Indian Interests

[ramana]

Oped In Pioneer, 14 March 2008

India owes much to Russia
Premen Addy

Russophobia is the infantile disorder Lenin believed Left-wing Communism to be. Russophobia is clearly a British brand, having found expression in the British Press almost two centuries ago in the aftermath of Waterloo and Napoleon's fall from grace. There was a subsequent waxing and waning through the 19th century. The Great Game was how Kipling described thrust and counter thrust on the outer reaches of the Tsarist and British imperial dominions. In Britain music hall songs gave the contest an inebriating edge.

The Tsar was entombed by history after World War I and the Communists took over the reins of power in Moscow. The wartime interlude of Anglo-Russian friendship was duly buried as the 20th century mutation of the Great Game unfolded. In keeping with the spirit of the age it was a less sporting affair. British-sponsored Allied intervention in Russia intensified the country's civil war and lay the country to waste. Russia survived its ordeal by fire but Anglo-Russian relations became fragile. Within a decade the affair of the 'Zinoviev Letter', a British forgery as it turned out, brought them to breaking point.

Come Hitler, and Britain and the USSR were again allies in a titanic struggle. On a visit to Moscow, Winston Churchill, one of the architects of the Allied intervention, asked Joseph Stalin whether he could forgive him. "Only God can forgive," was the former seminarian's memorable reply. With the Soviet Union disappearing into the mists and Communism an increasingly distant memory, there was initially much high-flown talk of a new era of Russian-Western co-operation. Co-operation on whose terms, pray? The sole superpower's, of course.

But Russia is too large, too rich in natural resources and human capital, too proud to bend its knees to foreign diktat. Gifted with an endurance almost beyond imagination, Russia has broken free of the yoke of the Golden Horde, defeated a Swedish king and a Prussian emperor and a succession of Ottoman sultans before vanquishing the great Napoleon himself. The demolition of Hitler's legions and the hoisting of the Soviet flag atop the Reichstag in Berlin in May 1945 was as complete a victory as the world is likely to ever see.

The recent blizzard of Russophobia in Britain may be likened to an old film much the worse for wear. President Vladimir Putin's troubles in Chechnya gave a faint glimmer of hope to his Western critics, but the iron fist of Russian statecraft soon put paid to the territory's Islamist insurgency. Russia gave notice that it was no passive morsel ready for absorption in the digestive tract of the House of Islam.

Staunch supporters of Gen Pervez Musharraf in London and Washington have attempted to earn brownie points with allegations of Russia's poor human rights record. Edward Lucas, the Economist's guru, has issued incontinent appeals for a revival of the Cold War. Wiser counsels appear to have prevailed as British businessmen head for Moscow to join the lengthening queue for a slice of Russia's $ 250 billion road-building contracts.

There seems to be a subconscious Anglo-American resentment that the old USSR had something to do with India's emergence as an independent sovereignty in word and in deed. India's freedom in 1947 came in the shadow of the Great Game. It was fondly hoped that it would join the serried ranks of the West's Third World faithful as Islamic Pakistan had done. Accepted that the West's primary target was the Soviet Union, not India, but Pakistan's atavistic ambitions included more immediately the re-conquest of the entire subcontinent for Islam and, at a further remove, possibly that of the Eurasian heartland as well.

The Pakistani tribal invasion of Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947 touched a sensitive chord in Delhi, which it clearly did not do in Washington. The US State Department's Pakistan desk officer in 1949 excoriated India's "inflexible attitude with regard to Kashmir," suggesting "national traits which in time, if not controlled, could make India Japan's successor in Asiatic imperialism. In such a circumstance a strong Muslim bloc under the leadership of Pakistan friendly to the US, might afford a desirable balance of power in South Asia".

In time Maoist China, in pursuit of an imperial restoration of Han power (a goal shared with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang) invaded Tibet as Hitler had Sudetenland, following which Sino-Indian ties slid into an abyss of deepening discord. Beijing's relationship with Moscow experienced a similar, parallel deterioration.

Beijing aligned with Islamabad as Moscow did with New Delhi. The Sino-Indian border war of 1962 foreshadowed those on the Sino-Soviet frontier in the late-1960s, a further dimension being added when China invaded Vietnam in February 1979, "to teach it a lesson as India had been taught a lesson", said Deng Xiaping. Earlier, in 1971, the Sino-American rapprochement led to both becoming Pakistan's patrons in Islamabad's war with India, stemming from the Pakistan's genocide in East Pakistan and the consequent Bengali liberation struggle.

The Sino-US accord during this conflict prompted IF Stone, doyen of American radicals, to pronounce: "The world has seen strange bedfellows before but never in a stranger and bloodier bed." But South Asia's power balance was altered permanently in India's favour, thanks to India's victory, to which the USSR made a critical strategic contribution through the Indo-Soviet Treaty of August 9, 1971.

Following the Soviet Union's dissolution, the Financial Times columnist Joe Rogaly advised India to settle the Jammu & Kashmir dispute with Pakistan (on Pakistan's terms presumably), cut the defence budget -- "after the Russians have been paid off for what they have supplied". India's relationship with Moscow had to go as "we now live in one-superpower world, and any acquiescence in bloody attempts to suppress secessionist movements will depend upon the US".

It is for India a wholly different ball park today. The India-US relationship is driven by a new, creative dynamic of which, one hopes, the India-US nuclear deal will shortly become the prime symbol. Civil societies in both countries are discovering each other's special strengths -- which bodes well for the future.

The continuing upward trajectory of the time-tested Indo-Russian partnership, born of the convergence of national interests, is equipped to reach new frontiers of endeavour and achievement.

No longer a basket case, India's economic and technological assets are increasingly appreciated abroad. It is perceived as a receptacle of hard and soft power, even if it takes longer to transmit these into a coherent diplomatic discourse.

What might have been reduced to a mewling coolie state appears at last to have come of age. For this, India owes much to Russia.

[Raju]

Kissinger's 1974 Plan for
Food Control Genocide
by Joseph Brewda

On Dec. 10, 1974, the U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger completed a classified 200-page study, "National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests." The study falsely claimed that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. national security. Adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President Gerald Ford, NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security adviser (the same post Scowcroft was to hold in the Bush administration), was put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture.

The bogus arguments that Kissinger advanced were not original. One of his major sources was the Royal Commission on Population, which King George VI had created in 1944 "to consider what measures should be taken in the national interest to influence the future trend of population." The commission found that Britain was gravely threatened by population growth in its colonies, since "a populous country has decided advantages over a sparsely-populated one for industrial production." The combined effects of increasing population and industrialization in its colonies, it warned, "might be decisive in its effects on the prestige and influence of the West," especially effecting "military strength and security."

NSSM 200 similarly concluded that the United States was threatened by population growth in the former colonial sector. It paid special attention to 13 "key countries" in which the United States had a "special political and strategic interest": India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. It claimed that population growth in those states was especially worrisome, since it would quickly increase their relative political, economic, and military strength.

For example, Nigeria: "Already the most populous country on the continent, with an estimated 55 million people in 1970, Nigeria's population by the end of this century is projected to number 135 million. This suggests a growing political and strategic role for Nigeria, at least in Africa." Or Brazil: "Brazil clearly dominated the continent demographically." The study warned of a "growing power status for Brazil in Latin America and on the world scene over the next 25 years."

Food as a weapon
There were several measures that Kissinger advocated to deal with this alleged threat, most prominently, birth control and related population-reduction programs. He also warned that "population growth rates are likely to increase appreciably before they begin to decline," even if such measures were adopted.

A second measure was curtailing food supplies to targetted states, in part to force compliance with birth control policies: "There is also some established precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion."

"Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these possibilities now," the document continued, adding, "Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?"

Kissinger also predicted a return of famines that could make exclusive reliance on birth control programs unnecessary. "Rapid population growth and lagging food production in developing countries, together with the sharp deterioration in the global food situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised serious concerns about the ability of the world to feed itself adequately over the next quarter of century and beyond," he reported.

The cause of that coming food deficit was not natural, however, but was a result of western financial policy: "Capital investments for irrigation and infrastucture and the organization requirements for continuous improvements in agricultural yields may be beyond the financial and administrative capacity of many LDCs. For some of the areas under heaviest population pressure, there is little or no prospect for foreign exchange earnings to cover constantly increasingly imports of food."

"It is questionable," Kissinger gloated, "whether aid donor countries will be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by the import projections on a long-term continuing basis." Consequently, "large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several decades—a kind the world thought had been permanently banished," was foreseeable—famine, which has indeed come to pass.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2 ... _food.html

more articles on artificial food crises here:

http://www.larouchepub.com/eirtoc/1995/eirtoc_2249.html

As if by coincidence new fungus has spread over to Pakistan and the Punjab region, considered the bread basket of Asia.

Wheat Fungus Could Cause Mass Starvation
3.12.2008 2:30 PM

By Dan Shapley

When Tropical Cyclone Gonu swept through the Arabian Sea in June 2007, there was wonderment at its size – the first recorded Category 5 hurricane in that part of the world – and concern over both loss of life and loss of oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf region.

But the larger concern may be an epidemic of world hunger, as new research shows.

That's because Cyclone Gonu blew a wheat fungus out of Africa and toward the Asian breadbasket, speeding by an estimated two years the spread of the devastating crop disease, called Ug99.

Already in Iran, the fungus may also have reached Pakistan and the Punjab region considered the Asian breadbasket.

"Scientists met this week in Syria to decide on emergency measures to track Ug99’s progress. They hope to slow its spread by spraying fungicide or even stopping farmers from planting wheat in the spores’ path," New Scientist reports. "The only real remedy will be new wheat varieties that resist Ug99, and they may not be ready for five years. The fungus has just pulled ahead in the race."

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmen ... e=47031207

[ramana]

X-Posted from Tibet thread

Nehru's tragic blind spot that almost destroyed his accomplishments.The sad fact oif the matter is that the PRC is a ruthless dictatorship,led by despotic godless rulers,devoid of humanity and looks upon its people as mere cogs in a giant piece of productive machinery.This despotic regime supports similar despots worldwide,preferring military dictatorships to the smallest hint of a democratic state.Like a giant vacuum cleaner,it is scooping up the riches of Africa and in other poor countries ruled by dictatorial regimes,so that the vast Chinese communist machine can survive in its present form.In CHina it is destroying its natural environment through grandiose mega hydel projects and it constantly looks abroad to see what it can scoop up for itself.It lives and breathes by its own despotic standards and only a people's revolution throwing out this Cold War cocktail of leaders that belong to pre-historic times .
The international community including India should boycott Chinese goods and begin a dialogue with the Tibetan leadership in India and the authentic democratic republic of Taiwan.

The problem was that JLN and cohorts thought that Commies of China were just like themelves in fighting for self determination from virtual colonization. Due to Macaulayization they thought that the Commies were also a liberation movement and did not understand that they were a revolutionary movment out to transform Chinese society just as the English Reformation, French and Russian revolutions did. One of the goals was to cut China's links to the past which include ties to Indic civilizational ideas.

One aspect of this DIE worldview is to take Western ideas as universal truths that apply to all people every where and at all times. From Indian history POV a benign China with Tibet as a buffer is the an Indian interest. Soon after Independence in 1947, India had to support PRC's territorial integrity as a colonial experience. However when the true nature of PRC's nature has revealed itself its not an Indian interest to have a belligerent PRC. And PRC will remain belligerent until it completes the transfromation that Communism as adapted by Mao is complete or is halted. There are a lot of reactions to the Maoist surge and we are seeing glimpses of it in Falun Gong and god knows what else that was suppressed earlier without the world knowing it. The turmoil of the Great Leap Forward could have been to erase China's historic past as a side effect.


Whenever aggressive rulers came to the helm in China, India and Indic civilization suffered. Indo-China and modern day ASEAN were lost to the Sinic consolidation in the 4th century AD. All the gains to Indic civilization after Ashoka were lost. Myanmar/Burma was lost to Sinic culture after the Mongols took over in 12th Century. Same with Cnetral Asia in the 9th to 11th Century. Again Tibet was lost after PRC took overin 1947. So it is Indic civlization that has suffered with the rise of assertive China. It might not be Bharat/Hindusthan/India but Indic civlization that was rolled back from these areas.

[ramana]

Pioneer, 21 March 2008

India paying for China's hubris

Kanwal Sibal

The Chinese had made themselves and most others believe that the Tibetan issue had been more or less settled on their terms. Progress, modernisation and prosperity in Tibet were supposed to have eliminated any serious resistance to Chinese rule. Their grip on the territory had become tighter with Han migration, enhanced military presence and quicker means of communications like the railway line, a show-piece of their engineering skills and political determination to fully control their periphery. Because of intolerance of any public expression of dissent, the authorities presumably depend on diverse agencies for assessment of the public mood. A people's pulse cannot always be reliably felt this way. Errors of judgement can also come from a deeply materialistic regime believing that prosperity trumps all non-material aspirations of a people.

The Chinese had, in recent years, opened up Tibet to foreign visitors and tourists, including Indian, in a show of self-confidence. Tibet had long ceased to be a real political pressure point on China in foreign policy terms. India gave up its Tibet card decades ago, even when the Chinese have played the Tibetan card against us all these years. Their claim to Arunachal Pradesh or, at a minimum, Tawang, and their occupation of more territory than they themselves have claimed in the past in Ladakh, are extensions of their own claim on Tibet as an integral part of China historically.

{He was Foreign Secy and yet does not show any sense of how and why that card was given up!}

The West has also long spurned the cause of the Tibetan people. Even when the Chinese were considered a Communist threat, the West had ignored Tibet's plight. Now that the West has manifold interests locked up in a country set to be the world's second power, it would have even less reason to actively promote the Tibetan dossier and derail existing relations. China can live with pinpricks over Tibet by odd US Congressmen, and take in their stride the increasing willingness of Western political leaders to receive the Dalai Lama officially in order to satisfy human rights lobbies at home, not to mention the publicity oriented activities of Hollywood personalities.

{Maybe they take their cue form the West? Once the West gave up GOI also gave up? The West gave up so they could play the China card in the Cold War. But what about India why did it give up the Tibet card? If a Foreign Secy cannot expalin who can? Is he implying it was political decision? Then what explains the Sunmdrongchu in 1987? When was the Tibet card really given up? }

The current events in Tibet have exposed the fiction that the Tibetans have found contentment under Chinese rule. The Han settlers in Lhasa have been attacked. Riots have engulfed other provinces with a Tibetan population. The Tibetans have an identity and a culture different from the Chinese. In a democratic polity that respects diversity and does not feel threatened by difference, regional aspirations can be accommodated without endangering central control. An authoritarian system is by definition intolerant of demands that diversity makes on governance.

{But PRC is not a democratic system. So why this surprise at what happened in Tibet? Was the MEA swallowing its own lies and led to this lack of response to the Tibet atrocities?}


There is no external threat to Tibet. India has legally accepted the Tibetan Autonomous Region as part of China. Unless India is supportive, no other power can destabilise China's rule in Tibet. India's own vulnerabilities and China's considerable capacity to create problems for it within and around it are powerful arguments against any Indian adventurism in Tibet.

China has got the rest of the world to adhere to the 'One-China' policy. While China itself makes territorial demands on others, it demands from others recognition of its own territorial indivisibility. India has once again during the current violence in Tibet underlined its support for the 'One-China' principle. India should not fish in the troubled Taiwan waters, but to go out of the way to show respect for China's territorial integrity when China shows little for India's territorial integrity, whether in its claim to Arunachal Pradesh or its unwillingness to take a position in our favour on the legality of the Jammu & Kashmir issue with Pakistan, is to give it one-sided advantage. The West can hardly support separation of Tibet when it rejects separation of Taiwan, a politically and economically sustainable democratic entity that is geo-politically much more important. Tibet for the West is an NGO issue, not a hard political one.

There is no internal threat to China's sovereignty over Tibet either. The Dalai Lama himself is against Tibetan independence, and has said so repeatedly. He seeks genuine autonomy, which the Chinese are legally committed to. The political jargon resorted to by the Chinese Prime Minister in his latest remarks shows China's unwillingness to face the reality in Tibet. To say that China is ready to have a dialogue with the Dalai Lama if he gives up his position for "Tibetan Independence" and recognises "Tibet and Taiwan as inalienable parts of China" is wilful disregard of the Dalai Lama's position on independence at one level, and a desire to humiliate him at another.

The current unrest has refuted China's propaganda about normality in Tibet, but is unlikely to materially change the long-term scenario. The Dalai Lama is right in saying that the Tibetan deer is in the grip of a tiger. China is relatively vulnerable in the run-up to the Olympics as it would not want to tarnish its image by being embroiled in a controversy over an issue of human rights and suppression of domestic dissent. The Tibetans seek to use this occasion to draw attention to their cause and mobilise sympathy for it across the world. It is doubtful whether they can sustain their protests for too long in the face of repression.

The Dalai Lama has called for an end to violence. This is consistent with his philosophy, but the moral impact of this on the Chinese leadership would not be much. The younger Tibetan generation may be more aggressive, but their capacity to support the struggle inside Tibet is very limited. The Chinese will have no qualms about quelling any serious unrest with the required use of force. Once the Olympics are over, the Chinese will have a freer hand.

The Chinese Prime Minister has spoken about the sensitivity of the Tibetan issue in the India-China relationship, praising India's position on the current uprising. This is also a subtle warning to India to put restraints on the Tibetans. The irony is that the Chinese are deliberately keeping both the border problem with India and the Tibetan issue unresolved. The two are interlinked. The landscape of Asia can change if China settles the border issue with India. Perhaps China feels it can continue to soar even with the weight of Tibet and India on its wings, but India cannot in equal measure. We will continue to pay a price for China's hubris.
-- The writer is a former Foreign Secretary

ITs amazing that all MEA personnel become wise beings who comment on affairs but do nothing to develop any capabilities whil they are in the service. There is something rotten in the way the MEA adn the foreign policy is run and kept out of bounds of common people.

Kanwal Saab is wrong. Tibet can unravel PRC to its historical boundaries and pull it down from its primacy. Its a Western controlled lizard and hence the silence on the Western part. Kissinger's China opeing was to make them pliant to Western demands.

However there is no need for Indian silence. Tibet is a national interest of India.


I have a bigger question. Was Indian establishment surprised at the timing and extent of the Tibetian rage at PRC dominaince?

Is it a coincidence that Tibet breaks out every 20 years or so (1958, 1989, and now 2008)? Might be a generatonal thing. The young ones come of age and rebel and the PRC crackdown begins. It takes two to three decades for new generation to emerge and seek their rights again.

[ramana]

Digital Library of India

India's Foreign policy JL Nehru



They did a great disservice by scanning this is tiff. Idont knwo which genius decided this for it implies that the reader is connected permanently to eh net. They should have download option.

Any way by looking at the contents JLN did go thru the whole gamut of issues confronting India and made policy speeches. Its 600 pages long book. Cant read on line. Wish it had a download feature.

[Sanjay M]

Thank goodness, Advani is helping to close the ranks around Modi by endorsing him:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/art ... 886063.cms

I am proud to see a man from such humble roots is poised to lead the New India.

I am an atheist, but I am rooting for Modi!
He's tough, he's sharp, he's spirited, and he's bold.

[ramana]

If one reads the Kanwal Sibbal artilcle it appears that MEA officialdom realizes it has to be realist but there seems to be a gap somewhere where this is not translated into developing capability. The gap is in the Financal Ministry and the political class.

The Finance Ministry alwasy shoots down budget requests and puts so many guidelines on the alloacted funds that it is a defacto cut in the budget. They do this as they need to allocate 'pork barrel projects to get the ruling party re-elected.

The political class since 2000 has done little to develop the capabilites to support the realism in the MEA. What is really wron with the political class?

Please dont give one line answers. If you can give an answer you can also develop the answer. If you cant be bothered then dont post.

[svinayak]

Hindustan Times, India
Can India Save the World?

"With America and Europe losing faith in multilateral norms, the responsibility should pass on to the new rising powers, China and India, to maintain these norms. "

[vsudhir]

LKA on how and why the INC and BJP are different

Must read, IMHO.

[ramana]

Folks I found this awesome book!

Google Books

Art of Transitional India
Its by good intro by Vinayak Purohit from Popular Prakashan 1988.

Long (1368 pages!) but very interesting. Read Chapter 3 & 4.

[Tilak]

India Today Conclave : Leadership for the 21'st Century

Must Watch "Full length " Videos :

Leadership to End Vote Bank Politics
Video {The Video feed is lost during DigVijay's address , but it is rectified .. }
Format : Asx
Duration : ~1:30 mins
Participants : Narendra Modi, Farooq Abdullah, Digvijay Singh
Moderator : Prabhu Chawla

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi claims it is his hard-pushed development agenda, and not votebank politics, that has kept him in power for seven consecutive years. On the other hand, Congress leader Digvijay Singh accuses the BJP and BSP of creating communal and caste divisions for political gains.

--------

How Does BJP's Leadership Differ From Congress?
Video
Format : Asx
Duration : ~1:30 mins
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, L.K. Advani, says the dynastic rule of the Congress has overshadowed the office of the prime minister

Modi pwns the "P-secs" again !!..

PS : Advani's Address + Q/A session also is very interesting.. especially from a Non-Congress pov..

[Arun_S]

Folks I found this awesome book!

Google Books

Art of Transitional India
Its by good intro by Vinayak Purohit from Popular Prakashan 1988.

Long (1368 pages!) but very interesting. Read Chapter 3 & 4.

Awasom it is indeed. A must read even if some pages are not available in Google preview.

[Ananth]

Tilak:

Would it be possible for you to convert it to some other format (real video/ mpg) and upload the videos to filefront or some other place? The problem is that on linux, I am not able to forward or rewind those aspx videos.

TIA.

[Tilak]

Tilak:

Would it be possible for you to convert it to some other format (real video/ mpg) and upload the videos to filefront or some other place? The problem is that on linux, I am not able to forward or rewind those aspx videos.

TIA.

Ananth :

I have replied to your post in the Linux Thread.

For Khidki-vaadis aka. Windows Users :

Install : SDP (Freeware)

>If you still need the files to be hosted.. let me know.

PS: Would be great if some jingo could upload the files to Youtube.. Or do I have to do it ?

[Stan_Savljevic]

Stealing a nation - a classical award-winning documentary on the perfidy of the US and the UK governments on Diego Garcia. Comes in six parts and is 60 minutes long. A thousand curses be upon the two wretches.

Look for South Indian names in the documentary - Leonie Rangaswamy and the lawyer, Maratoomootoo (Marudhamuthu). We need to document this. Diego Garcia is ours. It is in our sphere of influence. We need to get it back asap.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UyRiB-dWLxg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SYQP_BMy010&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GUlwo5d7KHE&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PDMeP40YLLk&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NOv7doYq84E&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-u8CeBnbgl0&feature=related

[ramana]

Zbig, in his book Grand Chessboard, page 205, written in 1997!

India's potential role needs also to be highlighted, although it
is currently a relatively passive player on the Eurasian scene. India
is contained geopolitically by the Chinese-Pakistani coalition,
while a weak Russia cannot offer it the political support once provided
by the Soviet Union. However, the survival of its democracy
is of importance in that it refutes better than volumes of academic
debate the notion that human rights and democracy are purely a
parochial Western manifestation. India proves that antidemocratic
"Asian values," propagated by spokesmen from Singapore to
China, are simply antidemocratic but not necessarily characteristic
of Asia. India's failure, by the same token, would be a blow to
the prospects for democracy and would remove from the scene a
power that contributes to greater balance on the Asian scene, especially
given China's rise to geopolitical preeminence. It follows
that a progressive engagement of India in discussions pertaining
to regional stability, especially regarding the future of Central
Asia, is becoming timely, not to mention the promotion of more directly
bilateral connections between American and Indian defense
communities.

[yvijay]

Install : SDP (Freeware)

>If you still need the files to be hosted.. let me know.

PS: Would be great if some jingo could upload the files to Youtube.. Or do I have to do it ?

Thanks for the streaming and the software link. Modiji is remarkably clear in his thoughts. Inspite of many provocations, he remains cool and answersn them lucidly and effectively. Another interesting thing is farooq abdullah, presents him like a staunch indian supporter, and alleges that it is the indian politicians that are eason for the chaos in kashmir.
And hypocrisy of digvijay singh pukes me out while defending the dynastic rule of congress.

P.S: Tilak I would upload the videos in youtube if you haven't already done that. The SDP software is really cool.

[Ananth]

P.S: Tilak I would upload the videos in youtube if you haven't already done that. The SDP software is really cool.

Neki aur pooch pooch. Do it asap and post the links here. Also upload Advani's speech.

[Prem]

India Today Conclave : Leadership for the 21'st Century

Must Watch "Full length " Videos :

Leadership to End Vote Bank Politics
Video {The Video feed is lost during DigVijay's address , but it is rectified .. }
Format : Asx
Duration : ~1:30 mins
Participants : Narendra Modi, Farooq Abdullah, Digvijay Singh
Moderator : Prabhu Chawla

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi claims it is his hard-pushed development agenda, and not votebank politics, that has kept him in power for seven consecutive years. On the other hand, Congress leader Digvijay Singh accuses the BJP and BSP of creating communal and caste divisions for political gains.


--------

How Does BJP's Leadership Differ From Congress?
Video
Format : Asx
Duration : ~1:30 mins
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, L.K. Advani, says the dynastic rule of the Congress has overshadowed the office of the prime minister

Modi pwns the "P-secs" again !!..

PS : Advani's Address + Q/A session also is very interesting.. especially from a Non-Congress pov..

Funny to note the hostility of non Dharmic followers toward Juggi Vasudev expounding Indian Spirituality.

[Tilak]

P.S: Tilak I would upload the videos in youtube if you haven't already done that. The SDP software is really cool.

Please do it.. And remember to split the files into 2 to 3 parts.. as they will be rejected(due to their size) and appropriately choose the keywords (which will make them easier to find). Also, would you be kind enough to post the links here.

Thanks..

[yvijay]

Here is the first part of the Modi video file. It contains the speeches by farooq, digvijay singh and modi about the question "how to eliminate vote bank politics". I'm posting the rapidshare link, as I have to figure out how to split the file. The long file has already been rejected by youtube due to its long size. I had done this before Tilak posted about it.

Modi's File: http://rapidshare.de/files/38921142/modi.wmv.html

Advani's File: http://rapidshare.de/files/38924926/advani.wmv.html

[ramana]

I am posting this here as it shows the broad range n Indian interests and the dangers of neglecting long range ones for temporary interests and the mistaking temporary ones for permanent ones.

The sacrifice of Tibet: Extraordinary delusions and temporary insanity

March 25, 2008


On November 18 every year, I silently salute the brave souls of C Company, 13th Kumaon Regiment, who in 1962 died practically to the last man and the last bullet defending Ladakh against the invading Chinese Army. These brave 114 inflicted heavy casualties and prevented the Chinese from overrunning Leh, much like Spartans at Thermopylae held the line against the invading Persians many moons ago.

[Where are our writers who can chronicle this glorious deed? How come there are no Indian writers of this momentous event. How come the Army itself does little to publicise this? Its like they are so caught up in self pity for the polticicians failings that they negelct their own deeds. the Army has managed to take the blame for the political defeat and converted it intot an Army failure. If the Army was defeated they never would have reacted in the 1965 or 1971 for a defeated army takes a generation to get over it.}

{Surya you need to fix this. Pronto. You are the China battles expert on BRF}


But have you ever wondered why these brave men had to sacrifice themselves? One answer seems to be that is because of the extraordinary delusions that affected a number of the dramatis personae on the Indian side: notably Jawaharlal Nehru, KM Panikkar and VK Krishna Menon.

A deadly combination of blind faith, gross megalomania, and groupthink led to the debacle in the war in1962; but its genesis lay in the unbelievable naivete that led these worthies to simply sacrifice a defenseless sister civilisation to brutal barbarians.

Furthermore, they were far more concerned about China's interests than about India's! Generations to come will scarcely believe that such criminal negligence was tolerated in the foreign policy of a major nation.

{In defence of those three they thought that by appeasing the Chinese interest they would be protecting Indian interests. India was bankrupted by the Brits and there wasnt enough money for both guns and butter. So guns were sacrificed along with appeasement to pay for butter. Turned out you can never appease a lizard for it will turn on you when it wants to. The Chinese dragon had been socially engineered into a lizard by the Communists. This is a big lesson for which the nation as a whole is paying. The bigger mistake is by those who came after them to keep pushing for a China appaesement strategy in the govt and the media. These are the people that Rajeev Srinivasan doesnt talk about. }

In a well-researched book, timed for the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of Tibet by the British, Claude Arpi, born in France but a long-term resident of India, and one of India's leading Tibet and China experts, argues that India's acquiescence to the enslavement of Tibet has had disastrous consequences. The book is Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement subtitled The Sacrifice of Tibet, published by Mittal Publications, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 241, Rs. 495, ISBN 81-7099-974-X. Unless otherwise noted, all of the quotations here are from this book.

Arpi also touches upon the difficulty scholars face with piecing together what actually happened in those momentous years leading to the extinction of Tibet and the India-China war of 1962, because the majority of the source materials are held as classified documents in the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund or the Ministry of External Affairs.

The historian is forced to depend on the sanitised Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru and the restricted Official Report of the 1962 War. If the relevant documents were made public at the very least we might learn something from them. Where is Aruna Roy, crusading champion of the people's right to know who has now accepted a sinecure under the UPA? Why are the Nehru Papers controlled by Sonia Gandhi ?

{The papers will reveal the credulity and gullibility of Nehru who was solely responsiblity for this China policy. However since the members of the family are still in ruling positions and are very insecure due to lack of any real accomplishments. These papers are kept under wraps and under family control for the benefit of these folks. How can the papers of Nehru as the Prime Minster be under private control? His private papers I agree.}


The story really begins exactly one hundred years ago, in September 1904, when the British Colonel Francis Younghusband entered Tibet and forced the hitherto insular kingdom open at the point of a gun. The Lhasa Convention of 1904, signed by the British and the Tibetans, put the seal of British overlordship over Tibet. The parallels with Commodore Perry of the US and his black ships opening up Japan are obvious. However, unlike Japan, which under the Meiji Restoration took vigorously to westernisation, Tibet continued to distance itself from the outside world, much to its later disadvantage.

Perhaps we need to look further in history, as Arpi did in his earlier book, The Fate of Tibet: When Big Insects Eat Small Insects. The Tibetans were a feared, martial and warlike race that had always, in its impregnable mountain fastnesses, held the expansionist Han Chinese at bay. However, in the 7th century CE, Buddhism came to Tibet, and they became a pacifist nation. Says Arpi: 'Tibet's conversion had another consequence on its political history: a nonviolent Tibet could no longer defend itself. It had to look outside for military support to safeguard its frontiers and for the protection of its Dharma. This help came first from the Mongol Khans and later the Manchu Emperors when they became themselves followers of the Buddha's doctrine.'

{Tibet in the 7th to 9th century was quite a warlike country and created an empire that consolidated Central Asia and even had some hold on Chinese countryside. In fact Islam moved into the consolidated lands that the Tibetians created.
The Britsh policy was an extention of Mackinder's Central Asian landmass theory and cannot be compared to Commodore Perry's expedition to Tokyo Bay as that was mercantile and the Younghusband expedition was imperialist. Hence the different outcomes between Japanese modernisation and the Tibetian regression.}


The sum and substance of China's alleged historical claim to Tibet is this: that the Mongol Khans had conquered both China and Tibet at the same time. This is patently absurd, because by the same token India should claim Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong as its own, because India and these territories were under British rule at the same time.

In fact, since the Mongol Khans and the Manchu Emperors accepted the Dalai Lama as their spiritual preceptor, it is clear that it was China that was giving tribute to Tibet, not vice versa: so Tibet could claim Han China as its vassal.

{Chinese Buddhism is an earlier version and is an amalgamation of Confucious and Buddhism. The Tibetian is Threvada Buddhism. So they are not the same. However China did pay tribute at oen stage to the Tibetian court will dig up ref and post. In other words the link was imperial and not religious.}

The Lhasa Convention was followed by the Simla Convention in 1914 that laid out the McMahon Line defining both the Indo-Tibetan border, and the division of Tibet into 'Outer Tibet' (which lies along the border with India) and 'Inner Tibet' which includes Amdo Province and part of Kham Province. It is worthwhile to note that the Chinese were not invited to discuss the McMahon line, nor was their acceptance of this line sought. Tibetans signed this treaty as an independent nation. The British government emphasised this in a note to the Chinese as late as 1943: 'Since the Chinese Revolution of 1911,... Tibet has enjoyed de facto independence.'

When India became independent, K M Panikkar wrote: 'A China [organised as a Communist regime annexing Mongol, Muslim and Tibetan areas] will be in an extremely powerful position to claim its historic role of authority over Tibet, Burma, Indo-China and Siam. The historic claims in regard to these are vague and hazy�' Yet soon thereafter Panikkar became the principal spokesperson for China's interests, even though his job was Indian Ambassador to China!

As soon as the Communists came to power, in 1950, they started asserting their claims: 'The tasks for the People's Liberation Army for 1950 are to liberate [sic] Taiwan, Hainan and Tibet.' A Scottish missionary in Tibet said the PLA officers told him that once Tibet was in their hands, they would go to India.

On October 7, 1950, Mao Tse-Tung's storm troopers invaded Tibet. But under Panikkar's influence, Nehru felt that the loss of Tibet was worth the price of liberating Asia from 'western dominance'. Panikkar said: 'I do not think there is anything wrong in the troops of Red China moving about in their own country.'

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was one of the few in the Indian government who recognised the menace from China. He wrote:
'We also have to take note of a thoroughly unscrupulous, unreliable and determined power practically at our doors� [It is clear that] we cannot be friendly with China and must think in terms of defense against a determined, calculating, unscrupulous, ruthless, unprincipled and prejudiced combination of powers, of which the Chinese will be the spearhead� [It is obvious to me that] any friendly or appeasing approaches from us would either be mistaken for weakness or would be exploited in furtherance of their ultimate aim.'

How prophetic Patel was! Unfortunately, he died soon after he wrote this. Interestingly, the very same words apply in their entirety to India's dithering over Pakistan today, 54 years later. The Pakistanis are also exploiting India's appeasement and friendliness.

But Nehru, it appears, had decided to sacrifice Tibet, partly in order to appease China, partly because of his distaste for what he considered 'imperialist treaties' (in this case the Lhasa Convention that gave enormous rights in Tibet to the British, and, as their successor, to the Indian government) and partly in order to act as mediator between China and the West over the Korean War.

Observers could see what was going to happen. The American ambassador Henderson noted: 'The UK High Commission would like to be able to argue with Indian officials that if GoI bows to Communist China's blackmail re Tibet, India will eventually be confronted with similar blackmail not only re Burma but re such areas as Assam, Bhutan, Sikkim, Kashmir, Nepal.' Absolutely correct, for this is exactly what is happening today.


{ Here is where experience triumphs over idealism in International Relations! The US ambassador could forsee what the idealist couldnt/wouldnt see. The fault was not providing for a downturn in relations after the appeasement. So it was classic negotiation between unequal powers. India keeps putting off difficult decisions till it is presented with a fait accompli}

Nehru and Panikkar simply did not see the threat from China, so enamoured were they of the great Communist Revolution there. Nehru said: 'The biggest event since the last War is the rise of Communist China'. Part of his admiration arose from his distaste for the Buddhist culture of Tibet: 'We cannot support feudal elements in Tibet, indeed we cannot interfere in Tibet'. Now doesn't that sound exactly like Xinhua propaganda, which Nehru seems to have internalised?


{Actually this neagation of Hindu and Indian ideals is due to the Marxist interpretation of Indian history. Vinayak Purohit explains this very clearly in his book "Arts of Transitional India". Its not Xinhua propoganda but internationalist/Deracinated mindspeak.}

A Canadian high commissioner had a different theory: '[Panikkar] had no illusions about the policies of the Chinese government and he had not been misled by it. He considered, however, that the future, at least in his lifetime, lay with the communists, and he therefore did his best to get on well with them by misleading Nehru'. That might be considered treason in certain circles.

{Read my comment above. It might not have required much misleading as Nehru was already deluded by the Marxist interpretation of Indian history as a class struggle. The Canadian is being kind and blaming Pannikar for Nehru's delusions. Also according the Chinese they were subjugated after India was colonised and they feel that the route to China is through India.}

Whatever the reason, we can see why Zhou-en Lai is rumored to have referred to the Indians in general and Nehru in particular as 'useful idiots'. (There is no reference to this in the Arpi book). In every discussion with Panikkar, the Chinese hosts smilingly avoided the question of settling the border, but they made sure that India acknowledged Chinese hegemony over Tibet. The Indians were thoroughly outsmarted, partly because they were willing victims dazzled by the idea of Communism.

When confronted with the question of the undefined border, Nehru said, "All these are high mountains. Nobody lives there. It is not very necessary to define these things." And in the context of whether the Chinese might invade India, here's Nehru again: "What might happen is some petty trouble in the borders and unarmed infiltration. To some extent this can be stopped by checkposts� Ultimately, however, armies do not stop communist infiltration or communist ideas� Any large expenditure on the army will starve the development of the country and social progress."

{I deduced the guns vs butter arguement and am surprised it was correct. Also dont forget the INC had a fear of Army takeover and was in process of social engineering the Army. That was what Krishna Menon's machinations of Army officers appointment and promotions were about.}

The naivete leaves the neutral observer speechless. What might be even more alarming is that there are supposedly serious Old Left analysts today, in 2004, who mouth these same inanities about not spending money on the Indian Army. Why they do not take their cue from China, with its enormous Army, is mysterious, because in all other respects they expect India to emulate China. Except that is, no nukes, no military might for India.

{Again its because the Indian Communists are internationalist inspired whereas the Chinese Communists are nationalist inspired. A lot of difference. BTW the Indian Communist inspiration comes from the London School of Economics milieu and not from Beijing as most Indian think. One has to study the history and evolution of the Indian commuist movement to understand their twists and turns.}

By not asserting India's treaty rights in Tibet, which would have helped Tibet remain as a neutral buffer zone, Nehru has hurt India very badly. For, look at what is happening today. Nepal is under relentless attack by Maoists, almost certainly supported by Chinese money. Large parts of India are infested with violent Maoists. Much of West Bengal is under the iron grip of Marxists, who clearly take orders from Beijing.

Yes it appears like that. However the redzone is Western inspired and nothing to do with PRC. The idea is to brign in evangelization after removing the previous cultural memory of the people. Beijing benefits temporarily.}

It is in this context that the so-called Panchsheel Agreement was written. Given that the Indian side had a priori decided to surrender all its rights to the Chinese, in return for vague promises of brotherhood, it is perhaps the most vacuous treaty ever signed. However, Nehru opined: "in my opinion, we have done no better thing than this since we became independent. I have no doubt about this�I think it is right for our country, for Asia and for the world."

Famous last words.

Nehru believed that the five principles which are referred to as Panchsheel were his personal, and major, contribution to world peace. Based on his impression of his stature in the world, he thought that the Panchsheel model could be used for treaties all over the world, and that it would lead to a tremendous breaking out of peace everywhere.

Nehru was sadly mistaken. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the principles themselves: they were not his invention, but were merely common-sense provisions used widely. And he had a megalomaniac idea of his own influence around the world: he did not realise that he cut a slightly comical figure. In his own mind, and in the minds of his toadies, he was the Emperor Ashoka returned, to bring about World Peace.

{This is a key point to understand that Nehru thought he was Ashoka redux. The adoption of the Ashoka lions as national emblem and the Drhama Chakra in the flag are pointers. He thought he would bring back the soft revolution that Ashoka brought about. However Ashok had gone peaceful after the conquest of Kalinga and had no challengers to his rule in Indian sub-continent. Nehru was implementing Ashoka's strategy from aweakness while the later had formulated it from strength. As to Pachsheel priniciples the Cholas had similar rules for conquered territories to ensrue peaceful integration. Again the rules applied after the conquest and not before.}

Here are the Five Principles:
1. Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty
2. Mutual non-aggression
3. Mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs
4. Equality and mutual benefit
5. Peaceful co-existence

The Chinese immediately violated every one of these principles, and have continued to do so happily. For instance, even while the treaty was being negotiated, the Chinese were building a road through Aksai Chin in Jammu and Kashmir, and in perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of this whole sorry mess, India was actually supplying rice to the Chinese troops building the road through Indian territory! This is distinctly surreal!

The problem was that Nehru had no sense of history. He should have read RC Majumdar: "There is, however, one aspect of Chinese culture that is little known outside the circle of professional historians� It is characteristic of China that if a region once acknowledged her nominal suzerainty even for a short period, she would regard it as a part of her empire for ever and would automatically revive her claim over it even after a thousand years whenever there was a chance of enforcing it."

{Its not just a Chinese trait. It was there with Romans, Persians and Islam. Western Europe implemented it in Spain as Reconquista. However India is vast and hence the absence of this priniciple is what reduced greater India to modern India even in our lifetimes. The politicians still do not articulate the concept of near abroad for India which is the SAARC region. }

And this was the 'ally' Nehru found against the 'imperialists' of the West! He went so far as to decline a seat at the UN Security Council because the China seat was held by Taiwan. He did not want India to be in the Security Council until China was there too!

{Again he was trying to reduce points of friction by appeasing the PRC and didnt want to become a Western tool. However the PRC did not have any qualms in using him for their purposes. And he paid for the mistakes by his diminished role in modern India and is said to have died heart broken when he realized his mistakes. But what about his sychopants like Notwar Singh who chant his mantras without understanding the context and the need to change a different tack? How come these charlatans/rogues are not exposed and why does the JNU still churn out tripe from their China Studies center? Wisdom must come form others mistakes.}


Since many people are curious about this, here is chapter and verse: it is in the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Series II, Vol. 29, Minutes of meeting with Soviet Leaders, Moscow , 22 June 1955, pp. 231. Here is the conversation between Nehru and Soviet Premier Marshal Bulganin:

"Bulganin: While we are discussing the general international situation and reducing tension, we propose suggesting at a later stage India's inclusion as the sixth member of the Security Council.

Nehru: Perhaps Bulganin knows that some people in USA have suggested that India should replace China in the Security Council. This is to create trouble between us and China. We are, of course, wholly opposed to it. Further, we are opposed to pushing ourselves forward to occupy certain positions because that may itself create difficulties and India might itself become a subject of controversy. If India is to be admitted to the Security Council it raises the question of the revision of the Charter of the UN. We feel that this should not be done till the question of China's admission and possibly of others is first solved. I feel that we should first concentrate on getting China admitted."

{He is trying to get PRC into the world body so it would commit to world norms. THat even happened ten years later in 1972. Its the policy of weaker power to get the larger power to commit to world norms. Unfortunately PRC commited aggression which is outlawed by UN in 1962 before it became a legitimate power.}

The casual observer might wonder whether Nehru was India's prime minister, or China's. Besides, the Chinese have now repaid all this support. India insisted that India should not be in the Security Council until China was in it, too. Now China insists that India should not be in the Security Council until Pakistan is in it, too. Seems fair, doesn't it?

What is the net result of all this for India? It is a strategic disaster. Forget the fact that the Tibetan civilisation has been decimated, and it is an Indic civilisation with practically no relationship to Han Chinese civilisation. Strictly from India's security perspective, it is an unmitigated catastrophe.

{I agree. However we need to work proactively instead of finding fault that will prevent us from doing the needful. In other words the cat has been identified now who will bell the cat?}

Analyst Ginsburg wrote in the fifties: 'He who holds Tibet dominates the Himalayan piedmont; he who dominates the Himalayan piedmont, threatens the Indian subcontinent; and he who threatens the Indian subcontinent may well have all of Southeast Asia within his reach, and all of Asia.'

{ This is not a new thing but a re-phrasing of Mackinder's description of the centrality of holding the Central Asian landmass for controlling the Euro landmass and that Brezinski is working on for USA. See his Grand Chessborad in the E-books thread.}

Look at the situation in Tibet today.

The Chinese are planning the northward diversion of the Brahmaputra, also known as the Tsangpo. This would make North India a desert
The Chinese have on several occasions used 'lake bombs' to flood Indian territory: as the upper riparian state based on their occupation of Tibet, they are able to do this, for example on the Sutlej.
Hu Jintao, who was the Butcher of Tibet, is now a top strongman in Beijing. Under his sponsorship, a railway line will be finished in 2007 linking Lhasa to eastern China. This would be an excellent mechanism for bringing in both large
numbers of Han immigrants to swamp the remaining Tibetan people, and also to deploy mobile nuclear missiles
The Chinese are deploying advanced nuclear missiles in Tibet, aimed at India, Russia and the US. With the railway line, they will be able to move these around and even conceal them quickly in tunnels and other locations
The Chinese dump large amounts of nuclear waste in Tibet, which will eventually make its way down to India via the rivers
The India-Tibet border is still not demarcated.
It is difficult to imagine a more disastrous foreign policy outcome than what happened between India and China. Claude Arpi is owed a debt of gratitude by all of us in India who care about the nation's progress and even its survival.

If the rather well-thought-of founding prime minister of the country was so uncaring about India's interests, one shudders to think what might be going on today with some of the ministers who are accused in criminal cases.

But even more than that, Arpi's detailed analysis and painstaking research on the process through which Tibet was enslaved is an instructive case study in how barbarians are always at the gates, and how, as Will Durant said, 'Civilisation is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within'.

One of the profound lessons to be taken away is that it is the lack of respect for the spiritual that has led to this cataclysm. As Ministry of External Affairs observer, Apa Pant, pointed out about Tibet and the Han Chinese colonisation: 'With all its shortcomings and discomforts, its inefficiencies and unconquered physical dangers, here was a civilisation with at least the intention of maintaining a pattern of life in which the individual could achieve liberation� The one so apparently inefficient, so human and even timid, yet kind and compassionate and aspiring to something more gloriously satisfying in human life; the other determined and effective, ruthless, power-hungry and finally intolerant... In the corridors of power [in official India], Tibet, Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, were all regarded as ridiculous, too funny for words; useless illusions that would logically cease to exist soon, thanks to the Chinese, and good riddance.'

{Please read Purohit's book to understand why this happened and is happening. How many of you cringe when the actor with the huge red tilak in Kasam Se comes on screen on ZeeTv?}

In the final analysis, Tibet was lost because those in power in India were dismissive of matters spiritual. It is the Empire of the Spirit that has made India what she has been all these millennia, and once the rulers start dismissing that, it is clear that we are in the Kali Yuga, the Dark Ages. It is the end of living, and the beginning of survival.

Thanks for reading so far.

[surinder]

Cross-posting from the US and the World Thread.




One advantage of a fresh viewpoint is that it makes us see things from a different perspective. That is why we read the travels of Chinese & Arabs in India to understand India. The traveloge of Frenchman de Tocquile (spelling?) in early US is very valuable to understand US. An outsider, quite often, can see more.

Directly or indirectly from that banned person, there are some useful things for us to ponder:

+ Why should Vajpayee & then MMS suddenly drop the fight against TSP and resort to a foolish peace process. Most BRF'ites might agree with it.

+ ABV's minister danced in TSP (Sushma). I don't know if it is true, but if true it is shameful. I think you fight your enemy till you achieve your aim fully & completely, not dance with them.

+ It does not make sense that India wants US to declare TSP a terrorist state without having done so itself.

+ We wants US to treat TSP == to Al-Kaidda, without bothering to do it ourselves.

+ Pakis are unwelcome in West and in Arab countries. India has a train & bus still running with them.

+ 60 years have gone by and we have made no serious attempt to recover PoK. Would any country have let this go so easily? Taiwan is much smaller and China's entire foreign and military policy is centered on it. Even if we lost in 1948, we should have embarked on an caimpaign to arm ourselves to get it back. We are just resigned from it.

+ India let the TSPians retreat from Kargill w/o firing a shot. That is when in full view they are laying down mines. If this is not laughable, what is. GFaulkner is right that the US military experts must have laughed their butt off.

+ During kargill, TSP was at its most isolated stage. We are told that their air-force was in shitty state. We could have done a lot more than we did. Now I was not there behind the scenes, but I feel we were in a much stronger position to have done some serious damage to TSP. All we did was recover our peaks. No retialiation except the Atlantique.

+ All this talk of Americans would have done this and that is not convincing. You take bold moves and then see what happens. I too feel that we have not been bold and brave. Victory, glory and success do not come without courage and risk. A nation that is so diffident cannot aspire for greatness.

+ 1962, we did not use Air-force because that might expand the conflict. I think you use the best of your weapons and let the chips fall.

+ Even if lost in 1962, we should gone on a massive campaign to modernize our army and mobilize & build our defense to take on China and get back Aksai Chin. I do not see any such effort.

+ In 1965 we agreed to a ceasefire and thought we had run out of ammo, while we had 85% of it left.

+ Gave back Haji Peer pass. Gave back the Kargill hights. We would be then the only country in the world which wins its own territory and then gives it back.

+ TSP is 1/7 of India, and holds Indian territory. As if that is not enough, it is demanding more.

+ India is 1/3 of China, and is scared of it. Not only is India not demanding Aksai Chin back, it is actively negotiating with China so that it own state of Arunachal stays with it (or at least the populated areas, we are told).

+ Did we not loose the conflict in Rann of Kutch? We gave land to TSP there. This of course emboldened them to start the 1965 war.

+ We handed over rivers in the Indus Water Treaty for nothing. Even Afghanistan has refused to sign water treaty with TSP.

+ When TSP was created in 1947, we just accepted the Radcliffe line. Accepted TSP as a nation. It was Afghanistan that had the courage to vote against TSP joining UN.

+ Mushy asked from troop withdrawls from Kashmir Vale a few years back. India obliged.

+ We are talking with TSP about troops in our own land of Siachen.

[SwamyG]

Good info from B.Raman @ Chennai Centre of China Studies. He again shows us the dots and connects them for us.

I just highlighted some parts. As usual there are several gems...please read carefully.


India’s Strategic Thrust in S.E.Asia –Before & After 9/11
[quote]
B.Raman, C3s paper No.134 dated March 26, 2008

(A keynote speech delivered by B.Raman on March 26,2008, at an international seminar on INDIA-SOUTHEAST ASIA: STRATEGIC CONVERGENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY organised from March 26 to 28,2008, by the CENTRE FOR SAARC STUDIES of the Andhra University, Visakhapattnam (Vizag) )

In recent years, the expression ’strategic’ to characterise relations between nations has been used somewhat widely and somewhat loosely. The characterisation ‘ strategic relationship’ has certain defining connotations. Firstly, there is a connotation in time—-strategic as against tactical,long-term as against short-term and enduring as against ephemeral.Secondly, it is a relationship based on perceptions of common interests and not on perceptions of mutual utility. Thirdly, it is a multi-dimensional relationship with many points of focus—-political, economic, mutual security, ideological affinity etc. Fourthly, a strategic relationship is a quid pro quo relationship and not one based on feelings of charity or benevolence.

2.It is often said that India has no strategic culture and that strategic thinking does not go into its policy-making. This is wrong. The decision of free India’s founding fathers to create a genuinely democratic state in India despite the constraints likely to be imposed by democracy on its economic development was itself the result of strategic thinking. The evolution of India’s domestic as well as external policies has greatly benefited from the vision and long-term thinking of its past political leadership and policy-makers—political as well as bureaucratic. India today is toasted as an emerging power, a power to be reckoned with in policy-making at present and in future. The foundations for this emergence were laid by the visions of its past policy-makers. A nation and a power without a strategic culture and thinking drifts. India has never been a drifting nation or power. It is a nation which knows where it wants to go and how to go there.

3.Since its independence in 1947, democratic India has had a succession of Prime Ministers. Some of them were in power only for a short while. Hence, their impact on policy-making was of only limited significance. There were others, who stayed in power longer, and hence, were able to make significant contributions to strategic thinking and policy-making. Through his policy of non-alignment, Jawaharlal Nehru enabled India to play an important role in the global arena despite its then limited economic and military potential. During the initial Cold War years, developing and non-aligned India played a more influential role in the world stage than a militarily and economically strong China has been able to do today. Nehru proved that a moral stature for a nation is as important as a military or an economic stature. Power projection and assertion of national interests in India’s immediate neighbourhood were the defining characteristics of the legacy of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Atal Behari Vajpayee. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh imparted new thinking to policy making and underlined the economic dimension of policy-making—whether internal or external— and gave a new geographic focus to India’s policy-makers.

4. To Narasimha Rao, who was the Prime Minister between 1991 and 1996, should go the credit for enlarging the geographic orientation of India’s external policy. He took India’s policy-makers out of the morass of South Asia where they had got stuck for some years and beckoned them to look to South-East and Central Asia as new playing fields for India of the future. He similarly took India out of the morass of its Arab-centric Look West policy and beckoned India’s policy-makers to look to Iran as a compatible power of the future. His perception that there was more in common between secular India and Shia Iran than between secular India and an increasingly Wahabised Arab world laid the foundation for his Look to Iran policy.

5. Since Narasimha Rao gave his Look East orientation to India’s external policy, its evolution has passed through three phases. During the first phase between 1992 and 1998, the new orientation was welcomed by the countries of the region, but their welcome was tinged with skepticism as to whether the new orientation would be ephemeral or enduring. Despite this understandable skepticism, there was progress in the political and security-related fields. India got increasingly associated with the ASEAN and the Asean Regional Forum (ARF). The new orientation took place at a time when Singapore, a small State, was facing increasing difficulties in finding space and facilities for the training of its Armed Forces. It was also looking for opportunities for joint exercises for its Armed Forces. They were, of course, exercising with their counterparts in the UK, the US, Australia and New Zealand, but they wanted to widen their experience in the Asian context.

6.The new orientation also took place at a time when Malaysia, under the Prime Ministership of Dr.Mahatir Miohammad, had embarked on an exercise for the diversifcation of its external sources of procurement of military equipment—particularly for its Air Force. It showed increasing interest in the procurement of Russian planes and other equipment. It wanted to tap and did tap on India’s long experience with Soviet and Russian military equipment in matters such as the reliability of the equipment, training in the use of the equipment, assistance for their maintenance etc. Boris Yeltsin’s Russia too encouraged Malaysia to look up to India for the handling and maintenance of the Russian equipment.

7. While the political and security-related dimensions of the strategic relationship thus recorded some progress during the first phase, disappointment was in store in respect of the economic dimension. The initiation of the Look East policy by Narasimha Rao coincided with the initiation of economic reforms. Well-calibrated liberalisation and globalisation became the defining charateristics of the new economic policy. India’s Look East policy created some excitement in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand more because of its likely economic benefits for South-East Asia than for any other reason.Singapore was already enjoying an infrastructure bonanza in China. Singapore and Malaysia entertained high hopes of a similar bonanza from an investor-friendly India. Thailand was looking for co-operation in the field of inland water prawn culture, which was taken up on a big scale in Tamil Nadu.

8. Their expectations were belied. Malaysia’s hopes for big orders for road and port development did not materialise. Singapore’s efforts to associate itself, along with the Tatas, with projects for the modernisation of India’s civil aviation infrastructure were rebuffed. The ambitious project for inland prawn culture was given up due to fears of its likely adverse impact on agricultural production. As a result of their disappointing experience, they concluded that India was not China and that India had miles to go before it could ever catch up with China. In their perception, whereas in China decisions at the party and Government headquarters in Beijing were implemented without reservations and foot-dragging at all subordinate levels, in India there was foot-dragging at many levels, thereby making implementation a painfully tardy process.

9. China was not a factor during this first phase. No conflict of interest between India and China in this region was in the horizon. The welcome accorded by the countries of the region to India’s Look East policy was not influenced by any negative perceptions of China in their mind. They welcomed India for its own sake and not as a possible counter to China.

10. The second phase was marked by India’’s nuclear tests of 1998 and the adverse reactions to them in the rest of the world, particularly in the US and China. The reactions from China were particularly virulent as a result of the action of Shri Vajpayee in citing India’s concerns over the Chinese nuclear capability as the reason for the tests in a secret letter addressed to the then US President Mr.Bill Clinton. The White House leaked out the contents of this letter to an American newspaper thereby creating embarrassment for Shri Vajpayee. Concerns over the Indian nuclear tests and China’s adverse reaction to them brought a pause in the developing relations between India and the major countries in South-East Asia except Singapore, which took them in its stride and did not allow them to affect its positive perception of India. Fortunately, this pause was of a short duration and was overtaken by the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US.

11. The third phase of the evolution started on 9/11. Of all the countries in Asia, barring Israel, India has the richest experience in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism. Before 9/11, the countries of the region—-even Singapore— avoided any co-operation with India in the field of counter-terrorism lest they get involved in what they saw as the India-Pakistan slanging match on this issue. They also viewed Indian evidence of the involvement of Pakistani intelligence agencies and Army in fomenting terrorism against India and regarding the presence and activities of various jihadi terrorist groups from Pakistani territory as partly motivated propaganda. India was not taken seriously on the subject of terrorism.

12. This perception changed dramatically after 9/11. As evidence started coming in to show that the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US had been planned and co-ordinated from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region by Al Qaeda and its associates, thereby corroborating what India had been saying about the role of Pakistan in fomenting jihadi terrorism, Indian evidence was treated with greater respect than before 9/11. The discovery of some sleeper cells of the pro-Al Qaeda Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in the beginning of 2002 and the Bali explosion of October,2002, further strengthened the credibility of India and its terrorism experts. After 9/11, Indian security and terrorism analysts became much valued participants in fora such as those of the Council on Security Co-operation Asia-Pacific (CSCAP) and their views and assessments were heard with attention.

13. In the field of counter-terrorism, India acquired a further value addition when evidence emerged from the interrogation of Al Qaeda terrorists arrested in different countries that Al Qaeda was planning a major act of maritime terrorism in one of the choke points in order to cause a major disruption of global trade and energy supplies. The Malacca Strait being the most important choke point in this region, its protection from possible depredations of terrorists and pirates became a subject of great priority not only for the member-countries of the ASEAN, but also for China, Japan, Australia and the US.

14. As this threat loomed large, apart from the US, India was the only country with the required naval capability to prevent it. As the US Navy was preoccupied with providing naval and logistics support to its operations in Afghanistan and subsequently in Iraq from 2003, it was not in a position to divert adequate resources for maritime security in this region. The Indian Navy and Indian experts in maritime security and maritime counter-terrorism started playing an active role in maritime security. In 2002, the Indian Navy was even requested by the US to escort the ships of the US Navy as they transited the waters of this region on their way to the Persian Gulf area from the Pacific and back. Before 9/11, India’s security related co-operation with the countries of this region was more static in the form of assistance in training, joint exercises and equipment maintenance. After 9/11, the co-operation became more active in the form of increased patrolling, co-ordinated patrolling with the navies of some countries etc.

15. The US not only nudged India into playing a more active role in maritime security in this region, but also encouraged other countries of the region to drop their reservations and concerns over an increased Indian role. For the first time since India initiated its Look East policy in the early 1990s , China started showing signs of unease over the increased activities of the Indian Navy in the waters of this region. Its unease was further aggravated by the interest evinced by the US in godfathering an active role for India. The co-ordinated operations by the navies of India, the US and Australia for providing disaster and humanitarian relief after the Tsunami strike in Indonesia and Sri Lanka in December,2004, was seen by China as possibly heralding an informal naval alliance in the making. Its concerns were further enhanced by the talk of a concert of democracies involving India, the US, Japan and Australia. The joint naval exercise by the Navies of India, the US, Japan, Singapore and Australia in September,2007, in the Bay of Bengal was another development of major concern to Beijing. It started taking seriously some articles appearing in the media in India and elsewhere about an Asian NATO in the making.

16. Beijing started strongly suspecting that the emerging Indo-US naval co-operation in the South-East Asian region and what it saw as the US-sponsored role of India in maritime security, with specific reference to maritime counter-terrorism, were actually meant to counter the growing Chinese power behind a facade of co-ooperation in counter-terrorism. India’s repeated attempts to allay these concerns have not met with success. Fortunately, till now, China has not allowed these concerns to affect its bilateral relations either with India or the US or the ASEAN countries. The ASEAN countries too have not allowed China’s concerns to affect their developing strategic relations with India.

17.The latest phase has also seen the economic dimension of the strategic relationship acquiring greater importance than in the first two phases. According to the Directorate-General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), Kolkata, India’s exports to the ASEAN countries increased from US$ 10.41 billion in 2005-06 to US$ 12.56 billion in 2006-07, a growth of 20.67 per cent. India’s imports from the ASEAN countries increased from US$ 10.88 billion in 2005-06 to US$ 18.08 billion in 2006-07, a growth of over 66 per cent. The ASEAN has a huge trade balance of about US $ six billion in its favour. The ASEAN accounted for 9.49 per cent of India’s imports and 9.95 per cent of India’s exports during 2006-07. This figure is likely to grow up further after the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and the ASEAN is finalised and implemented, hopefully later this year. The total value of the two-way trade amounted to US $ 30.64 billion , which was almost equivalent to the total value of India’s two-way trade with China. At the 6th India-ASEAN summit in Singapore in November 2007, India proposed to enhance the bilateral trade with the ASEAN countries to a target of US$ 50 billion by 2010.

18.Bilateral trade between Singapore and India grew by 31 per cent in 2006-07 to US $ 11.49 billion from US$ 8.7 billion in 2005-06. Indian firms have started looking to the Singapore Stock Exchange for fund raising and listing. The SGX became a shareholder in the Bombay Stock Exchange in March 2007. 659,000 Indian tourists visited Singapore in 2006, the fourth largest national group.Singapore was the third largest foreign investor in India in 2006-07, investing over US$ 321 million. Singapore is an increasingly valued investor in the real estate sector in South India. By June 2007, about 2,000 Indian companies had set up offices in Singapore.In 2005, India and Singapore signed a Comprehensive Economic Co-operation Agreement (CECA), an integrated package comprising a free trade agreement, a bilateral agreement on investment promotion and protection, an improved double taxation avoidance agreement and a work programme for cooperation in healthcare, education, media, tourism, customs, e-commerce, intellectual property, and science and technology.

19.Malaysia came next.The total trade with Malaysia increased 88.2 per cent from US$ 3.57 billion in 2005-06 to US$ 6.72 billion in 2006-07. The trade balance was heavily in favour of Malaysia—-with India’s imports from Malaysia amounting to US$ 5.28 billion, while exports were US$ 1.44 billion. Malaysia is stated to be among the top 10 foreign investors in India, but exact figures are not available. Indonesia was the third with a total two-way trade of US$ 6.21 billion in 2006-07, a growth of over 44 per cent from US$ 4.3 billion in 2005-06. But the investment flow from Indonesia has been insignificant.Thailand was the fourth with a total two-way trade of US $ 3.14 billion in 2006-07 as against US $ 1.22 billion in 2000-01. The investment flows have been in the reverse direction with increasing Indian investments in the gems and jewellery sector in Thailand.Vietnam was the fifth with a total trade of US$ 1.15 billion in 2006-07, an increase of 40.26 per cent over the previous year. This included Indian exports of US$ 982.5 million and imports of US$ 171.53 million.

20.Myanmar was the sixth .The total trade increased from US$ 636.66 million in 2005-06 to US $ 917.15 million in 2006-07, a growth of 44.1 per cent. India’s exports were worth US$ 139.2 million and imports US$ 777.95 million.India is Myanmar’s fourth largest trading partner after Thailand, China and Singapore. It is also Myanmar’s second largest export market after Thailand. . India is involved in several river and land-based projects in Myanmar such as the reconstruction of the Settwe port in the Arakan area, the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transport project, the Tamu-Kalewa-Kalemyo road project and the India-Myanmar gas pipeline project. In this upswing of trade and economic relations between India and the ASEAN countries during the third phase, the Philippines, Brunei, Laos and Cambodia have not figured significantly. The reasons for this are not clear.

21.More than two million tourists from India travelled to the ASEAN countries during 2006-07 in comparison to 280,000 ASEAN tourists who travelled to India. A study of the impact of terrorism on tourist traffic to South-East Asia made in November,2002, showed that while the Bali explosion of October,2002, resulted in large-scale cancellations of hotel and air bookings from the West and Australia, there were very few cancellations from India. The lesson: Indian tourists are not as nervous and panicky as their Western counterparts and , hence, are more dependable as a source of revenue.

22.. India’s relations with Myanmar are in a class apart. The underlying motive is partly to benefit from its energy resources, partly to enlist its co-operation in counter-insurgency in India’s North-East and partly not to leave the field open to China. However, despite Indian assistance to Myanmar in various fields including in respect of the sale of Myanmar’s much-needed military equipment, India’s political influence over the military junta is not comparable to that of China.One saw it in the aftermath of the widespread demonstrations by the monks and students all over Myanmar last year. The Junta was more amenable to suggestions from China to moderate its suppression and to be more sensitive to international concerns than it would have been to similar suggestionbs from India. In respect of the exploitation of the gas reserves in the Arakan area too, the Junta has been more attentive to the needs of China than of India. The political influence, which India has been able to build up in Myanmar, has not been commensurate with what it has done for the Junta.

23.More than the development of economoc and security-related ties, what is significant is the change in the mental attitude of the ASEAN countries to India. Nowhere is this change more striking than in their perceptions of the Indian educational system. In the 1970s, Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, used to get reports about the sarcastic remarks being made by Mr.Lee Kuan-Yew, the then Singapore Prime Minister, about the Indian educational system. He felt that India would never rise as a major power because of what he viewed as its poor educational system. He had even advised his Ministry of Health not to allow Indian medical graduates to work in Singapore. Today, the ASEAN countries—even Singapore— have been highly impressed by the quality of the Indian education. The Manipal University of Karnataka has been invited to set up a campus in Malaysia to train Malaysian students in medicine. They do the first two years of their medical education in the University’s campus in Malaysia and then come to Manipal for the final two years. Singapore has been keen to benefit from the high quality of the education in the Indian Institutes of Technology and Management.

24. In the post-9/11 world, they have also been impressed by the fact that the Indian educational system has not only been producing professionals of very high quality, but have also been producing more Muslim moderates than extremists. It is true that a small number of Muslim products of the Indian educational system have gravitated towards pro-Al Qaeda organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), but there is no instance as yet of any product of the Indian educational system drifting towards Al Qaeda. In the UK, about six Indian-origin Muslims were suspected to have links with Al Qaeda, but all of them were products of the British educational system. Can the South-East Asian countries learn something from this?

25. In February 2005, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College had released a study made for it by Shri Amit Gupta, an Indian scholar titled “The US-India Relationship: Strategic Partnership or Complementary Interests? â€

[ramana]

There is book of memoirs of the US Asst Secy of State in the first Reagan Admin. I dont recall his name and need to find it. In it he writes about a visit to Delhi with Robert Mcfarlane and the encounter with Rao who was MEA at that time. The visit was to plan Ms G 's trip to US. He gives a synopsis of what Rao told him about Indian interests and all that in a couple of pages. Very insightful for he was portrayed in the Indina medai as somnolent.

I went back to the book store and it was gone!


If anyone can get his name we should be able to get the book form the many internet retailers. Maybe Mcfarlane's memoirs name him?

[svinayak]

A good read for the jingoes. There are people who think like him. There is still hope.

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14629732

Thanks for the article, warmed my jingo dil when I read this quote -

Today, the country is going through a major transition. The younger generation has just started taking over. This transition will be completed by 2012. Then India will not be as 'pacifist' as it is today. It will be more assertive as you saw it happening in Australia recently. The problem is that New Delhi is still ruled by people born under foreign domination. Mostly they were told what to do. Analysis was the forte of the foreign master. Today, the younger generation is street smart, confident, and well educated. Their assertiveness by 2012 will start changing the soft, irrational and passive policies towards China exercised by the present set up. It will be far more assertive and equipped with sufficient power to take on such adversaries in our vicinity.

[AjayKK]

A guided tour of 'outer' India -Maloy Krishna Dhar-Sify

[quote]

Have you ever heard of places like Somdal, Chapkikarong, and Soraphung?

To many, they might not even sound Indian. But they are areas in the Indian State of Manipur.

The Indian Army and paramilitary forces took over three months (November 07 to February 2008) to partially recapture the sensitive Somdal area on the Indo-Myanmar border from hordes of Meitei (Manipuri Hindus) rebel groups.

Chapkikarong, a beautiful valley near the Burma border, is still infested by the Meitei and assorted Kuki rebel groups.

Soraphung, on the Manipur-Nagaland border, and close to Myanmar, is a stronghold of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) or NSCN (I-M).

The Naga imbroglio is a long story. But Manipur, where I conduct your tour now, is a far more complicated and longer story.

The kingdom of Manipur was merged with India in 1949. Since then, the Jewel of the East has rarely witnessed peace.

Several complicated factors contributed to the rise and consolidation of separatist outfits in Manipur since early sixties. The valley (700 sq miles) was mostly inhabited by Meitei Vaishnavite Hindus. The hills were traditional homes of assorted Naga tribes (about 15) and tribes of Kuki-Chin-Lushai origin (about 20). It is a vast, kaleidoscopic confluence of humans and bountiful nature.

I cannot guide you to Loktak, the Dal Lake of the East. The vastness, depth and rippling beauty of the water body has shrunk, and very few Siberian and Chinese birds migrate to the area during winter.

I cannot take you to Bishenpur (Vishnupur) to see the neglected 7th century Vishnu image created by the craftsmen of the Hindu Abha kingdom of Myanmar. Some stray terrorist bullets might hit you and me.

If I can manage a police escort, it may be possible to guide you to Moirang Lakeview, where Netaji Subhash Bose had set up Azad Hind Government’s headquarters on Indian soil. The memorial lies in neglect.

A drive up to the border smuggling towns of Tengnoupal and Tamu is fraught with danger. There are distinct possibilities of Naga, Kuki or Meitei underground gangs kidnapping us for a hefty ransom.

Would you like to travel to Tussom Khullen, Chassad and Toipoi? Rather risky. These tracts in Ukhrul’s Tangkhul Naga areas are administered by the NSCN (I-M) instead of the government of Manipur. You might have to pay local taxes to the Naga rebels for a bumpy journey to the remote villages on Myanmar borders.

However, the breathtaking beauty of the Ukhrul Naga Hills might tempt you to drop into a village, chat with the khullakpa (headman), witness wonderful dances and listen to Church carols. I wish I could guide you through the beautiful terrains in Ukhrul as well as Tamenglong and Thanlon-Parbung Hills.

However, I wouldn’t recommend setting up a business, take a government job or set up a professional practice either in the valley or in the hills.

The terrorists demand hefty monthly dues and casual “taxesâ€

[SSridhar]

X-posting from the TSP thread.

Jinnah's Republic, as it appeared on Dec. 13, 1947 - Andrew Roth

Karachi, November 15

ITS creator and governor general, M. A. Jinnah, has described Pakistan as "the biggest Moslem state... and the fifth biggest sovereign state in the world." Though the second point might be disputed, Pakistan is unquestionably worthy of attention, for it is situated just where the Anglo-American and Soviet orbits touch in the strategic Central Asian theater.

Seldom has a new state been created under such contradictory pressures or with such a load of full-grown problems. Control of the government is vested in a few top officials, supported by a powerful bureaucracy, but Britain has a say in matters of defense, finance, and foreign policy. Already the government is shot through with corruption and nepotism. Social life is dominated by Mohammedan concepts, including the subjection of women. The structure of the state, however, has not yet had time to harden, and internal strains may reshape it in another image.

Although Mr. Jinnah exaggerates when he describes his dominion as "blessed with enormous resources and potentialities," Pakistan is undoubtedly "workable" economically. With an: area of 230,000 square miles, one-fourth larger than 1933 Germany, it has a population of 70,000,000, about the same number as 1933 Germany. It produces an agricultural surplus and can export part of its wheat and rice and a good deal of its valuable jute crop. It also has some oil and chromite and considerable potential water power. Industrially it is the most backward part of the whole under-industrialized subcontinent. There are scattered woolen, cement, sugar, and cotton mills, but cloth and most other manufactured goods must be imported; some 85 per cent of the raw jute of all India is grown in Pakistan, but the jute mills are in Calcutta. Pakistan has no known coal or iron and only one modern port, Karachi. The people are largely illiterate; only 4 per cent can read as against 12 per cent in India. Among the well-educated, here as in India, are too many lawyers and too few engineers.

Close and friendly relations with the Indian dominion seem essential to the development of Pakistan's potentialities. The Congress Party, indeed, finally agreed to partition, after years of deadlock, partly in the belief that Pakistan could not exist as a separate state. "Let them have their Pakistan," it was argued, "if they'll take it without the eastern Punjab and without Calcutta and western Bengal. They won't have any coal, capital, or industries, and we can throttle them economically. After a few years they'll come crawling back!" This attitude, although not shared by the entire Congress high command, has certainly pervaded the partition operations. In the division of assets the Moslems have had to make a separate fight for virtually every typewriter and ream of paper. Difficulties have even been raised over the handling of mail.

Pakistan's economic troubles have been immeasurably increased by the bloody communal conflicts and the resulting influx of refugees. Almost every Moslem League leader from Mr. Jinnah down believes that this refugee inundation was part of a plot to swamp the Pakistan government before it could get established. "I'm sure that Nehru isn't a party to this plot," one declared, "but I'm just as sure that it is the backing of Patel [India's Home Minister] and Baldev Singh [the Defense Minister and a Sikh]."

With enormous problems, Pakistan has only a very ordinary set of leaders to cope with them. The brilliant Mr. Jinnah, of course, must be excepted, but he is over seventy and has been in poor health since a severe pneumonia attack two years ago. His voice can barely be heard ten feet away, and he chose to become governor general rather than premier partly because it was an easier post. He has repeatedly told subordinates, "I have done my part of the job; I've given you Pakistan. It is up to you to build it."

Premier Liaqat Ali Khan is a competent administrator with the conservative social views of a typical feudal landlord and a strong belief in a political and economic alliance with Great Britain. He had to chose a man of technical ability for his Finance Minister but the other members of his Cabinet are all mediocrities. So farfetched was the appointment of the Calcutta hide merchant, Faziur Rahman, as Minister of the Interior and Education that an old friend, seeing him in a front seat at the Independence Day celebrations, cried out, "You're in the wrong row; that's for the Cabinet!" Top officials are in the main from the landlord class, with a sprinkling of lawyers and merchants. The sole modern-minded industrialist in the dominion, Hassan Ispahani, is being sent out of the way as ambassador to the United States. Provincial officials are of the same kind: the Punjab Premier is the Khan of Mamdot, the province's largest landholder.

Considerable opposition to this leadership is manifesting itself, although it is still unorganized. After 1944, when the Moslem League became a mass movement, clerks, small shopkeepers, mechanics, and poor peasants thronged to its meetings, and it was they who finally obtained partition. Many of them were recruited through religious appeals; others through the promise of better living conditions. The economic discontent formerly directed against the commercially dominant Hindus and Sikhs--it still provides much of the fuel for the Moslem arson gangs--is gradually being turned against the wealthy Moslem League leaders. The story is told that when Mumtaz Daultana, the brains of the West Punjab ministry, went to his huge Multan estate in August, his Moslem tenants, all staunch League members, congratulated him on the achievement of Pakistan, and landlord and tenants feasted together. But a pall was thrown over the festivities when a peasant asked, "When will the land be given to us?" This question is being asked repeatedly, for agrarian reforms have been promised by the League.

Similar resentment against the rich is voiced in the towns. A Moslem clerk who is the local secretary of the League in his ward is made conscious of social differences when he goes from his filthy, overcrowded tenement home to the palatial residence of the provincial leader. At a recent meeting in Lahore a fervent young Leaguer exclaimed, "The rich are finished! Let us shoot them!"

Some of this radicalism is spontaneous; some of it is the work of the progressives in the League, who are influential throughout Pakistan but especially in the Punjab. These agitators are usually well-educated, modernminded young people with a war-gained knowledge of foreign countries, a strongly nationalist point of view, and a liberal approach to social problems, including the position of women. One of the most prominent is Mian Iftikharud-Din, known as "Ifti," a wealthy, radical Moslem who was formerly president of the Congress Party in the Punjab and twice jailed by the British. Now publisher of the Pakistan Times and a member of the Constituent Assembly, he is looked up to by young, progressive Moslems but kept at a distance by League leaders. The tactics of the young progressives have reached a stratum of Moslems never before interested, and at Lahore and Peshawar there have been mass demonstrations of Moslem women clad in the ghostly looking white burqas, a cover-all garment with a net eye-slit which enables orthodox Moslem women to appear in public without being seen. The League leaders welcomed such mass support in fighting for Pakistan--although many had prejudices against women in politics--but now they are embarrassed by the claims of the awakened and demanding millions.

During the Lahore riots some of the inflamed young Moslems asked the League progressives for guidance. "We tried to slow them down," a leftist Moslem leader said, "but we couldn't oppose them openly. The Communists attacked us for this, saying we could not be considered progressive if we did not openly fight Moslem communalism, but we know that would have meant isolating ourselves from our people."

A major conflict is now looming over the question of how closely Pakistan should be tied to Britain. Nationalist-minded Pakistanis, among whom are most of the young people and the new League rank and file, are dismayed by the number of Britons in the administration. Three of the five provincial governors, five of the nine departmental secretaries, and all the high officers of the armed forces are British. Informed nationalists think it necessary to keep certain Britons for their technical skills but do not want this to be carried too far. Army officers do not object to serving under British generals temporarily, but are concerned that the army should continue to be equipped solely with British materiel and indignant that promotions have been left in British hands. Some nationalists charge that when Premier Liaqat Ali Khan was in London a year ago he committed Pakistan to remaining within the British economic sphere.

In the Punjab even the League right-wingers are anti-British, because the British governor there kept the League out of office for over a year and because the boundary award is considered unfair. In consequence a substantial number of Britons have been dismissed, but many of these have turned up with the central government at Karachi. The railway specialist, A. G. Hall, for example, was put out by the Punjab government but is now director general of railways for all Pakistan. To protests about the great number of Britons in the Pakistan service, the Premier is reported to have replied: "Before the transfer of power Lord Mountbatten had both the League and the Congress members of the interim government promise to keep on all British officials who wanted to stay and against whom we could not make a specific case." It is interesting to note that of those who have stayed, the great majority have chosen to serve in Pakistan. While this may be due in part to the fact that opportunities are greater in the less-advanced state, there is certainly a feeling among the British that although India will probably declare its independence, Pakistan may be kept within the empire. The likelihood is enhanced by the character of the League leaders, almost none of whom are known for militant nationalism.

Since Pakistan's establishment, League officers have been cautious about declaring where they stand with respect to the conflict between Russia and the West. Pakistan is nearer to the Soviet border than to either Britain or the United States, and substantial segments of public opinion show an interest in the U. S. S. R. Even orthodox Moslems are watching developments in the Soviet Moslem areas, such as Bokhara, which are close to Pakistan culturally as well as geographically. Not all the League progressives are pro-Communist, but many seem to feel that some sort of socialism, usually referred to as "Islamic socialism," is necessary to make Pakistan a strong modern state. There would certainly be overwhelming opposition to allowing Britain and the United States to use Pakistan's military strength or strategic position to further their own designs.

The future of the Moslem League is already a subject of dispute. Old League officers, fearing that the impoverished Moslems will follow the progressives if the government does not soon grant their demands, are tending to abandon the organization which brought them to power and to rely increasingly on the bureaucracy which they inherited from the British and on their new powers of bribery through job distribution. Moslem religious leaders are attacking young, modern-minded progressives as "anti-Islamic," and telling the women to forget about politics and go back into purdah. But it is not easy to turn back the clock. "We have learned that even women have power, and they can't make us forget it," said a Lahore housewife to me.

[Gerard]

xpost
To The Brink: Indian Decision-making and the 2001-2002 Standoff
http://www.stimson.org/southasia/pdf/To ... 0Brink.pdf

This is a study of the ten-month standoff between India and Pakistan triggered by an attack on the Indian Parliament by Islamic extremists in December 2001. The report, authored by Stimson Center Scoville Fellow Alex Stolar, includes interviews with two former members of India’s Cabinet Committee on Security, Brajesh Mishra and Jaswant Singh, as well as with other senior Indian national security officials who served during the confrontation.

[ramana]

THe folks should not have give the access. The OODA loop on Indian side is being probed. ACM Mehra saab was right: "In India those who shouldnt talk talk and those who should don't."


As a side remark this will be used against Indian leadership as being confused etc. The kid already said that in his report.

,

[pradeepe]

A good read for the jingoes. There are people who think like him. There is still hope.

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14629732

Thanks for the article, warmed my jingo dil when I read this quote -

Today, the country is going through a major transition. The younger generation has just started taking over. This transition will be completed by 2012. Then India will not be as 'pacifist' as it is today. It will be more assertive as you saw it happening in Australia recently. The problem is that New Delhi is still ruled by people born under foreign domination. Mostly they were told what to do. Analysis was the forte of the foreign master. Today, the younger generation is street smart, confident, and well educated. Their assertiveness by 2012 will start changing the soft, irrational and passive policies towards China exercised by the present set up. It will be far more assertive and equipped with sufficient power to take on such adversaries in our vicinity.

Me too. The older gen actually feels the pressure quite well. It manifests itself with the broad swipes and DCH type epithets etc. They should put that concern to rest. Their position is and will always be solid - as strategists providing roots for civilizational learning - they should adopt to leave the driving to the new generation. A few bumps and bruises should be allowed.

[Gerard]

A good read for the jingoes. There are people who think like him. There is still hope.
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14629732

Wow.
A must read article....

[vsudhir]

A good read for the jingoes. There are people who think like him. There is still hope.
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14629732

Wow.
A must read article....

I agree.

But what's with this 'younger gen taking over reins by 2012' thing? Why 2012 in particular? I can certainly see the BJP top brass leaving the picture by then (LKA, ABV). Younger gen in BJP means Modi, Jaitley, Scindia types then.

But what of the INC? Rahul as the assertive younger gen or the status quoist manuchurian in the mix?

And the commies? will they have 'new leadrship' too? Yechori and KaRAT are by no means of the pre-47 gen are they?

[rocky]

The Lhasa Convention was followed by the Simla Convention in 1914 that laid out the McMahon Line defining both the Indo-Tibetan border, and the division of Tibet into 'Outer Tibet' (which lies along the border with India) and 'Inner Tibet' which includes Amdo Province and part of Kham Province. It is worthwhile to note that the Chinese were not invited to discuss the McMahon line, nor was their acceptance of this line sought. Tibetans signed this treaty as an independent nation.

Tibet did sign this treaty as an independent nation, but it's not true that the Chinese weren't invited; for the Chinese envoy was very much there to sign the treaty, and after the signing he did come down to Agra to vacation.

Ramana, btw, for a long time, you've been articulating your ideas in the China threads, but you seem to always stop short. Maybe it is time to hear your side of the view.

What is your solution to the Tibet problem?

[ramana]

Complain about Nehru!

[Arun_S]

Here is an interesting (some of us will say obvious) move from a power that understands Unkills game to importance of Central Asia to Chahch's Dark-vedar plan, and has no hesitation to train nuclear weapons against Ukarian. Of course the all powerful NATO buckled on the threat, such is power of using the weapons in hand to political use. India must learn and grow up to aduthood, and not be pushed around by "2 Taka Gunda".

Of course Arundhati al el will not never consider this destabilizing o bad fro poor Russian peasant!!

So what happens now that Pakistani stock (its strategic location on earth) is devalued to dust, by access to Afghanistan via Russia?


Putin triumphs against NATO expansion

by Staff Writers
Bucharest (AFP) April 3, 2008
President Vladimir Putin joined the NATO summit Thursday after triumphing in a bitter campaign to scupper the membership hopes of pro-Western Georgia and Ukraine.

Putin arrived in the Romanian capital Bucharest for dinner and was to deliver an address on Friday with expectations high that he will invite the alliance to use Russia for transit to the war in Afghanistan.

The ex-KGB officer, who is due to move to the prime minister's post in May after eight years in the Kremlin, is the alliance's most bitter critic, particularly over eastward expansion into the former Soviet bloc.

He won a victory even before arriving Thursday when after months of Russian pressure NATO declined to give Membership Action Plan (MAP) status to ex-Soviet Georgia and Ukraine.

Putin had threatened to target nuclear missiles at Ukraine if the country joined the alliance and his angry rhetoric helped cause a public split in NATO.

The United States pushed for expansion, while western European powers France and Germany, which rely heavily on Russian oil and gas imports, warned against angering Moscow.

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Russian lower house of parliament's foreign affairs committee, said France and Germany had confirmed "the importance of maintaining good relations with Russia."

Despite the row over expansion, Putin appeared keen to use his international swansong as president to help realign relations between Moscow and the West in time for his successor Dmitry Medvedev, who will be sworn in on May 7.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Putin was set to offer unprecedented cooperation by letting NATO use Russia for transit to the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Scheffer said: "We hope that tomorrow's meeting ... will have as one of the results the land transportation agreement of non-lethal goods for ISAF in Afghanistan."

Another major sticking point -- a planned US missile shield in central Europe -- was to be aired at a separate summit between Putin and US President George W. Bush in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi over the weekend.

In a sign of will to cooperate, NATO said Thursday it was "ready to explore the potential" for linking US, NATO and Russia's own missile defence systems in a unified network.

The push for reconciliation did not mean that the principal problems were entirely resolved.

NATO may have kept Georgia and Ukraine out of the MAP scheme for now, but strong US lobbying meant that the door remains wide open for the future.

"We agree today that these countries will become members of NATO," Scheffer said.

Georgia's minister for Euro-Atlantic integration, Giorgi Baramidze, described that statement as a "historic" breakthrough for his country, while Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko also hailed a "victory."

Russia's deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko warned of "a big strategic mistake" if NATO embraced Georgia and Ukraine, and "most serious consequences for common European security."

NATO also showed unity over Washington's plans for missile defence in the Czech Republic and Poland, which the Pentagon says is necessary to guard against Iran, but Moscow describes as an attack on its security.

The allied leaders stated their support for the US plan and particularly the "substantial contribution to the protection of allies ... to be provided by the planned deployment of European-based United States missile defence assets".

[ramana]

We should look at Indian interests from
-Strategic interests
-Economic interests
- Public interests
- Private interests
And what is our unique interest? In other words why should there be an India and Indian way of life?

[Keshav]

We should look at Indian interests from
-Strategic interests
-Economic interests
- Public interests
- Private interests
And what is our unique interest? In other words why should there be an India and Indian way of life?

What isIndia's ultimate goal in all of those fields?

Or is that what you're asking?

[Kalantak]

India is biggest counter to China, US adventurism
Apr 14 2008
New Delhi

India has the biggest moral counter force to the militant adventurism advocated by China and US on the global stage, says Robert Thurman, leading scholar, writer and the first American to be ordained as a monk in Tibetan Buddhism during the 1960s.

"They (Chinese) are still caught up in militant adventurism, of which the US has been and is also been guilty," the 66-year-old Thurman said Sunday evening while delivering a speech on 'Tibet: Zone of Peace, Crucial for Humanity'.

"The answer to that is in India, the biggest counter to that kind of adventurism," he said.

Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University, Thurman, who is also the father of Oscar nominated actress Uma Thurman, pointed out that India and Tibet have special historical links.

"If Tibet is declared a zone of peace and given autonomy, then you (Indians) could go and visit Kailash whenever you wanted. The entire Himalayas would be open to you. Your rivers will not be diverted, as the Chinese are doing to Brahmaputra by drilling through rocks with nuclear devices."

In another part of the speech, Thurman said he knew that the Indian government was 'under enormous pressure' but did not elaborate further.

Thurman said in his latest book 'Why the Dalai Lama Matters' he had laid out five modest steps for the Chinese leadership to keep Tibet and also present a more statesman-like face to the world.

"I can guarantee that Hu Jintao and his nine-member standing committee of the Communist party politburo will get the Nobel Prize if they follow the steps," he said jocularly.

The first step would be the reinstatement of the Tibet Autonomous Region, the second, the establishment of a real one country-two systems policy, the third to reassign the thousands of Chinese soldiers posted in the Tibetan heartland to the borders.

"The fourth step would be to mend relations with the Dalai Lama. And the last step would be to declare the Tibetan plateau as an environmental reserve," he said.

Thurman was convinced if the Chinese regime did give the Tibetans what they wanted, which was real autonomy, then the Dalai Lama would be a very influential goodwill ambassador for China with the rest of the world.

He also suggested that there should be a plebiscite for Tibetans to decide if they want to be with the Chinese. "Tibetans are incredibly pragmatic. They know it's not practical to be independent," said Thurman.

Further, he noted that it was wrong to think that the Chinese were not concerned about their image or about world opinion over Tibet. "Why are they bothering to hold the Olympics and spending $60 billion if they are not worried about their image?"

Thurman said that he was shocked and surprised by the riots and violence in Tibet last month.

"I know that Tibetans outside would have done something in the run-up to the elections, but nobody expected Tibetans inside Tibet to protest - as that is self-destructive," he said.

[Rye]

This is not related to the nuke thread (and also trying to avoid that thread). Indians understand legal stuff, but they do not seem to understand that a "legal system" was created by a bunch of people, and if the legal system has laws that are practically unenforceable (because beating the system and not getting caught is easy). In such cases, an unenforceable law is as good as no law.

There are two kinds of people in this planet : people who think laws and rules exist and have to be obeyed, and those who understand that laws and rules do not matter if they cannot be enforced.

The latter view is seen in JEM's post:
JEM wrote:

We should not let it. But, even so, this is ultimately this is about power. About whether you have the fortitude to get your way, one way or the other. Look at the status of our nuclear sector. Does it look like we don't have the fortitude? We started from absolute scratch.

The former view is seen in John Snow's post.

An intelligent saab like Ldev guru, is forgetting the fact that signing an agreement tanatamounts to agreeing and accepting to be bound by .....hence the opposition to the deal...

Basically, any nation that does not have people who can work past all the real world problems through their own efforts is going to have to stick to the "rules" written by the "international community". In other words, if the people have the smarts work past real world problems, then they can work past any "rules" too.

India does not resemble such a nation of untalented people, implying that it has enough people with the knowledge and will and fortitude to push their nation's agenda regardless of whatever it sign on to.

American superpowerdom has been rapidly eroded both in the moralpolitik and the realpolitik sense -- the US has lost its moral cloak and the shirt off its back by handling Iraq wrong (the war itself is not the problem, but the poor strategies used to replace Saddam+Baath with a new regime is the root cause of the problem). The US needs allies, and India can provide as much support as it can given its local political compulsions -- however, such a slow coming together of US and India is what is going to make 123/Hyde irrelevant. Furthermore, the probability breakdown of nuke deterrence is very high given all the new countries that have started going down that road -- in that sense, India is letting the US shore up its "legal regime" so that weak states do not go around acquring nukes completely destroying the notion of stopping proliferation forever (there is good chance this will still happen). After that point, every nation worth its salt will test and ignore the NPT.

Also, the game is going to completely change when Chinese nationalism hits the fan. The US and EU are starting to view China as a threat, and the Russians are now moving towards EU and the chinese, and India has to be equidistant to all powers, perhaps closer to some than others. But nothing indicates that India will be in a weaker position than today to resist any power plays down the line.

People are krapping in their diapers at the thought of the NSG breaking the deal on their end (and assuming that India will be up a certain creek without a paddle when that happens). However, that assumes that India has no choice but to see the NSG coalesce, but the NSG itself needs a handful of countries to sign up before they become a true supplier cartel in complete control of nuke resources. There are two possibilities -- India becomes part of the NSG down the line and/or India develops bilateral relations and develops influence with nations to counter NSG moves to coalesce.