the Pakistan army (the institution which has been chiefly responsible for all the most major losses of Pakistani "H&D" so far.) The collective resentment that will be caused across all sections of Paki society over a loss of H&D to India, IMHO far exceeds the disruptive effect of other groups within Pakistan blaming the TSPA for that H&D loss. If the SDRE Kaffirs grab land it will be a rallying point, not a source of internal dispute, for Paki society.
If India
a) Somehow manages to confiscate Pakistani land at what Indian leaders consider a reasonable cost and risk to itself... which isn't something I can imagine;
b) Somehow manages to hold this land at reasonable cost to itself;
History shows us that the last people who will be blamed for this in Pakistan are the TSPA. They cannot be judged for H&D loss... they are the judges who condemn and blame other parties for H&D loss, who cite H&D loss as a pretext for blackmailing other countries into giving them what they want. H&D is a tool in the TSPA's hands, and neither the Islamist right-wingers nor the Mango Abdul currently have anywhere near the kind of power required to wrest that tool away and use it against the TSPA itself.
Nobody will haul the TSPA over the coals. The TSPA will be the ones shouting "H&D! H&D!" as a rallying cry that will inspire the right wing Islamists, the Mango Abduls AND the Pakistani media to put aside their differences and unite against the Kaffir Yindoo who aggressively and illegally occupies their land. This will abrogate whatever fissiparous forces are currently destabilizing Pakistan, to a very large extent.
Meanwhile, we would have the whole international community breathing down our necks for illegally occupying Pakistani land in response to non-state aggression. We would give the TSPA a new excuse to seek weaponry, and the 3.5 friends (and others) a renewed excuse to supply weaponry to the TSPA.
We would receive lectures and possibly sanctions, and achieve a whole new level of equal-equal hyphenation from an international perspective ..."India claims Pakistan is in illegal occupation of Kashmir, while Pakistan claims India is in illegal occupation of Kashmir PLUS blah-blah-blah land seized by India, allegedly in response to a terrorist attack by non-state actors."
No great loss really, but on the other hand, not much use at all.
For all in India who think, there is a peace constituency in Pakistan and it needs to be strengthened, this is the way to go about it.
I humbly disagree. It seems to me that it would be the wrong way to go about it. Time and again, TSPA effectively silences any "peace constituency" in Pakistan by citing Indian aggression. Our occupation of Pakistani land would give TSPA a bonanza of fuel to feed the national paranoia about India and thereby consolidate their own position.
Do you really think the "peace constituency" will be able to convince the Mango Abdul (or any other class of Pakistanis) that the loss of land to India was actually TSPA's fault? This is not a society that has ever shown itself to be capable of honest introspection.
Never underestimate the TSPA's capacity for spin, or the gullibility of other classes of Pakis to succumb to that spin. Don't misconstrue the TSPA's degree of control over the media and Paki public opinion.
The magnitude of the TSPA's falsification of history, such as "we won the 1965 war", or "we were never involved in Kargil", is matched only by the willingness of the Paki people to swallow that spin via doublethink. The level of delusion endemic to that society is truly Orwellian in nature.
