Bharat Rakshak

ramanaji,
it could very well be a psy-ops. Or it could be both a half-lie and a half truth. The thing is there is this risk that develops through long political careers which can expose them to such connections. Especially where they are surrounded by clients and courtiers clamouring for money and support which in turn cannot be obtained overtly or legally under prevailing outward social norms and formal financial rules. So parties like the CIA can have a field day in getting politicians.

There could have been ways of avoiding the pitfall in IG's time, if she had played dirty and gave different versions to cabinet in session and separately to members. While reserving the real plans only for army command. But that faculty probably only developed post 77. And again perhaps the development of thsi faculty made it clear to her external and internal enemies that she could no longer be exploited in the "old ways" - and perhaps enhanced the steps to finish her off. Assassination of unmanageable political opponents have not been a "Hindu/Sikh" trait for a very long time now. But it has remained firmly a part of the mindset of the two proselytizing branches of the Abrahamic and nations or secret services dominated by them. Typically one of them targets only the individual while the other aims at eliminating all possible successors at the same time - children or suckling babies no bar. The first one targets successors who dares to take up the mantle in sequence but leaves them out otherwise if they do not enter politics. These patterns can identify the faith system behind the assassination. Compare political assassinations over the subcontinent and do not get stuck at the "hand of the assassin" only - since the hand is the one which is visible and not the brain and the infrastructure.

The extreme courtiership around the family is enough to utterly blind normal people, and that dynasty has not shown any superhuman intelligence.

IG's flare was instinctive, but she had not the chance to really understand "men" in her early life in a political sense. When she had, it was under the glow of adulation to a father already a centrepiece of a Mughal darbar. There is somehow no replacement for very early exposure to the raw ambitions, and twists of human nature -at a time when adults do not think you are capable of realizing what they are really at and therefore are less careful about revealing their true motivations.

the best psy-ops are those based on half lie-half truth for it will tie up the receipent in knots. Not everyone is like the provenribial raja hansa that can sip the milk from the watered milk container.

I wouldnt put it past Mrs G to use known moles to pass on info to spook the others. Say what you want the Indian IB is the best in the world in tailing the compromised assets. They might not be able to do anything about it thats another matter.
To my naive mind she even withheld the real plans from even the Army command. A pointer to this is the book.
Indina's Wars since Independence" by Maj. Gen Sukhwinder Singh. He was the Brigadier in chargeof the operation palns and had personally briefed the frontline commanders. Yet as the war unfolded he was taken aback at the paltry gains on the Western front. He surmised that FM was implementing something else.

ramana ji,
this will go into history, and I think has been revisited an almost uncountable number of times. But if pretending to go after west was a cover to distract the real intention of going after "east" then the overall strategic objective was not a sign of long term foresight. If the territory in the east was to remain an independent entity - then with its opportunist "nationalist" who were really dominated by Islamists but took on the mantle of "nationalism" to carve out power for themselves - it was going to be a waste. It was an intra-Islam fight for control over resources which simply tactically pretended to be "secular", "nationalist", modernizing etc to win international support and also utilize the Leftist militancy.

The east used India, and promptly went back to its Islamist behaviour as far as India and non-Muslims are concerned.

The reason I see it as a waste, is because in the 40 years since, the Islamist base has not dwindled, and it will now become much harder to incorporate becuase it has already established a tradition of "independence" - however much it goes on being a nuisance to Indian interests and be a base of operations for almost every power hostile to India - openly or covertly.

Whereas a complete smashing of Pak before the "separation" would have made the integration much simpler.

What happened after the Imperial German defeat of Tsarist forces at the battle of Tannenberg? The remaning demobilised Tsarist soldiers helped overthrow the Tsar in 1917 i.e. three years after the event.
Similary it might have been hoped that the defeated chunk of TSPA would go for regime change. However it didn't happen because ZAB took over and was demagogue who held them together by introducing Islamism as a state policy. And the TSPA's Zia took over after decent interval for him to fail i.e. by 1977. The FSU takeover of Afghanistan made TSP a frontline state with US interests which thwarted the potential for the revolt.

Alternatives - as many alternatives as possible should have been gamed. I know we will be accused of the benefit of hindsight. But TSP and TSPA were not Russian soldiers in the failing frontlines of 1914. They were Islamists - and strongly Islamists, and the pattern should have been clear right from 1958 for all strategic watchers within India. It would be obvious from the trends of political alliances and militarization of politics and politicization of the military together with intertwining feudalism, they backlash would not overthrow the regime on its own.

Moreover, mere "overthrow" and not dissolution and absorption - would still retain the country as "independent" and still out of control of India for "its" friends to come in and rebuild it as a hostile country.

You have to roll the dice which way you can with one arm tied. and that was done.

yes, and yes probably. But look how much difficult this partial biting off and not even digesting the bitten off part has brought us to - China can lay bases on both sides, and we cannot strengthen the NE becuase we cannot land from the Bay into Chittagong. UK or USA and every two-bit tail-hook of the two can meddle and needle using both sides of the Indian land mass.

In fact even if Pak gets dissolved and reabsorbed - the "east" will play spirited and defiant, and the games start all over again - this time in earnest using the east as base.

Xposting the link
http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/sep/ ... antony.htm

Noting that India [ Images ] wanted to develop friendly relations with China, Antony, however, said the country could not lose sight of China's increasing military and physical infrastructure along the borders.

Why Tibet is an important sector where the CPC can be destroyed in more ways than one if we can use the situation properly.
Oil and communist mansabdars of China

Clique of three hardliners sprang from oilfields

Date: Sunday, 05-September-2010
Please Uyghur News Bookmark and Share


The Sydney Morning Herald
September 6, 2010

John Garnaut reports on the men who have run Western China.

THE three key officials who have led China's hardline security policies in Tibet and Xinjiang in recent years all started out together around the oilfields of the Yellow River delta in Shandong.

One is the Tibet Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, who described the Dalai Lama as "a wolf in monk's clothes, a devil with a human face". The second is Wang Lequan, who has led the uncompromising "strike hard" policies against ethnic separatism in Xinjiang since the mid-1990s.

The third is Zhou Yongkang, China's formidable security boss, who sits on the elite nine-member Politburo Standing Committee and controls China's police, intelligence and justice systems.

Many analysts, largely outside China, believe the hardline security policies implemented by Zhou, Wang and Zhang contributed to the seething discontent among Tibetans and Uighurs which exploded into deadly riots in Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in July last year.

But little is known about the process of policy formulation that has led to the political screws being tightened.

If past episodes are any guide, it was likely the product of fierce internal struggles between factions, interest groups and ideology. Professor Melvyn Goldstein, a leading Tibet scholar at Case Western Reserve University, has detailed how Tibet became the battleground for one of the Communist Party's most ferocious internal struggles when Deng Xiaoping's Southwest Army and the Northwest Army marched onto the Tibetan plateau from opposite directions in 1950 and could not agree on how to divide it up.

Tibetan sources detail how the radical reform efforts of the party secretary, Hu Yaobang, from 1981 were constantly undermined by local political-economic interests.

This is another piece of info that I am posting to encourage forumites to think in terms of extending the military-only solution to include more nuanced manipulation and political support extended to opposing factions within the CPC-PLA establishment.

We should not think of and treat the CPC-PLA as a monolithic block. We need to think more comprehensively in terms of independent Tibet as part of and not the only end objective - which is the destruction of the CPC and the PLA. Only by weakening and destroying the regime at Beijing and its mansabdars in areas like Tibet can we have a solution.

briahaspati garu,

What do you think of Philip's plan of making HH Dalai Lama President of India?

RajeshA wrote:briahaspati garu,

What do you think of Philip's plan of making HH Dalai Lama President of India?

Is it constitutionally possible? will require a lot of twisting and turning of the rules. Not that the twisting hasn't done before, but is the pay-off high enough to set the wheels in motion?

For becoming India's prez, he will have to become Indian citizens and renounce his allegiance to Tibetan government in Exile.

We can chose a Karmapa born in Tawang to be the president, that would be perfect.

He should be kept out of this. He loses his political pull and ideological impact globally if he gives up on his Tibetan citizenship [of the non-recognized-by-PRC Tibetan nation]. This should come more from the mass of Tibetans in exile. This should be a separate political and democratic process. But remember that every such step will be sought to be used by lost-identity-hence-fanatically-grabbing-ROP people in the north and similar ROL in the east.

For India to intervene, a legal way of doing this is to have it through the Tibetan Parliament in Exile. India needs to create a special category of "autonomous region" which only gives up on foreign policy and defence to the "centre" [but that has its own problem since it generates other demands from pre-existing usual suspects within India] and recognize Tibet as one such autonomous region of Indian Union.

Can Tawang belong to this Tibetan Autonomous Region of India?

No.

Probably not! Tactically would you risk it? Think not of just the next 50 years - but why create excuses for future River-of-sorrow emperors over centuries to come!

Autonomous regions should be clearly created as a category of regions which want to remain or join up with India but where long term Indian political and military presence continuously over recent history is difficult to establish archaelogically or historically. This rules out J&K from being autonomous.

This means we are simply allowing new regions that never really faced Indian rule to join up in the great project that Indian endeavour for the next century is going to be. Which also means it is an acknowledgment of their "foreign" origins.

Airavat wrote:The principal error in the above discussion is clubbing Marathas with Sikhs. The Marathas are in a separate category by themselves; their power rose earlier and spread across a much wider arc of Indian provinces.

The Sikhs come in the category of other provincial powers who rose up due to oppression by Aurangzeb: Rathods, Jats, Bundelas. Each of these formed kingdoms that were a factor in the 18th and 19th century geopolitics of India.

The discussion is a little dated now, but it is never too late to respond.

There is a reason we club the Marathas with the Sikhs. There are tremendous similarities---some obvious, some subtle---in the two empires. These two represent the Indic revival in the 17-19th centuries: They both represent the ability of the Indian ethos to look inside and from it take what is best to fight back the Muslim depredations. Both the Sikhs and Marathas had the basic germ (or fundamental core idea) in the spiritual movements: in the case of the Marathas the spiritual awakening had a 2 century lead on the Sikhs. Both the Marathas and the Sikhs were movements, started by religious Saints, then energized by the common people. Another characteristic is that both these movements were powered by people of all castes---they were essentially caste-less movements. People of all castes joined them. The so-called "lower-castes" were a major force, along with the so-called "upper castes". Both the movements had as their primary focus the Muslim rule, and the desire to bring back the Indian glory and independence. To oust the Mllechhas was their central goal, which they both succeeded.

Both the Marathas and the Sikh revivals were social revolutions: Neither of them were a continuation of any pre-existing dynasties or lineage. These movements, in fact, created new ruling families. They both did not inherit any land or kingdom from previous ancestors: they won the whole kingdom from scratch. Behind their surprising & sudden rise and success was a very simple driving force which they never relented or lost focus on: The elimination of Muslim power from India, and revival of old Dharma. You will notice that neither the Marathas nor the Sikhs resiled from this singular aim, regardless of any other faults one may find in them.

In terms of differences, it is true that Maratha Kingdom was bigger: at its peak the Maratha kingdom was 4 times the size of the Sikh Kingdom at its peak. But it must be noted that Sikhs also had an enormous geographic & demographic challenge in their theatre of affairs. (Sikhs/Hindus were a minority in their empire.) Sikhs were at the border and also dealt more frontally with Afghans, Pathans. The geographies in which they fought are also challenging: NWFP, Afghanistan, Jammu & Kashmir & Laddakh etc.

One more similarity before I close: India was primarily won by the British by defeating the Marathas and the Sikhs. It was from these two they snatched India. Their most decisive & expensive wars happened with these two adversaries.

^While my knowledge of history or politics isn't so good that I can comment on anything else, I have no doubt in my mind that Sikhs and Marathas did indeed lead the Indic revival with great fervor and even success. It was not to be and it ended, by the defeat of Marathas and Sikhs from British as Surinder ji said, before it could reach its natural conclusion, but their contribution can't be underestimated.

kittoo wrote:^While my knowledge of history or politics isn't so good that I can comment on anything else, I have no doubt in my mind that Sikhs and Marathas did indeed lead the Indic revival with great fervor and even success. It was not to be and it ended, by the defeat of Marathas and Sikhs from British as Surinder ji said, before it could reach its natural conclusion, there contribution can't be underestimated.

Read around 10 books of History in that period and you will get an idea what was going on that time.
The entire Hindu revival after years of subjugation under Islamic rule was a miracle. This grass root revival has to be understood to figure why India is today what it is.

Acharya wrote:

kittoo wrote:^While my knowledge of history or politics isn't so good that I can comment on anything else, I have no doubt in my mind that Sikhs and Marathas did indeed lead the Indic revival with great fervor and even success. It was not to be and it ended, by the defeat of Marathas and Sikhs from British as Surinder ji said, before it could reach its natural conclusion, but their contribution can't be underestimated.

Read around 10 books of History in that period and you will get an idea what was going on that time.
The entire Hindu revival after years of subjugation under Islamic rule was a miracle. This grass root revival has to be understood to figure why India is today what it is.

Acharya Guru and other gurus, would you recommend any specific book for that period?

P.S.- Nooo...you immortalized my mistake by quoting it

Around 7-Sept-2010, Brookings Institution of America, a progressive think-tank mostly aligned to Democrats, had a book unveiling ceremony. The books title was "Arming Without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization". For the unveiling the books authors and few other American experts of South Asia, had an open house.
The transcript of the open house is available over here. It is fascinating to read because it gives insight on a lot of topics.
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/ ... litary.pdf

A few pakistani's who had come to attend raised two points
1) The territorial integrity of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are intertwined.
2) India has a lot of poor people, so called people under poverty line. So why is it spending so much on defense procurement.

The first is a joke. If Pakistan or Afghanistan starts to unravel, then it will not automatically lead to unraveling of India. We might be impacted, but it will be one of the best outcomes which India can hope for.

Regarding the second point pakistan has more people below the poverty line, measured as a percentage of population, than India has. India has more in numbers, but raw numbers are meaningless unless put in perspective. And with the recent floods, pakistan may slip even more into poverty. I am leaving out afghanistan, as the country has not known peace since 1978-9.
Moreover the figure of 100 Billion USD is the figure floating around for India's defense spending. The point is that India is going to spend this amount over a period of at least 5-10 years and not one or two years. Moreover this spending as a percentage of our GDP is very less. Our GDP is 1 Trillion USD and counting.

When Pakistan got independent, it was a general consensus that India would fragment, as it did not have the required unity or was not homogeneous or did not have a dominant religion and so on. Also Pakistan would prosper as it had a lesser population and better governance. But after 60 years of independence, it is India which has shown more resilience and higher growth. It is India which will become the 2nd largest economy of Asia, overtaking Japan and after china before 2015. On the other hand it is pakistan which has remained the basket case of south asia. In fact if the trend continues, Bangladesh will be replaced by Pakistan, as the sick man of South Asia.

When we talk of the spectacular success of India in various spheres of economics and knowledge-production since the independence, in spite of dire speculations of "inhomogeniety", "no-dominant-religions" etc, we somehow accept in an indirect way two myths created by the "west". The first is that "homogeneity" and "single dominant religion" is a precondition for economic growth. The second is that India's current economic growth is unique in Indian history.

The situation is even more complicated than that - because India had grown economically even in the past when there were dominant faith systems over large parts of India in pre-Islamic times, and India's growth stagnated when there were other forms of dominant religions like under the Khalji Sultanate or the latter Mughals. The "western" phenomenal growth took place in an era of intense religious schism and warfare.

However the more insidious result of this imagery is that somehow the lack of "single religious dominance", or "inhomogeneity" as supposedly manifest in Republican India - becomes by insinuation, a necessary precondition for Indian "growth". This then becomes a justification for all the deliberate steps taken to maintain an ideological vacuum, selective protection or virtual patronage of specific religions while suppressing or actively controlling others in the name of promotion of diversity, and protecting multiplicity of identity claims under state-sponsored incentives using state's power to spend the social surplus.

No one explores whether, all this growth was a result of desperate initiatives taken outside of the state's control, and which the state only took advantage of when it realized that its own protectees or mentees would be unable to maintain the productivity that in turn maintains the state's power. And whether Indian growth or productivity is not related to inhomogeneity or lack of single dominant religions.

Failure to realize patterns in long term growth and its connections or not to the political and ideological environment - can force India back into what I call the "beehive role". For a very long time Indians have been forced to become "bees" for animals who don't know how to make honey themselves or are too lazy to do so but cannot overcome their taste for it.

So periodically Indians are allowed to develop their productivity and then when the hive is full of honey the animals come up to break the hive and extract the honey. The last 2500 years of Indian history is a history of these animals - sometimes from CAR, sometimes from the middle East, and sometimes from Europe. Of course bees fight back to an extent. Some of these animals are so stupid that they not only break the hive and eat the honey, they also light a fire to burn the bees, use up all the wax for candles, and dance in joy when no bee is left to start a new hive. Some are however more clever and leave when all the honey is extracted and part of the wax is taken away - but leave at least part of the bee population intact to revive the hive or start a new one.

Then wait until the hive is full of honey again.

A beehive remains vulnerable because it cannot kill off the animals at each and every attack. It does not pursue the animals back to their lair and kill them. In simple terms make it prohibitively expensive for any animal to come and destroy the hive or extract the honey. Simple buzzing is not effective unless there is a continual reminder to the animal that the buzz is a precursor to a fatal retaliation - which means such fatalities have to be ensured from time to time to keep it in recent memory. Some of the bees may advocate the strategy of forever creating honey and give part of it as bribes to the more intelligent looting animals as a compromise solution that does not require all the trouble of retaliation.

Problem is once you are vulnerable, you can never be sure that the next animal coming is intelligent enough.

When we talk of hostile force against India, it may be better to think of strategy in three aspects :

(1) Ideological war
(2) Psychological war
(3) Conventional war

The Ideological war comes first and is the foundation for all other wars. Ideological war defines what is it that we find obnoxious in the enemy, why the enemy should cease to exist, and what distinguishes the enemy from us. Ideological war should aim at delegitimizing all the bases of the ideology, philosophy of the enemy, and make it unattractive to gain new recruits. Force the enemy to constantly defend his ideology, and basically turn defensive on each and every aspect of his world-view. Take apart every claim of pride in that ideology, and make it shameful. This is finally aimed at sapping the will of the enemy to defend his ideology at all.

This has been successfully carried out by the two proselytizing branches of the Abrahamic against India, and by the Marxists, whereas we have failed to learn from their method and tactics. This is how the Chinese or various mouthpieces of the West try and sap the will of Indian resistance in more conventional spheres as military capacity, or economic growth or its social framework.

To turn it around, we have to de-engage from accepting values put forward by these ideologies as our own. We have to re-examine their values and find fault with them or hypocrisy in them over such values. Without delegtimizing their world-views, and all aspects of their belief systems as propounded in their propaganda - clearly first recognizing them as "different" from us - we cannot win over them. You cannot hit the decisive blow on the neck of the enemy if you get confused and partly identify with the enemy himself. Accepting the "enemy's value" as your own is partially identifying with the enemy.

This is why we see so much of confusion in seasoned politicians over Maoism in India, or Islamism in and around the Subcontinent, the separatists in Kashmir Valley.

brihaspati ji,

I admire your analytical ability and grasp of history. The question I have for you is that can ideology become an end itself or are ideologies necessary tools of social evolution and ultimately serve humanity? Simply put is ideology for the benefit humanity or is the human destiny to serve this or that ideology?

In context of a tussle or conflict or war between two peoples, there should be clarity what they are fighting for.

One needs to accentuate the differences between self and the other side, and if the differences includes ideological differences, then those differences would be highlighted and the other side demonized with even more gusto, simply because ideological differences can best be captured, and ideology affects the whole community especially through identity.

The accentuation and demonization of the differences is necessary as a tool to motivate the own people to fight and resist the alien force. In case of ideology, it shows vulnerability to rational analysis, and its weak points, its conflicting positions, the immorality of its extreme interpretations can be found, and attacked. If the other party has built up its identity on the basis of an ideology, an ideological attack combined with suitable rhetoric offers itself as an attack vector. Any warring party would use any attack vector available to shore up one's own fortress and to attack the enemy.

Of course, the differences sometimes can be simply ethnic. In that case, one devises a racist attack, showing self as a superior race and the others as inferior, and often the attack is formulated as racist mocking.

Monarchs and chieftains often build a cult following and solidify the identity of their subjects through the oath of loyalty, whereby loyalty to the king is hailed as the highest virtue of a warrior. Then on the ideological plane the tussle is a competition between which monarch has built a stronger base of loyal following, and warriors of weak loyalty are tempted to change sides, through bribes, coercion and promises, so the loyalty level becomes the chief difference.

So one needs to be aware of the differences between self and the enemy, accentuate them, motivate own people on the basis of identity built on those differences, and demolish the foundations of the identity of the enemy.

Akalam bhai,
a tough question, and exploring it will perhaps be deemed OT! But briefly I will try to answer this as far as relevant for this thread I think.

Description of reality will always remain incomplete if attempted within a self-consistent logical system - there will be always unprovable statements, a kind of application of Godel's Incompleteness theorem. Ideology has two functions - one is this attempt at explaining past and current experiences or perceived reality, the other is to decide and reduce the number of choices for action and response to the environment [which includes actions by other humans].

The sum total of this means that ideologies perform important roles in regulating human action according to values which necessarily may include "values" that are axiomatic or unprovable and derivable from others.

One of the ways in which both the positive and negative aspects of ideology can be combined for sustainable human journey through time - is to recognize the functional role of ideology as a guidance system for human choices while also recognizing the limitations of ideology in being an incomplete description of reality containing unprovable or axiomatic values.

Thus while we should retain ideologies, we should also keep the mechanism of constant exploration of reality open and treat an ideology as an interim solution with possible components which may need to be replaced or updated with greater knowledge and understanding. [This should be consistent with one line of interpretation of the Upanishads as the human journey to be a never-ending quest for greater understanding].

So an ideology that itself includes this "quest" and re-exploration of the currently used form as a "value" is probably the best way forward. I will call it "self correcting ideology". Most broad based ideologies of the modern world do not include this "value" of re-exploration : Marxism [even post-Marxian Marxism, Leninism, Maoism], all the branches of the Abrahamic claim that they already have all the answers or even if they do not have all the answers - the answers exist, which means they have already decided on the finality of reality.

In practical reality, this can actually mean spectacular successes - because by reducing the choices of human action through prescriptive and dogmatic norms they reduce both the individual problem of dealing with complexity, while they help in converging and collating diverse human action into a single-minded social mobilization.

But this centralization of purpose and implementation comes at a price. Typically it means developing a structure of control and organization that ultimately needs to increasingly micromanage the lives of its members. You can see this trend in all the religions I mentioned and the political parties/movements I referred to.

I think it is possible to set objectives as ideology prescribes and encourage decentralized implementation of central objectives - a kind of extension of "self-correction in ideology" to practical implementation. This brings in the innovation and individual brilliance of those on the ground and who can therefore adapt to developing situations and respond to changes that come about even by their own actions on the situation. For this to happen a huge amount of trust needs to exist between the "centre" and the "frontline". Maybe a certain brand of a religion has already tried to implement this - but they are in a self-contradiction - because their core ideology itself is not "self correcting".

RajeshA ji,
I hope you now realize what I was trying to nudge in the "managing Chinese threat"! Hope to see more on this from you.

brihaspati wrote:RajeshA ji,
I hope you now realize what I was trying to nudge in the "managing Chinese threat"! Hope to see more on this from you.

I await your ideas on the other two points.

surinder wrote:There is a reason we club the Marathas with the Sikhs. There are tremendous similarities---some obvious, some subtle---in the two empires. These two represent the Indic revival in the 17-19th centuries.

In the context of this thread there were large parts of India where there was no Indic decline to begin with, so no Indic revival was needed.

surinder wrote:Sikhs were at the border and also dealt more frontally with Afghans, Pathans. The geographies in which they fought are also challenging: NWFP, Afghanistan, Jammu & Kashmir & Laddakh etc.

Yes this is true. By the time Ranjit Singh defeated the other Sikh misls and began expanding his kingdom, the British were already the dominant power in India. It was tough to resist the EIC advances while at the same time taking on the unruly frontier tribes, and it is to the credit of Ranjit Singh that this was achieved. Thankfully the Dogras had conquered Ladakh, invaded Tibet, and defeated the Chinese at Chushul to bring that trans-Himalayan territory under Indian rule. Therefore the Sikh resources could be concentrated against the Afghan invaders on the northwestern side.

AKalam wrote:brihaspati ji,

I admire your analytical ability and grasp of history. The question I have for you is that can ideology become an end itself or are ideologies necessary tools of social evolution and ultimately serve humanity? Simply put is ideology for the benefit humanity or is the human destiny to serve this or that ideology?

Some (but not all) ideologies are tools for elites to further their imperialistic aims. For the foot-soldier (i.e. useful idiot) such ideologies do become ends in themselves.

Airavat wrote:In the context of this thread there were large parts of India where there was no Indic decline to begin with, so no Indic revival was needed.

I am glad you see no indic decline those "large" parts, hence see no need for revival. This is certainly very heartening to note. For those living in the declined and slave India, certainly that must have been a beacon of light. I wish the declined populations had known about the existence of areas where ancient Indian glory was continuing in full swing, they could have taken refuge in these "large" areas to avoid their misfortune.

surinder wrote:Thankfully the Dogras had conquered Ladakh, invaded Tibet, and defeated the Chinese at Chushul to bring that trans-Himalayan territory under Indian rule. Therefore the Sikh resources could be concentrated against the Afghan invaders on the northwestern side.

I am aware of the desire of many segments to deny & dilute the role played by Ranjit Singh's empire in the conquest of Laddakh, Gilgit, Baltistan, and attack on Tibet. This distorition of history is a sad reflection of how we bicker inside India; how are our narrow communal/caste identities prevent us from seeing clearly.

(Your time line is also messed up, incidently: Ranjit Singh had already concluded his wars against the Afghans *before* the Laddakh, Tibet etc. campaigns. And what cover was needed from the Laddakhis & Tibetans? They had not been the one invading India. *No* cover whatsover was needed from them.)

We have had this discussion before. I have already written more than I wanted to---I am not sure I want to enter into it again.

^^^reply posted in Distorted History.

X-Posted from Managing Chinese Threat Thread

Deals with the questions of identity

If we want to avail of Taiwanese support in our efforts to contain the threat from PRC, we could try to understand the Taiwanese better. Following is a good treatise by Jiang Yi-huah on the questions of identity in general and how it manifests itself within Taiwan. We also needs to understand at the solutions proposed by China to establish its national identity - the Zhonghua Minzu. Without understanding these, we can also not exploit these either.

A Paper by Jiang Yi-huah
Department of Political Science
National Taiwan University
Is Taiwan a Nation? On the Current Debate over Taiwanese Nationalism and National Identity (pdf)

Chinks in the Chinese Armor

The Middle Kingdom has 4 main pillars

1. National Consolidation under One Identity and One State Authority
2. Strong Centralization of Political Authority
3. Economic, Technological and Military Strength
4. Pro-Active and Aggressive Foreign Policy & Neutralization of Rivals

National Consolidation under One Identity and One State Authority

Over the next decades more and more the people of the Indian Subcontinent would have to face the geographical and political implications of the Chinese National Identity Building Project - the Zhonghua Minzu.

This project tries to explain how different ethnicities within PRC are all Chinese, i.e. a China which has been dominated by an ethnic core of Han Chinese are now spreading the umbrella of this identity over all the ethnicities within PRC. This they have managed to do by establishing one National Language, one Script, one History, controlled Employment Market, hierarchical Political Structure, etc. On the basis of this political ideology, the Chinese are building the PRC nation. This model also demands that the 'ethnic core' not be fragmented. Every concentric circle starting from the 'ethnic core' has to be complete and consolidated.

That is one reason why the Chinese have insisted that all their enclaves under foreign domination be brought under Chinese sovereignty - Hong Kong, Macau and especially Taiwan.

One should ask why the Chinese are so adamant that Taiwan not change its name nor declare independence. As long as Taiwan keeps the name and remains true to the 'One China Policy', Republic of China (Taiwan) would be considered an ideological difference within the 'single Chinese nationhood', that needs repairing. If Taiwan really declares independence, then the whole model of Zhonghua Minzu comes crashing down.

The whole model of Zhonghua Minzu is built on two premises

1. that all people on the land of the Middle Kingdom are Chinese
2. that all such Chinese must live under the same state authority

If Taiwan declares independence it would be mean that either not all the people in the land of the Middle Kingdom are Chinese - they can for example be Taiwanese (a separate national identity) or even if they are ethnically Chinese from the land of the Middle Kingdom, they can have their own state. That means Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria can all go their own separate ways, if they don't consider themselves as Chinese, or any group of people, either Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, Sui, or Han Chinese from some Province can decide to establish their own state with a different political system and authority. THAT would be the end of China. That is why China has been so adamant about Taiwan and has proceeded to thwart its independence.

So the fundamental ideology of the Chinese Political Elite is 'Zhonghua Minzu' - 'The Great People of China'. Communism was simply a slogan, an instrument to achieve the unity of China and establish a new central authority.

With the core consolidated, the Chinese would embark on a renewed passion to spread the color of the 'ethnic core' to the outlying concentric circles of various ethnicities - the Manchus, the Sui, the Tibetans, the Mongols, the Uyghurs, etc. That is also a reason why China is insisting on retaking Arunachal Pradesh especially Tawang. The whole concentric circle of Tibetans must lie within Zhonghua Minzu for it to be colored by the 'ethnic core' most easily. The Dalai Lama is a very big thorn in the side of the Chinese simply because he threatens the basis of Zhonghua Minzu. Zhonghua Minzu does it envisage this amount of autonomy for any ethnicity, that its resists the 'ethnic core's' continuous assimilating pull. That is why the CPC, 'the inner core', is trying to get the other fragments of the 'ethnic core', the Han Chinese in Singapore, to accept China's nominee for Panchen Lama.

This project has been going on for some time. Once the concentric circle of Tibetans is assimilated into the inner circle, the Chinese would, I am sure, proceed to other people in the region as well. If Tibetans can belong to the Chinese, then why not Burmese, or Laotian, or Vietnamese? If the Uyghurs can be Chinese, then why not the Kazakhs, the Kirghiz, the Uzbeks? If some Mongolians can be Chinese, then why not all Mongolians? It is this expansionist drive of PRC, which one day would cause China to claim the whole of our North-East. Then Assamese, Nagas, Mizos, Manipuris would all be claimed as Chinese people and be brought under Chinese rule.

The Chinese have employed strong tactics to impose the ideology of 'Zhonghua Minzu' over the Manchus, Sui, Mongols, Koreans, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Taiwanese. There are still lot of chinks in the Middle Kingdom.

China has gone ahead and tried very hard to neutralize India. If India wants survive as a nation and a power, it would need to exploit all the chinks it can see in China's armor. Of course, the dragon spouts fire here and there to warn all others not to take too many liberties, but these should be ignored and one should proceed to question the fundamentals of Chinese nationhood.

Very good post RajeshA...its a keeper. Can it be archived? and can you develop more on what chinks in the armor exist and how can those chinks in the armor be exploited?

Edited after Klaus's word of caution.

Request to RajeshA ji and Venkarl ji, please modify your posts to make it "Chinks in the Armour" or similar phraseology lest somebody reports your posts due to lack of understanding!
You do know that the chi** word is a no-no in BRFATA.

One of the recent phenomenon that worries me is the continuing incidence of Anthrax in Bangladesh. Reports suggest that the beef industry of BD has suffered tremendous losses over Eid over anthrax scare. Apart from rejoicing that a lot of milch cattle lives would be spared and the animal used more sustainably, what is worrying is that we know that Anthrax is a likely component of Biological Weapons possibly available with Islamist terror groups. It is not entirely impossible that either due to lack of knowledge, or carelessness in handling, or even worse a small-scale field trial is being carried out in areas where the aftermath could be covered up and made untraceable due to predominance of Islamists and their networks penetration of state power.

Any scenario or update about the possibility over the subcontinent would be welcome!

X-Posted from Afghanistan News & Discussion Thread

SSridhar wrote:Afghanistan & OTA, Chennai

This passing-out parade will also be memorable for 18 gentlemen cadets from the Afghan National Army and two lady cadets from Lesotho who underwent training at OTA. Speaking to The Hindu after the ceremony, Ahmed Shahpoor Nooristani from the Nuristan province in Afghanistan, said “Back home there isn't enough military training facilities or instructors. This was a golden opportunity for us.” The men from various provinces, including Logar, Ghazi and Kandahar, who are alumni of Afghan Military School, will be heading to Kabul via Delhi on Saturday night to join their army as officers. Fourteen more Afghan cadets are undergoing training in OTA.

IMHO, I think India should allow people of other countries to serve in the Indian Armed Forces, just as the British Army allows Gurkhas, and US allows Green Card holding immigrants to serve in the US Armed Forces as non-commissioned officers, while it bars them for certain units like Navy SEALS and from certain countries hostile to USA except with special waivers.

We could allow this facility to all countries of SAARC except those hostile to India - which would allow Afghan, Nepali, Sri Lankan citizens etc. to serve in the Indian Armed Forces as soldiers. That way when they go back to their countries India would have a ready pool of military men, who could support India in some Indian Agenda or protect Indian infrastructure there. Like USA, one could also offer a road to Indian citizenship for say 5 years if service. Should Myanmar also join SAARC, it would give India an extra lever to influence the happenings there.

Afghans serving in the Indian Army would be a good way to ensure that Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan does not get out of hand.

This policy would also establish that India is the dominant military power in South Asia, and responsible for the security of the region.

Simply an idea! I don't know whether the Indian Military would appreciate the idea, or write it off as absurd.

RajeshA,

It is some thing that can be tried on, perhaps on the lines of the Indian foreign legion. Controlled by the MOD and the IA but separate from the IA. Where any non Indian can join to serve the cause of the Indian nation. at the time of discharge they get an option of becoming an Indian citizen of returning to the native society.