Bharat Rakshak

One fundamental sawal here - Why are we trying to understand Pakistan all over again? Paki will remain paki. Paki is India's gutter which India will have to clean sooner or later. Unkil and other 2.5 fathers are not allowing us to clean this gutter. But we will clean it, in spite of them.

Why new way of looking at gutter, hain ji?

To clean it with least damage to self.

ramana wrote:To clean it with least damage to self.

dada.. we wear gloves.. we clean the gutter, ekddam chakaachak.. when its clean , we remove the gloves, and burn them off along with the dirty clothes and wear clean ones from inside the home. lagey haathon we also clean our home as well, with same broom, gloves and clothes and mop before disposing this off.. the damage will happen to gloves and clothes only.. or rather, where ever damage happens, that is glove and cloth and needs to be disposed for greater good.

when we have burnt the dirty ones and worn clean ones, the job is done..

it is like parashurama donating earth to a "worthy" kashyapa.

Atri wrote:One fundamental sawal here - Why are we trying to understand Pakistan all over again? Paki will remain paki. Paki is India's gutter which India will have to clean sooner or later. Unkil and other 2.5 fathers are not allowing us to clean this gutter. But we will clean it, in spite of them. Why new way of looking at gutter, hain ji?

Lets not forget, in spite of the Poaqroach bravado, they beat Speedy Gonzalez in quickness when it comes to self preservation. Gutter is clogged now and onlee thing we need to make sure is that stench go westward not Eastward.

not that easy saar...what you are describing is the final stage. before that the tactics of Islamists have to be guarded against. the sword arm of Dharma has to be protected manasa-vaacha-karmana against the Taqyia of the degraded ideology. for that an understanding of what fuels and guides them is necessary.

ramana ji, regarding the relationship between the ruling theology and the ego-drives of the Qabilah serpent and its mulla crest -- its not merely the existence of such memes, but their relative truth-values and order by which they are arranged that creates this Qabilah syndrome. If the order and relative value of the different elements of Islam can be torn apart and reversed, then genuine reformation is possible. It would be like finishing off Jarasandha, who was created by joining two halves which were lifeless by themselves, and he was destroyed only when Bhima tore those halves apart and flung them in opposite directions so that they don't merge back again. To do this, both, physical sledgehammer and philosophical surgery are necessary, IMHO. If you look at the Vedas, these memes are present there too. Yet, the overall effect is completely different, because the relative truth-values given to different memes is different in Vedanta philosophy, which is the crest jewel of Indic society.

brihaspati wrote:At the moment Pakiland cell is simply consolidating its identity resources. The so-called subnationalims so fondly mentioned as tearing Pakiland apart - are manifestation of the same process.

B ji, I agree with your entire post. Engagement and intercourse with any splinter cell of the Qabila, even seemingly a sweet-singing anti-cell, is equivalent to being cuckolded -- i.e., energizing and helping raise a hatchling by spending resources of one's own nest.

But what about a third scenario?: Where the Qabila cell is denied its symbiotes and quarantined, so that the Qabilah and its splinter cells enervate one another. Only the split is energized with physical resources, and widened by providing a new ideological context.

Ramanaji

I am writing the following with due respect to you.

You are assuming too much by saying that 'not enough' people understand the Kabila model yet!

Do you have any evidence to prove that? What is your definition of ‘enough’?

I have understood the Kabila model very clearly from what Rudradevji has written. It is not difficult to understand.

Although it was a great post by Rudradevji, I personally feel that this theory is not applicable to all countries/modern times.

Rudradevji wrote:
‘Fact: Kabila system prospers, endures and successfully extinguishes pre-Islamic cultures in certain geographies.
Fact: Kabila system becomes weakened by investment and "settling", and it is also less able to extinguish pre-Islamic cultures, in certain other geographies. Islamic ideology does not need to have a "basis" for either of these things to happen. They have already happened’

Rudradevji, why the Kabila system in Pakistan has not become weak by investment and "settling"? I foresee a complete talibanisation of Pakistan.

Harbansji
I totally agree with your statement: ‘We don't have enough geography to hold out forever. Our forefathers could have had that luxury, we don't. Our approach to creeping Islamization has to be looking beyond the geographical perspective.’

Carlji – you are absolutely right in pointing out the following:
1.That's why I suggested to Rudradev ji that there is a psychological/mythical equivalent of the geopolitical qabilah metaphor.

2. In today's urbanized landscape, even in Western countries, there are certain psycho-social contours in the demographics on which the qabilah game will be played.

3. In this view, geography is not a medium or a barrier, considering the phenomenon of leapfrogging in a technological, networked age.

4. The colonization and cornering of geographical and biological resources will be the end-effect of this long process that will begin from this psycho-social landscape.

5. Therefore, just as geography, military, economics and technology are considered in mapping this qabilah theory out, one must add the dimension of psychology and spirituality. Only then a consistent model can be developed. Otherwise, significant exceptions will always be found.

Brihaspatiji

I agree when you point out the following:

‘Qabilah is a good way of understanding Islam. However, it does not explain some crucial features as they obtain over India. This is what I have always been worried about.

When we use Islam's experience in lands and cultures outside of India to model what happens in the subcontinent, we may miss the core drivers of Islamism’

A collection of pertinent posts from the TSP thread....


Shiv wrote......

Arun Menon wrote:I would like to ask some questions to Shiv.

1. Should we live in peace with Pakistan?

2. Can we live in peace with Pakistan?

3. Can Pakistan exist without its hate for India and Hindus?

4. Is a united Pakistan or broken up former Pakistan better for India? Why?

5. What should we do and what conditions must exist to live in peace with a united Pakistan?

or

6. What should we do and what conditions must exist to break up Pakistan?

I would really appreciate it if you would answer me. Thanks in advance.


PS: Is it possible to de-brainwash the Islamic fanatics that make up the people (majority) of Pakistan?

1. Should we live in peace with Pakistan?

• Indian policy has always been to live in peace with Pakistan. Pakistani policy has been to wage war. What is extremely odd is that after a series of defeats and setbacks, Pakistan has become dysfunctional enough to continue of a path that will get its people nothing other than more punishment - which has been stated by some Pakistani leaders as "acceptable" a long as India gets punished in the process. What is equally odd is that India recognized these signs decades ago but not one single so called "world power" (other than the USSR) gave a damn which shows where their priorities lie. The US of course has actively aided Pakistan as it slipped into dysfunctionality. But if we can make peace with Pakistan, we must. Others powers (USA/China) gain by playing us off against Pakistan.

2. Can we live in peace with Pakistan?

• Whoa! I think we can. I am gradually beginning to see Pakistan as a mass psychiatric case brought up to believe that India is out to take Pakistan/islam down. This paranoia will need to be addressed. It would be easier to address if we could help install a cooperative government in Pakistan. Cooperative==not army, unless a Paki general has more balls that Paki generals generally show. And the army needs to be kept out and de fanged. The US does not desire that.

3. Can Pakistan exist without its hate for India and Hindus?

• Yes. It will be like Bangladesh. A piece of former India ruled by someone or other, but trading with India and working for the good of the people. That is paramount. India is doing that. So is Bangladesh. Pakistan is not doing that. And no one is really bothered - certainly not the USA

4. Is a united Pakistan or broken up former Pakistan better for India? Why?

• My personal feeling is currently going in the following direction. Words like "United" and "Divided" are emotionally charged expressions and we must stop using them. It is important for educated Indians to raise themselves a little higher and understand what is happening to Pakistan. In brief we have a nation of 180 million people that is suddenly beginning to wake up and smell the coffee and is finding that all the Proud Paki bullshit that they have been fed for decades is worth less than a pool of pig's piss. They are not the power that they were told they were. There are not respected by anyone,. Their economy is in a shambles. The "enemy" India is doing better and the enemy India is not attacking. The US is attacking instead. As are fellow Muslims. And the enemy India is not suppressing its Muslims and preventing them from doing azan. Indian Muslims are not being forced to run scared - which is the reason why Pakistanis were making sacrifices all these years - to save Indian Muslims.
  
  It is very important to foresee what this sort of realization will do to a population. In cognitive dissonance (which is happening to millions of Pakis) there will be a tendency to try and go into denial and clutch onto old beliefs about India. It is difficult to change beliefs that have been driven in. This is the time when India should not threaten Pakistan with break up. India is the only country that has openly demonstrated an ability to break Pakistan. If Pakistan breaks up on its own that is not our doing, but we should say "We want an intact Pakistan". We should not appear to be trying to break them up.
  
  But apart from that - I believe that if we can bring sanity to Pakjab, we can then use that to put pressure on Pakistan to give Baluchis and Pushtuns their rights and ensure that we trade with those people as well and help them with development. if those people break free - Pakjab and Sindh will continue to be in turmoil as they are now - with enemies everywhere and war all around. This situation has given me great pleasure (which is why I made this video) and makes me want to tell Pakis "**** you. You can eat shit now", But in the long term, that is not such a good thing - for my children.
  
  Ultimately we should be able to have land links via Pakjab to Baluchistan, Iran and Afghanistan. That is the way forward.

5. What should we do and what conditions must exist to live in peace with a united Pakistan?

or

6. What should we do and what conditions must exist to break up Pakistan?

• I think we should do what any power does - and that is to retain the capability to punish any other power militarily, but that power should be held in check if we can avoid it. The conditions to live in peace with Pakistan are not difficult. The first step is to make the Pakistan army weaker and realise that Pakistan's interests are the interests of its 180 million people and not the interests of its its 10,000 strong army brass. Islamists can be held at bay if the Pakistan army is first shown its place and brought down to play a positive role in Pakistan rather than pretending to protect Pakistan while working as a US proxytute. Pakistan can do with a good police force that protects its citizens and the army should do that IMO. Not that they will listen to me. Islamists who attack India will be killed/arrested as and when we get them. They know that and that is what is happening.

Is it possible to de-brainwash the Islamic fanatics that make up the people (majority) of Pakistan?

• There are two sides of me. One is slimy and scheming. The other is honest and attempts to be unbiased and scientific.
  
  We have no data to say that the majority of Pakis are going around hating India. Pakistanis are not seriously being polled about anything let alone India. But if we believe the few polls conducted by the usual biased ba$tards in western media outlets - there are a lot of Pakis for whom India is not the biggest threat. That feeling is a pastime of the new rich middle class who also contribute to the LeT/JuD. The worry expressed on here is that if India makes peace and the Pakistan economy gets better, the larger numbers of new middle class will then have more money to support anti-India activities. Pakistanis will do a taqiya till they get better and then Islam will kick in.
  
  What all this means is simple. One set of Indians are afraid of dealing with Pakistan for stated reasons. Another set of Indians wants to have a go.
  
  The problem with letting Pakistan stew in its juice is that it allows fearful Pakistani leaders to invite foreign powers to take over former Indian lands (Pakistan) because they do not want India to get it. These Paki leaders are certain that they will lose to India. Letting foreign powers sit in former Indian lands - many of which are sacred to Hindus and Sikhs of India is wrong. It is happening because of Pakistani fear of India. We need to change the way Pakistanis see India. Pakistanis need to see India as a win win for them. That does not mean we give away our lands. We get access to what was ours. We are not capturing anything. Pakistan will remain a sovereign nation and will not need to keep foreigners in their country because they fear India. Pakistanis in turn will get better access to those parts of India from which their ancestors came. Pakistani need to understand that modern nations become great only by developing their people, not by whoring for other powers. The most painful thing for Pakstanis to face is that their "respected army" is no more than a cheap whore. One side of me makes me want to rub it in and laugh. But we must resist the temptation. We have more to gain by telling Pakis that their army is great but needs to achieve greater heights by changing tack to help Pakistanis develop without foreign interference and that India will help. not attack.

Arun Menon replied......

Thanks Shiv for taking the time to give your answers. They were quite informative and thought provoking. I really do wish they become like the Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina (ie moderate and cooperative) and I really hope that things don't slide into a negative situation on that front if the opposition comes to power. Considering the size of the problem Pakistan poses it is going to take a herculean effort to bring things to normalcy between us. I really don't know if this can be done. I am not an expert in that regard anyway, so I leave that to the judgement of my betters. But, considering how things are going I don't see any hope (except if you take the current civilian "mutiny" as something of a change and a positive for us). I fear that something similar to the Taliban are going to take over large swathes of Pakistan, just like in Afghanistan. Now all of these are my fears and like I said before, I am not an expert and they need not be "valid" fears. Even if things are changing for the better, I wonder if we can return to normalcy within the generation of 6-year-old nephew. To tell the truth, though it would give me great pleasure to see these vermin suffer like the famine and disease stricken Somalis, but I wonder if it is good to have a population 180 million or more living in misery and breeding like pigs at you doorstep, no matter how strong your doors are. So, I do see the attraction of having a "normal" (if that is even possible) Pakistan. I really hope things happen in a way that would best benefit us and our future generations. In the end, I believe most of the Islamic disease will be cured once the Arab scum runs out of oil. So, lets hope for a brighter future.

Also, I would like to say as someone who in the last 10 years or so have read your posts practically every day, I have noticed lately that you have mellowed in your outlook towards Pakistan. What brought this on? (Any chance we will see the fire and brimstone Shiv any time soon ?)

Shiv replied....

Arun Menon wrote: I have noticed lately that you have mellowed in your outlook towards Pakistan. What brought this on? (Any chance we will see the fire and brimstone Shiv any time soon ?)

Pakistan has changed too. My brimstone against Pakistan is being replaced by (currently) muted opposition to all those countries who have tried to make a small failing nation a thorn in India's side. I tend to experiment with various options/explanations that appear to fit reality (as I see it). Somewhere along the way I stopped seeing Pakistan as a peer, an entity with whom we need to scramble to reach equality and started seeing Pakistan as weak state that is desperately pretending to be the real India.

We spent years on BRF wasting time because we thought India is "like any other country" and that Pakistan "is like any other country". We (on BRF) too experimented with various analogies to explain reality and say "The US did this to nation X" and "Israel did this to nation Y". A is bold. B was cowardly. Chamberlain,. Churchill. Hitler Why can't we be like blah blah? But India has attributes that no other nation has, and Pakistan has consequently developed behavior that few other nations have displayed to my knowledge. There are very few "precedents" in dealing with Pakistan.

One thing that does not get much attention on here is the fact that India was expected to fail and Pakistan was expected to succeed. It is a quirk of history for me personally that I had become a boy old enough to read newspapers by the time people in other parts of the world started wondering about how and why India is managing to hold together and hold successful elections and peaceful changes of government. You see, if you were leader of a powerful western nation and saw how power went from Liaqat Ali Khan to Ayub Khan, you would probably crinkle up your nose an say that is how the turd world works Tinpot military dictators like that sleepy African in uniform. Turd world Guran to western Phantom, ghost who walks. So it was expected that when Nehru kicked the bucket - India would part ways with itself. Nehru was by all definitions a "WOG" - Westernized Oriental Gentleman. The westernization kept this uncivilized nation together.

So we had a situation where India was the bigger nation with greater potential - but that was not known to anyone because that was in the future. Pakistan the smaller nation with a smart tightassed military dictator was an Asian Tiger - although Pakistan's "economic success" rode on American arms aid.

What India has done is to claw itself up from being considered a basket case dead civilization to something that is counted in the top 5 or 6 in the world in all sorts of ways. Most of US BRFites belong to an era that has seen Pakistan as a peer. If you were an Indian who has been old enough to read from say 1975 to 1995 - you will probably see Pakistan as a peer onlee, because the world, the media (Indian media too) portrayed India as a peer of Pakistan. It was wrong even back then, but we grew up in that environment and accepted it. On BRF most people see India as a peer of Pakistan and inferior to the "Great powers". We are saying that India should "sort Pakistan out" and not worry about what is above us. Those who are above us play the "great games" and we sit unable to sort a peer out - so we are inferior. These have been commonly experssed BRF sentiments over the last decade. But that is not how great games are played.

India was never Pakistan's peer and will never be. It was always ahead but Pakistan was propped up and set up as a military competitor by the collusion of Paki military dictators and a set of "world powers" who did not care and needed vassals to fit into their interests.

Pakistan however can do with India as a friend and an ally. That will give them back their history, their dignity and their strategic depth. Mummy is in India. Not in Arabia.

IF_Mughals_were_great and IF_Pakis_feel_they_represent_Mughals it is clear that this "greatness' did not come from Arabia. It came from India. Nothing will change that. Pakis continuously howled and complained that the Muslims who remained in India had drawn the short straw and needed to be rescued. This ridiculous notion got traction only because Paki leaders became US "allies" slaving for the USA as early as 1951 - four years after partition. By all metrics Indian Muslims are better, and better off than Pakistanis. Pakistan like I said is a huge psychiatric case that needs therapy.

But why should India be the therapist? If I have to answer that one, this post only gets longer.

What is it that Pakistan wants? Arms and money from USA and being an "ally"" of the USA did not give them power or dignity. A shameless ass-licking of China and embarrassing praise of the red book wielding maniac did not get them what they wanted. All that Pakistanis want is India. They can't get it and are suicidal. All these so called "great powers" who we want to kowtow to have been trying to give us to Pakistan. See the ironic dhmmitude here. The US has been screwing us through the back door - but we are so enamored of them. The US and China together could not give Pakis what they wanted. Only india can do that, but having broken away in 1947, Pakis cannot have part ownership of India in the way Indian Muslims have. Pakis can have access. They can have dignity. They can change their name to India minor or Northwest India if they like and retain the Rupee with some exchange rate with INR. And we would like to keep all their provinces attached to Pakistan/Northwest India rather than have the US sitting there.

India will not come to Pakis by force. Even with the assistance of USA AND (AND!!!) China who are adversaries in theirown right. they colluded to help Pakistan against india. (Speaks volumes about a deep Indian sense of inferiority to be unable to see the significance of this) Only by mending relations with India can Pakistanis say with pride and without embarrassment or fakeness that "I am an Indian. I am a descendant of blabla empire." Indians are all descendants of some great empire or other.

We need to turn the tables on the current world order.

RamaY wrote....

shiv wrote: My brimstone against Pakistan is being replaced by (currently) muted opposition to all those countries who have tried to make a small failing nation a thorn in India's side. I tend to experiment with various options/explanations that appear to fit reality (as I see it). Somewhere along the way I stopped seeing Pakistan as a peer, an entity with whom we need to scramble to reach equality and started seeing Pakistan as weak state that is desperately pretending to be the real India.

If there is a single country that is responsible for making Pakistan a thorn in Bharat's bed, it is Secular India. It is this masochist who is encouraging the paki sadist since it's birth.

A overt Hindu Bharat will solve Paki problem (along with it's friends) in no time.

Sharing my own opinion, not someone else's opinion as information

CRS wrote.......

Do I have the last word ? I think DocJi is way too obsessed with US loyalists garbage to take everything else he says seriously, including his surrender to TSP strategy. As always, truth is not black and white, but in between.So here goes:

1. TSP's, especially pakijabi's hatred of India is beyond repair, its irreversible. They want nothing short of India destroyed or both India and TSP go down in a mushroom cloud. Status quo means India wins, and this is unacceptable to pakijabis. Thus, no room for compromise.

2. USA and its lackeys, and China have harnessed this hatred to box and stymie India and lock it in an "South Asia" box. Furthermore, the sad part is that if US wants to, it can turn on the screws even more on India

3. As pathetic as it is, there is no doubt in my mind that if pigLeT terror is down today a tad, its because of US pressure on TSP, fence along the LOC notwithstanding. Furthermore, TSP itself made a conscious decision to scale back and embarrass India through stone pelting. And of course, MMSJi with his "borders are irrelevant" and post 26/11 surrender has kept TSP's hope alive that if they continue this path, a lot more is on the anvil. But make no mistake about it, TSP has not a paid a prices for its slaughter of Indians, rather, it has gained big time, its pigLeT infrastructure is still intact, and at the opportune moment, it can strike at will

4. India's own faults, including obsessive secularism, weak sense of nationalism manifesting itself through this self-flagellating "hindu terrorism" (DocJi calls this Chanakyan) have all but rendered it impotent and soft state that anybody can p!ss on with impunity and get away with it

5. Of course, there are Hindu extremists just as there are Christian extremists or whatever. But at best "Hindu extremists" can dif up cricket pitches in India, and show their "valor" on Valentine Day couples in India's metros. They are toothless cowards who don't deserve the equal equal labe with pigLeTs. But this equivalence that India has engineered has obliterated India's moral case against TSP-sponsored Islamic terror

6. Indian middle class has absolutely no clue on the threats USA/TSP/China combine pose to India, and they are consumed with a mind numbing toxic combination of IT back office jobs, Bollywood, and cricket

Those of us who realize India's weaknesses, but feel it can do a lot better, call on to look within and do something about 4, 5,and 6. Only an internally strong India can the challenge US & its lackeys on 2. This has nothing to do with being a US loyalist or not, just hard-nosed facts.

RamaY wrote.....

Why a overt Hindu-India is the panacea for Paki problem.

The birth of Pakistan is based on religious ground. It was argued that Muslims and Hindus are two different nations (it was argued that sub-continental Muslim culture already separated from underlying Hindu culture) and cannot live together.

The got separated and Pakistan became a overt islamic nation. On the other hand India declared itself secular and trying to prove Pakistan is wrong; and it failed miserably at it. If one wants proof, one should look at the political events within India.

India sold the idea of secularism to Indians as well as world humanity on wrong foundations. It opted for secularism arguing that a overt Hindu identity would undermine (both internally and externally) the religious minority interests in India. In other words, it supports Pakistani logic that subcontinental muslims (and Christians - as we can see constituent assembly debates) cannot prosper in the absence of the secular constitution.

Imagine, on the other hand, India declared itself as a Hindu-nation and defined its constitution as
- Democratically elected govt
- Provide reservations (even for religious minorities, if needed)
- Reclaiming, Protection and development of Hindu cultural and historical artifacts
- Ban on religious conversions to abhrahamic religions, while allowing revertions into Hinduism.
etc.,

And demonstrate that not a single religious minority is prosecuted in Independent Bharat on the basis of their religious identity or birth or caste; then THAT would have proven conclusively that Pakistan's claim was wrong and baseless.

SUCH a Bharat would have been a beacon in the subcontinent toward self-awareness, self-development and mutual respect.

Carl wrote:

brihaspati wrote:At the moment Pakiland cell is simply consolidating its identity resources. The so-called subnationalims so fondly mentioned as tearing Pakiland apart - are manifestation of the same process.

B ji, I agree with your entire post. Engagement and intercourse with any splinter cell of the Qabila, even seemingly a sweet-singing anti-cell, is equivalent to being cuckolded -- i.e., energizing and helping raise a hatchling by spending resources of one's own nest.

But what about a third scenario?: Where the Qabila cell is denied its symbiotes and quarantined, so that the Qabilah and its splinter cells enervate one another. Only the split is energized with physical resources, and widened by providing a new ideological context.

What we want is the dissolution of the glue that holds Islam together - which is a smooth interweaving of freeing from guilt while facilitating biological greed. To do this, one direct way is the delegitimization of the theological leadership.

At least two methods exist to do this - (a) remove alternative claimants and pretensions to leadership - so-called liberal, secular, tolerant, modernizing, post-Islamics from power or on the way to power. These people delay the exposure of the real corrosive elements of the theology that survives like a patient virus. In this method, it is crucial to have the mullahs in direct power. This then over time delegitimizes the theology itself - since the great preachers of purity prove gods with clay feet and even worse than the kaffir leaders they lambast all the time.

(b) directly finish off the theologians and militarily defeat and crush all islamic institutions in that society. Because the theology establishes the myth that all happens by the wish of their supreme - such an overwhelming and erasing defeat will prove to the bulk that their supreme has abandoned them - or better still, no such supreme exists.

brihaspati wrote:What we want is the dissolution of the glue that holds Islam together - which is a smooth interweaving of freeing from guilt while facilitating biological greed. To do this, one direct way is the delegitimization of the theological leadership.

...

(a) ...it is crucial to have the mullahs in direct power. This then over time delegitimizes the theology itself

(b) directly finish off the theologians and militarily defeat and crush all islamic institutions in that society.

B ji,

Can we explore this a little more? I don't know if it helps, but I had used the Jarasandha metaphor in a previous post to ramana ji, because it had occurred to me that there was a similitude.

The psychological "glue" that holds the two halves of Islamism that you mentioned is actual physical pain, on top of which is held the constant threat of physical pain.

Can an anti-humanistic entity forged by physical pain be completely undone solely by further brutality? Certainly, the physical sledgehammer is required to finish off the compulsively violent mulla-controlled thuggery and break open the ghetto.

But the second part will have to be philosophical surgery. IMHO, your point (a) about discrediting the mullacracy is one step of the second part. It must be followed up by a reversal of the assigned truth-values internal to Islamic theology itself. This requires aggressive injection of Indic ethical values in order to metamorphosize the vermin, after quarantining it in its self-spun cuccoon. Once that happens, physical force can again be used to tear open the cuccoon and allow a metamorphosized version out, while destroying the vestigials.

Added:
Without this internal surgical, I believe there is always the possibility of it re-forming. the two halves of Jarasandha, though torn apart, kept rejoining and Bhima was vexed, until Krishna told him to throw them "in opposite directions" after ripping them.

In Iran option a) was implemented in 1978.

ramana wrote:In Iran option a) was implemented in 1978.

Exactly. So we have to execute the next part of that step, otherwise even if the Ayatollah regime collapses, it will be one of the many vain iterations in which Bhima ripped Jarasandha apart, but failed to perform the decisive reversal. Even if Iran is invaded with overwhelming physical force, and even if a majority of Iranians declare themselves Oiropean liberals, there will always be a significant section that will remain Islamist by going into a shell, or by dispersing as spores and contributing elsewhere.

Kakkaji wrote:
This entire Paki TFTA/ Indian SDRE business is BS. If dressed and groomed the same way, Pakjabis look no different than Indian Punjabis, Pak-Mohajirs no different than Indian Biharis, and so on.


In India, skin colour is not an indicator of wealth or power, but in Pakistan it seems it is.

There is absolutely no doubt that it is bullshit. But what is beginning to surprise and educate me as I read Rajiv Malhotra is that the attitudes that Pakistanis carry, were "put in" by colonial European attitudes. It is not as if the Brits and their succeeding power the US are innocent and it is the Islamic mozzie bhench*d who is guilty. Muslims have been brainwashed too. Europeans all subscribed to "Aryan" until WW2. After WW2 they found it inconvenient in Europe but the theories were all alive and healthy in respect of India and slavery in America.

Pakistan opted to jump in with a white supremacist racist paradigm that saw Hindus as inferior. It was convenient that the Asraf who went to Pakistan were actually fair complexioned and were closely allied to the Brits (they did not fight for independence from Britain) and were "people of the book" who accpeted the Old testament. the old testament talks of Noah's 3 sons of whom one son "Ham" was cursed by Noah that all his descendants would be inferior servants to others. Hence Africans and other dark skinned races were "Hamites". The fact that Sanskritic culture came from dark complexioned people was unacceptable. So the Aryan race theory was cooked up. But Indian Aryans were inferior because of intermingling with Dravidians. The people who made Pakistan had no such disability and joined up with the white supremacists and successfully carried through the claim that they needed a separate country and "protection" from inferior Hindus. But that does not actually represent all Pakistanis. Mainly RAPE class - who are now brainwashing Pakis just as Brits brainwashed Indians to accept their inferiority, not complain about things, and to "know their place" and understand the fundamental white black divide. This is what Indians are now telling each other. Even on BRF.

shiv wrote:Anyone notice any colour class differences in Pakistan?

The upper crust of paki society is intermixed with foreign blood. Benezir's mother was lebenese or Iranian; many lebenese and syrians are almost european looking (eg., in the US, Abizaid, Sununu, Petreaus are all of lebenese descent and pass for white). Salman taseer's mother is white english; she married his father mohd din taseer and converted to islam. That woman's sister married faiz ahmed faiz who is supposed to be a punjabi poet of some distinction. I believe even gilani's forbears are of middle eastern descent. Another example are the Aga Khan's: over generations, each successor has married a Eurpoean woman, who invariably converted to this weirdo heritical shia sect, and the latest aga khans are almost purely white. One such fellow married Rita hayworth in the 50s and tried to convert her even though he himself lived like a euro playboy in monaco, wineing and wimmining all the time. She didn't co nvert, and then quickly divorced, and didn't let her daughter convert either. That fellow became Pakistan's permanent rep to the UN, where I am sure many a gora was impressed by how bakis were just like them. The latest pompous ENglish accented UN rep is also part foriegn no doubt.

The fetish for white skin was of-course paramount with the ottoman sultans who after the first one or two always had east european slave women in their harem, and the favorite one was invariably of that stock. SO most of the sultans were purely european. And the turkish aristocracy was the same way no doubt. I think in the subcontinent, muslims have had a bigger role in fetishing white skin, and certainly their dominance in bollywood has much to do with those distortions. Long before the euros came to india, the muslims and their heros in Turkey, Persia were already trying to whiten themsleves by capturing and copulating with balkan and east european wimmins. If you go on Puki webistes, the angusih when musilm wimmins give birth to a "sangli" baby is very deep and shameful.

Mulla Shiv, what have you been drinking...your recent posts are quite strange
Begum Akthar may have sung..aapke badle hue tewar nahin dekhe jaate..

Are you giving your son/daughter on marriage to MSA or Bhadrakumar's kin?

Dr. Shiv, I must say your recent posts have been very thought-provoking and certainly a departure not only from much of the consensus on BRF (as it seems to me) but also from your own previous thoughts.

I have a few questions for you, but before that let me lay out what I glean from your recent posts, with the caveat that I may be misunderstanding what you are saying. What you seem to be suggesting is:
- Those who focus on the hostile role of Pakistan exclusively are not looking either at the root cause/enabler of that hostility, or at the bigger picture
- That bigger picture involves the role of the UK and then the US, who have encouraged and egged on this hostility and delusional 'superiority' complex of the Pakis (e.g. when you said that

The US has been screwing us through the back door - but we are so enamored of them.

- Therefore we should be thinking of how to dislodge the UK/US involvement in the subcontinent -- and this will go some way towards resolving the problem of Pakistan

We have to think like a regional power, not as a local IndiaPakistan power. It is the US that needs to go.

When it comes to Pakistan itself, you seem to be saying that:
- The TSPA holds prime responsibility for deluding the paki abduls into thinking they can conquer India, and is the most to blame for inculcating this mentality

I am gradually beginning to see Pakistan as a mass psychiatric case brought up to believe that India is out to take Pakistan/islam down. This paranoia will need to be addressed. It would be easier to address if we could help install a cooperative government in Pakistan. Cooperative==not army, unless a Paki general has more balls that Paki generals generally show.

- The average Paki is not necessarily hostile to India, which means that having a civvie government in power can lead to friendly relations since hostility with India is not a popular, mass belief

We have no data to say that the majority of Pakis are going around hating India. Pakistanis are not seriously being polled about anything let alone India.

- Removal of the TSPA and having a civilian government in (true) power (not in name only) will mean that the anti-India anti-Hindu propaganda in Pakistan will begin to die down

I believe that if we can bring sanity to Pakjab, we can then use that to put pressure on Pakistan to give Baluchis and Pushtuns their rights and ensure that we trade with those people as well and help them with development.

And ultimately, that this can lead to a situation where Pakistan, without breakup, can kick out US influence and maintain friendly relations with India to our mutual benefit and the greater benefit of the region.


Now if that understanding of your thoughts is correct, here are my concerns with this argument:
1) Your contention that the average Paki is not hostile to India or predisposed to militant Islam seems to echo the very claims of many TFTA RAPEs that Pakistan has a 'moderate majority' which is why Islamic parties have only ever won 0.000006% of the votes in any election. These are claims that have been derided by many, including yourself, by pointing out that there is already so much Islamic orthodoxy built into the existing constitution and politics of 'secular' parties that there is hardly a need for overly Islamic parties to take power to have an Islamized polity. There are also the polls (Gallup?) conducted a few years ago which showed that something like 85% of Pakis support the death penalty for apostasy, and stoning for adultery, among other brutal 'pure' Islamic punishments. Not to mention the fate of Qadri, who has been feted and has a popular following, or the JuD/LeT roadshow that is currently attracting so many fans, or the ongoing devastation and victimization of Hindus, Christians, Ahmedis or Shias, all of which suggests a highly radicalized population that is hostile to India externally and assorted kafirs internally, not only because of a government policy of instilling this hatred (although that may be how it began), but because at this point that hatred is 'organic', i.e. part of the common wisdom and popular understanding of the country, just as Jews were known to be slimy vermin deserving of marginalization if not outright death in late 1930s Germany.

Are you now suggesting that those claims of the RAPEs repeated ad nauseam that the vast majority of Pakis are moderate, that you have yourself derided in the past, is actually true?

2) On a related note, you are essentially scapegoating the TSPA in your argument as the origin of all the misguided hatred of India and Hindus and the Indian heritage in Pakistan. You place the blame on them and suggest that without their inculcation of hatred in the common people there would be no such hatred. In this it seems to me that you put the cart before the horse -- the TSPA is not an entity that exists in isolation, without any connection with the Paki people. I would argue that the TSPA is a reflection of the country overall, even though it may be controlled and officered by the elites among that society. This means, again, that it is not the TSPA that is the source of the hatred of 'Hindu' India and delusions of conquering India, but that this hatred and delusion comes from the masses, from the popular thinking in Pakistan -- and is reflected in the TSPA because the TSPA is a reflection of the country (albeit a particularly nationalistic one).

This means that removing the TSPA from power is no guarantee that the hatred of India in TSP will disappear over time. This hatred is a self-sustaining ideology at this point, TSPA or no TSPA. The machines of hatred are the tens of thousands of madrassas, the jihadi tanzeems, and the Saudi money that fuels them. This also means that removing the US and UK from the region does not necessarily translate into an evaporation of this hatred -- it is not as though the US/UK created this hatred, although they have encouraged it and egged the Pakis on, to our mutual detriment.

3) You say that now is not the time for India to display hostility because Pakistan is more nervous than ever about collapse and Indian intentions. Yet SSridharji and others have eloquently argued before that this Pakistani fear of India is fake, a contrived argument designed to justify the armed forces' outsized share of national resources. India has never entertained thoughts of 'conquering' Pakistan because it is a hellhole, and steadily getting worse. Yet this has never mattered to the Pakis, who will fear us and hate us simply for existing -- because we present a contradiction to the ideas that underpin their entire country. 'Why Partition, if India is not the Muslim-hating nightmare that we were told it was?' is a very real question for a country that bloodily tore itself from its origins within living memory, and all that bloodshed cannot easily be accepted as based on the false premise that India and a Hindu majority were never a threat to Muslims in the subcontinent -- and therefore it seems to me that Pakis will continue to hold on to their cherished belief that India is 'out to get them', because this is the only possible reason for all the sacrifice and useless pursuit of foreign patronage, arms and ideologies all these miserable decades.


As for my views, I think that we should view Pakistan as a modern equivalent of Nazi Germany.
- Militarized society
- An already existing hatred and bigotry against specific ethnic/religious groups
- The sharpening and extension of this hatred by deliberate government policy so that it takes on epidemic proportions, to the point where the vast mass of civilians, although 'regular people like you and me', will in aggregate stand by and watch as their army commits genocide and violence against the hated religious groups and neighboring countries
- At this point, mere replacement of the army with civilians is insufficient to eliminate the hatred inculcated for so long
- The only solution is absolute collapse, i.e. political, social and military failure, so that the utter bankruptcy of the prior policy of hatred is demonstrated beyond a doubt

IMHO this kind of absolute failure of the prior ideology is necessary for the India/Hindu-hating thinking to be comprehensively dismantled in Pakistan. Without this failure, that thinking will survive and remain as a strand of popular thinking, and will ultimately reassert itself. In other words, there can be no peace with Pakistan unless it goes through a through drubbing in one form or another, and this defeat is widely understood as resulting from the failed social and religious policies of the country leading up to that point. Only after this demonstration, and the rejection of the prior poisonous ideology of hatred (which will not occur otherwise), can normality and peace return to India-Pak relations.

Apologies for the long post, but thank you for provoking much thought on this subject in past weeks.

ramana wrote:

A_Gupta wrote:The story of Anglo-US perfidy against India is complicated by the fact that the UK, via Lord Mountbatten did help get most of the princely states integrated into India. Far simpler it would have been for Atlee & Co to say the princely states were independent and that no British influence would be used to sway their decision about whether to remain independent or accede to India.

A_Gupta,

A principle in international relations is that one gets compensated for their loss.

In agreeing to the Partition of British India, the Brits agreed to let the Union of India takeover the Princely States as they owed them money for WWII. While assuring the Council of Princes that the paramountcy lapsed and they could do what they want they also agreed to let Union of India take over the Princely states. VP Menon came up with the accession treaty idea and Privy Purse for the Princes. Indira Gandhi reneged on the privy purses in 1969.

If they had not worked for the takeover the INC might not have accepted the Partition and could lead to a mess.
So it was not an option.


They did double perfidy on those Princes.

At least some of those "Princes" of served as vassals/servants of the British empire and the feudal princely set up was quite convenient. However through the mid 1700s right up ro the mid 1900s there was a climate of attitudes that would today be called "racism" based on several factors. Color was one, The other revolved around somehow proving the superiority of European Christianity over Judaism and the Hindoo "religion" which seemed to have a brilliant past which needed to be reconciled in various ways with white, European Christian supremacy. These attitudes made their way into academic and lay literature and into "common knowledge" having the backing of "science". Even at the time of my (or your) grandfather, it was "accepted" knowledge that nose measurements resulting in the "nasal index" was a good differentiator of races - with (inferior) black Aboriginals with broad flat noses at one end and the pure "Aryan" (later called "Indo-Europeans") at the other end, with the "nasal index" being able to detect mixed races who were inferior to the Indo-Europeans but superior to the Hamites/dark races. This was "science" just 100 years ago. The every science that we Indians took up with great gusto - included this racist mumbo-jumbo that our grandparents (and great grandparents of younger BRFites) learned if they got a Macaulayite education.

But what is germane to this thread is the fact that both Hindus and Muslims of India were equally exposed to these race weird theories via their education. For the Hindu there was no escape from the "weight" of the "scientific theory" that fair skinned northern upper caste was naturally superior to dark skin south lower caste. For the fair skinned Muslim (Ashraf) there was an escape route in the sense that he was not Hindu at all and therefore not subject to the degeneration of mixed race Hindus.

I am certain that these "scientific theories" laid the basis for an eventual partition because Hindus and Muslims became separate "races" with Muslims of Pakistan continuing their caste discrimination. It is to the eternal credit of Indians that they figured out the holes in this "science" very early (Ambedkar too) and refused to continue on the path that led to Pakistan.

Pakistaniyat is now a curious mixture of outdated race theory (superior white Muslims versus inferior dark Hindus) which is buttressed by rabid Islamism. Both are props to keep India away. But the "India" threat to Pakistan is not from India. The biggest threat India poses is the India that exists inside every Pakistani. But Pakistani fear of India is very very real and while India does fear and does have reason to fear the might of the Pakistani army, as a nation Pakistan can't do much without the support of a dangerous armed force that is among the top 10 in the world. This armed force exists in a nation built on a combination of race theory and religious bigotry. It is greatly in Indian interests to see that this powerful armed force is divested of its formidable irrational racist power. If it comes to war India is set to overwhelm the Pakistani armed forces no matter what anyone does - but even so it is better to get things done without losing more Indians in a war.

Oudated race theory makes the fair skinned Pakistani Muslim superior to Indians. But Islam makes him superior to the Christian West.

We now have a choice. Do we join with the Christian west to overwhelm Islamic Pakistan? Or let Islam and the Christian West fight it out while we reach out to the majority dark skinned Indic people of Pakistan?

Shiv, Now you get the Nazi features in Pakiology. Its a combination/amalgam of white Aryan race theory with Islamist believers vs Kufr.

They are both made for each other.

Especially the new born again folks and new Wahabandis!

No wonder they both thought 9/11 was a Gott dammerung moment and went for each other.

Kamboja wrote:1) Your contention that the average Paki is not hostile to India or predisposed to militant Islam seems to echo the very claims of many TFTA RAPEs that Pakistan has a 'moderate majority' which is why Islamic parties have only ever won 0.000006% of the votes in any election. These are claims that have been derided by many, including yourself, by pointing out that there is already so much Islamic orthodoxy built into the existing constitution and politics of 'secular' parties that there is hardly a need for overly Islamic parties to take power to have an Islamized polity. There are also the polls (Gallup?) conducted a few years ago which showed that something like 85% of Pakis support the death penalty for apostasy, and stoning for adultery, among other brutal 'pure' Islamic punishments. Not to mention the fate of Qadri, who has been feted and has a popular following, or the JuD/LeT roadshow that is currently attracting so many fans, or the ongoing devastation and victimization of Hindus, Christians, Ahmedis or Shias, all of which suggests a highly radicalized population that is hostile to India externally and assorted kafirs internally, not only because of a government policy of instilling this hatred (although that may be how it began), but because at this point that hatred is 'organic', i.e. part of the common wisdom and popular understanding of the country, just as Jews were known to be slimy vermin deserving of marginalization if not outright death in late 1930s Germany.

Are you now suggesting that those claims of the RAPEs repeated ad nauseam that the vast majority of Pakis are moderate, that you have yourself derided in the past, is actually true?

Good point!! One of the things that has bothered me from back in 2002 when my ebook was not even conceived was how anyone can actually poll the (then) 140 million (now 175 million) Pakis about their real attitudes. You see in the absence of real accurate polls (ideally democratic elections/national referenda) we have to depend on
a. What some Pakis claim
b. Make a judgement from actual Pakistani behavior

Now what the Pakistani "liberal RAPE class" claimed was that only 6% (or some such figure) of Pakis were supporters of extremism. I did not believe this figure, but I saw the claim as an obvious move to garner Western money and support for Pakistan that would keep the rich wealthy and turn attention away from extremism that was hitting India. So I found is convenient to trash the claim using sarcasm. In my view it was important that Indians and Indian Americans who came to BRF did not buy the 6% argument. You see if the US judges that only a 6% minority of Pakis are extremists and the Paki army is moderate, then guess which way the aid flows?

But the question still remained (as it remains today). If the support to Islamists is not as lo as 6%, is it as high as 100%. Where does the actual support line lie? While it can be anybody's guess - we will have to judge from the few possible biased polls and evidence of behavior of Pakistanis. The figure is not 6%. It is probably not 100%. Is it 25% support for extremists? Is it 60% support for extremists? Is it 90% support for extremists?

In my view if it is anything less than 70 % support for extremists - we have a huge population to work with. My suspicion is that given Pakistan's 30% poverty, 50% illiteracy, 40% under 15 years, and 20% shias and other minorities, ethnic divisions between Pakjabis, Seraikis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pasthuns and Balwaristanis, Banglas, and perhaps 5% of Pakistanis with an India connection - it is unlikely that more than 50% of all Pakistanis actually support anti-India extremists. This is a guess. 50% is huge number, but if true it means 50% can be turned our way.

If I dig deeper the figure could possibly be made to look more positive for India. The "extremists" of Pakistan get support from the middle class. All my digging over the years has given me a Paki middle class figure of 5 to 15%. But even taking it as 20% you find that over 75% of Pakis fall below middle class and their ability to fund jihad is limited, although they can supply cannon fodder.

Finally I have stated (fairly recently) that the only people in India who may really have some idea of "grass roots" support for India in Pakistan are the diplomats, intel agencies, media people and the Aman ki Ashas. What are they saying? What is the impression they are conveying?

India may have several million Pakistanis to influence and win over, but more of that in reply to your next question.

Kamboja wrote:2) On a related note, you are essentially scapegoating the TSPA in your argument as the origin of all the misguided hatred of India and Hindus and the Indian heritage in Pakistan. You place the blame on them and suggest that without their inculcation of hatred in the common people there would be no such hatred. In this it seems to me that you put the cart before the horse -- the TSPA is not an entity that exists in isolation, without any connection with the Paki people. I would argue that the TSPA is a reflection of the country overall, even though it may be controlled and officered by the elites among that society. This means, again, that it is not the TSPA that is the source of the hatred of 'Hindu' India and delusions of conquering India, but that this hatred and delusion comes from the masses, from the popular thinking in Pakistan -- and is reflected in the TSPA because the TSPA is a reflection of the country (albeit a particularly nationalistic one).

This means that removing the TSPA from power is no guarantee that the hatred of India in TSP will disappear over time. This hatred is a self-sustaining ideology at this point, TSPA or no TSPA. The machines of hatred are the tens of thousands of madrassas, the jihadi tanzeems, and the Saudi money that fuels them. This also means that removing the US and UK from the region does not necessarily translate into an evaporation of this hatred -- it is not as though the US/UK created this hatred, although they have encouraged it and egged the Pakis on, to our mutual detriment.

Kamboja let me illustrate my thoughts with a simple example. You have an armed gang of 20 men and are tasked with winning over a village of 100 people. Your main opposition is the village defence group of 15 armed men. You can defeat them but you may lose 10 men. At worst they will drive you back. But if those men had no arms, or if they only had swords to your guns, your task is that much easier. the Pakis army is the biggest threat. Make that army weak and everyone else can be straightened out. Ideology is no substitute for tanks and artillery. We on BRF confuse ourselves with a very silly argument. We say "Oh all Pakis are against us so what the use?". All Pakis may be against us (or 50% or more as I stated above) but the biggest hurdle is the army. get the army out of the way and we have a population to work on. Hatred does not kill. Guns kill never mind the American rhetoric about guns. Tanks, artillery and F-16s kill even more efficiently than AK-47s.

Kamboja wrote:3) You say that now is not the time for India to display hostility because Pakistan is more nervous than ever about collapse and Indian intentions. Yet SSridharji and others have eloquently argued before that this Pakistani fear of India is fake, a contrived argument designed to justify the armed forces' outsized share of national resources. India has never entertained thoughts of 'conquering' Pakistan because it is a hellhole, and steadily getting worse. Yet this has never mattered to the Pakis, who will fear us and hate us simply for existing -- because we present a contradiction to the ideas that underpin their entire country. 'Why Partition, if India is not the Muslim-hating nightmare that we were told it was?' is a very real question for a country that bloodily tore itself from its origins within living memory, and all that bloodshed cannot easily be accepted as based on the false premise that India and a Hindu majority were never a threat to Muslims in the subcontinent -- and therefore it seems to me that Pakis will continue to hold on to their cherished belief that India is 'out to get them', because this is the only possible reason for all the sacrifice and useless pursuit of foreign patronage, arms and ideologies all these miserable decades.

See? You have said it. Sridhar has said it. It is the army that matters most. It is the army's hatred that is of greatest significance. Get the US to stop funding that army. Hatred can be handled. Islamic extremism is nothing = it is just a dove when it's ability to kill is removed. It is just hot air. it will negotiate.

Kamboja wrote:The only solution is absolute collapse, i.e. political, social and military failure, so that the utter bankruptcy of the prior policy of hatred is demonstrated beyond a doubt

IMHO this kind of absolute failure of the prior ideology is necessary for the India/Hindu-hating thinking to be comprehensively dismantled in Pakistan. Without this failure, that thinking will survive and remain as a strand of popular thinking, and will ultimately reassert itself. In other words, there can be no peace with Pakistan unless it goes through a through drubbing in one form or another, and this defeat is widely understood as resulting from the failed social and religious policies of the country leading up to that point. Only after this demonstration, and the rejection of the prior poisonous ideology of hatred (which will not occur otherwise), can normality and peace return to India-Pak relations.

I think we could keep on discussing the exact stage at which "absolute collapse" occurs. It may not occur but assuming it does, one of the routes is to allow any country other than India to occupy parts of Pakistan. This is what Pakis are doing, inviting both the US and China in. We should not behave like a blinkered apologetic slave power. We need to reach into Pakistan like the US and China are doing and trip up the plans that the US and China have. Neither the US nor China love Pakistanis.

Plij to allow a ramble..

I have been studying the word and concept of "nationalism" and in fact the etymology of the word "nation" implies "Of common ancestry". For mono or near mono ethnic and mono linguistic nations like Britain/France "Nationalism" was easy to define linguistically and culturally. Even in Britain you have the Celts - of different ancestry being considered different.

Nationalism in the absence of common language and visibly common ancestry is a different ball game. I would use the expression "cultural glue" to explain why people who look different and speak different tongues may find reason to feel kinship with one another. But I believe that family, ethnic and linguistic glue will likely trump cultural glue unless there is a commonly agreed code or central "government" that suppressed feuding. I am not sure if religion has ever trumped cultural or ethnic/linguistic glue. I think religion has served more to break cultural and ethnic glue and form new groupings.

As part of India Pakistan started off as a multi-religious, multi-linguistic grouping with basic cultural commonality in the subcontinent. The Pakistan experiment was to hive off a mono-religious, multilinguistic group from India. The loose cultural commonality of India was split on the theory that religious affinity is more powerful than any loose cultural affinity. But that split did not take into account linguistic and ethnic divides.

Pakistan did nothing to address linguistic chauvinism other than to promote Punjabi chauvinism under a "pretend unity" of Islam and Urdu. Having said that I still think that Pakistan actually did manage to cultivate a degree of "Pakistani nationalism" on the basis of common Urdu and common Sunni Islam. That is to say - I do not believe that the linguistic and ethnic divides of Pakistan are absolute. There is some "Pakistani" unity across linguistic and ethnic lines. So Pakistan is khappay all right. It does exist in some manner. The main divisions in Pakistan are religious (Sunni vs Shia/Ahmedi) and ethnic/linguistic (Pakjabi versus the rest)

But the divisions of Pakistan were sought to be "stitched up" by Islam and a fear of anti-Muslim India. The actual divisions were not addressed but suppressed. The divisions were suppressed by creating the fear of a continuously impending fear of Indian attack and Indian take-over. This is what led to the "idea" that an India that keeps its hands off Pakistan and does not attack will cause Pakistan's internal rivalries to spill over and Pakistan will stew in its own juices.

However, Pakistan still has an element of Pakistaniyat and nationalism (Army, "Liberals") and these forces, with the aid of the US and other nations will old Pakistan together - at least for the time being. So Pakistan may not actually stew as well as expected. It still remains true that an Indian attack may unite Pakistan's divers elements. But lack of Indian attack may not cause Pakistan to split up.

If India maintains a totally hands off policy on Pakistan, there is a chance that Pakistan can stabilize and strengthen its basic anti-India stance and still become more powerful. This possibility calls for the need to engage Pakistanis without threatening them to try and "win over" some of them to stop seeing India as a threat and more as an opportunity.

Of course the cynical view I have heard is as follows "Pakistan does see India as a target of opportunity that can be taken over by force and India's internal weaknesses do make it a good target for Pakistani take over, considering the Jaichands and Trojan horse Muslims of India". So India is already an "opportunity" for Pakistan and why am I demanding that Pakistan should see India as an "opportunity". India should be threatening to Pakistan so that it sees India as a threat, not an opportunity for recapture.

So there is a fundamental difference in the way India and Pakistan are viewed here by Indians

There is one view that says "india is weak. It is a great target for Pakistan and others. We need to become strong. We need to act tough"

The other view sees india as strong, much stronger than Pakistan and recognizes that Pakistanis see India as a threat and that removing that threat actually removes one reason for Pakistani unity. The India threat is needed by Pakistan for unity and for aid from other countries. Reducing the India threat is essential for breaking this paradigm.

But the later is not enough. Pakistan may not fail completely. We need to put our hands inside Pakistan non threateningly and pick up whatever we can pick up. Otherwise someone else will pick it up anyway.

Pakistan faces two threats.

1. The threat of Hindu dominated India that rules with an iron hand over the disputed territory Muslim majority Kashmir.
2. The threat of Islamic extremism in the form of the Taliban whose despotic rule over Afghanistan now theratend to spill into Pakistan.

The world faces two threats
1. Islamic extremism that may lead to the Islamic extremists acquiring nuclear weapons
2. The intransigence of Hindu majority India in giving a fair deal to Muslims leading to a nucleatr standoff where Islamic extremists are the only people able to stand up to in increasingly vocal Hindu right wing

The only civilised and balanced view here comes from the developed West led by the USA and its NATO allies whose ideals of freedom, justice for all and equality for all are being threatened by the twin forces of Islamic extremism and the growth of the Hindu right wing in India.

Pakistan stands at the crossroads of this civilizational struggle and the US needs to balance out these opposing forces by stabilizing Pakistan against the twin destabilizing forces of a hegemonic Hindu India and a resurgent Islamic Taliban. Islam and Hinduism remain the problems they have always been. And the people of the Indian subcontinent remain as stupid as they have always been, which sorta explains their backwardness.

As part of India Pakistan started off as a multi-religious, multi-linguistic grouping with basic cultural commonality in the subcontinent. The Pakistan experiment was to hive off a mono-religious, multilinguistic group from India. The loose cultural commonality of India was split on the theory that religious affinity is more powerful than any loose cultural affinity. But that split did not take into account linguistic and ethnic divides.

Pakistan did nothing to address linguistic chauvinism other than to promote Punjabi chauvinism under a "pretend unity" of Islam and Urdu. Having said that I still think that Pakistan actually did manage to cultivate a degree of "Pakistani nationalism" on the basis of common Urdu and common Sunni Islam. That is to say - I do not believe that the linguistic and ethnic divides of Pakistan are absolute. There is some "Pakistani" unity across linguistic and ethnic lines. So Pakistan is khappay all right. It does exist in some manner. The main divisions in Pakistan are religious (Sunni vs Shia/Ahmedi) and ethnic/linguistic (Pakjabi versus the rest)

But the divisions of Pakistan were sought to be "stitched up" by Islam and a fear of anti-Muslim India. The actual divisions were not addressed but suppressed.

Here's the problem, Shiv. We are buying the argument of the same Western nations who are Pakistan's apologists and protectors, when we accept that there is a "FEAR" of anti-Muslim India, even a blatantly false and manufactured fear, in Pakistan's national psyche.

Fascism appeals to psychological motifs-- unity and strength in numbers-- that may at some primal level be grounded in fear. However, a Fascist state does not need explicit fear (such as a "Fear of Conquest/Domination by India") to sustain its influence over a population. When Anatol Lieven and other such ar$eholes emphasize the "Fear of India Factor" as a driver of Pakistan's behaviour, all they are doing is attempting to justify the actions of a fascist political construct... whose essentially fascist nature would not have gone unnoticed had its victims been of any other race or religious heritage than our own.

We have to fully and thoroughly understand the dynamics of a fascist nation before we can judge the value of an approach based on "alleviating fear". If we don't understand who we are dealing with, and assume them to be "just like us only", then we risk proposing solutions like "Aman ki Asha", "demilitarization", "conciliatory posture" and so on that cannot possibly achieve the sort of results that we hope for... because we formulate these solutions based on completely unrealistic expectations of what the anticipated responses from Pakistan will be.

Historical instances that are commonly described as fascist states have two common characteristics: a rigidly articulated national ideology, and a military establishment endowed with chronic and disproportionate political strength. In a fascist country, the State is not merely a subset of the People who happen to govern: the State completely subsumes the People and all their institutions into its identity, and the People are under social, political and even legal compulsion to identify totally with the State and its ideology. Any distinction between the people and the State is sought to be erased aggressively.

The State alone dictates the norms of civilized behaviour, and is the final arbiter of the moral code by which its citizens live. Hence, for example, Pakistan is Islam, and Islam is Pakistan.

To establish such control over identity and behaviour, the State contrives moral authority in flagrantly distorted "critical editions" of history where the facts are conveniently revised to suit a desired narrative outcome. Even so did the Nazi German identity depend on claims of descent from an "Aryan Race"; even so does Pakistan's identity hang from the fabricated notion of having inherited a "Mughal Past."

Fascism is thus, almost by definition, a history-centric system in which privileged historical narratives and fabricated moments of revelation assume positions of ideological paramountcy. When the forced-fit Synthetic Unity observed in Western Civilization, and in Islamic countries seeking desperately to validate their modern nationhood by Western categories, is carried to its logical conclusion... fascism is invariably where you arrive.

The strength of a fascist ideology relies heavily on the material strength of its State as a source of "proof" or validation. Military strength is the greatest part of this validation, and is used repeatedly to articulate the will of the State by force, often in preference to other methods. It is employed to violently subjugate recalcitrant sub-populations who refuse to identify completely with the State, as with the Pakistan Army in Baluchistan or East Bengal. Additionally, the fascist State's greatest opportunities for validation arise when there is a chance to prove military supremacy over a foreign power. From the perspective of a fascist nation, military victory over another nation is a direct and inextricable consequence of its ideological superiority over that other nation, QED. This is perhaps the only explanation for why the Pakistan Army has relentlessly launched itself into a series of wars against India from 1947 through 1999, every one of them disastrously unwinnable.

Meanwhile, the fascist belief system allows a loophole for the State to rationalize, survive and even benefit from the trauma of military defeat. No military defeat ever happens because of bad generalship, strategic incompetence or technical overmatching by the enemy. It is always, invariably, the product of insiduous sabotage by a fifth column; of betrayal by untrustworthy allies; and of course, the lack of a sufficiently strong National Will among the home population. The response to defeat is to purge recalcitrant elements blamed for the lack of Will, and to reiterate the force-fit by squeezing the identities of People and State even more tightly together.

Such circular reasoning appeals to primal, pre-historic instincts; the desire to belong to a tribe that is strongest and offers the best protection. The entire religion of Islam, for example, appeals to the basest brute drives of human beings towards strength and safety; it is no coincidence that any modern State founded on Islamic principles winds up steadfastly fascist.

In contrast, the rationale for fascism becomes meaningless in a Dharmic society where an Integral Unity of all the cosmos is a fundamental assumption of the civilization's world-view. When an ultimate and inherent unity of all things is assumed, the fabrication of an artificial unity is automatically recognized for a futile, delusional and dangerous exercise.
It is only when one's conception of the world is atomistic and composed of innately disparate essences, that one feels compelled to seek a synthetic unity; that the desire to achieve security by forcibly imposed strength-in-numbers gives rise to pathological political behaviour.

Fascism appeals to this pursuit of strength in compelled unity, a key insecurity that is a hallmark of the Mlecchha mindset. It is reinforced by the total identification of a People with their State, and by a contrived ethical system in which absolute moral authority derives, solely and automatically, from this identification. The People of a Fascist State are by definition, Good; hence, any action carried out in their name is Good and all entities opposed to their State's agenda are by definition Evil.
The most interesting thing about fascist nations is that their success, even their survival, ultimately derives from the cooperation of millions of ordinary civilian citizens. People with no particular ideological motivations of their own, most of whom are simply more interested in living their normal lives than in articulating a doctrine or advancing a cause. These people are not required to do any of those things in their personal lives; all that is demanded of them by the State is that they go along with its national program.

Fascist states, like Pakistan, survive because for the most part, their people are sufficiently motivated by that instinctive drive for safety and strength to go along and cooperate willingly. For us to confuse this instinctive drive with some magical power of Islam to induce fanatical conformity... may well amount to giving far too much credit to Islam as a particular ideology. Even people who have doubts in the ideology at an intellectual level, don't want to relegate themselves to the straggling edge of the herd.

Rudradev wrote:
Here's the problem, Shiv. We are buying the argument of the same Western nations who are Pakistan's apologists and protectors, when we accept that there is a "FEAR" of anti-Muslim India, even a blatantly false and manufactured fear, in Pakistan's national psyche.

Fascism appeals to psychological motifs-- unity and strength in numbers-- that may at some primal level be grounded in fear. However, a Fascist state does not need explicit fear (such as a "Fear of Conquest/Domination by India") to sustain its influence over a population. When Anatol Lieven and other such ar$eholes emphasize the "Fear of India Factor" as a driver of Pakistan's behaviour, all they are doing is attempting to justify the actions of a fascist political construct... whose essentially fascist nature would not have gone unnoticed had its victims been of any other race or religious heritage than our own.

Rudradev it is a manufactured/contrived fear allright. There is one obvious entity that manufactures and feeds on this fear. it is the Pakistani army. The likes of Anatol Lieven merely represent a Western/US imperial viewpoint that utilizes the Pakistani army for its own imperial ends

Rudradev wrote: Historical instances that are commonly described as fascist states have two common characteristics: a rigidly articulated national ideology, and a military establishment endowed with chronic and disproportionate political strength. In a fascist country, the State is not merely a subset of the People who happen to govern: the State completely subsumes the People and all their institutions into its identity, and the People are under social, political and even legal compulsion to identify totally with the State and its ideology. Any distinction between the people and the State is sought to be erased aggressively.

The State alone dictates the norms of civilized behaviour, and is the final arbiter of the moral code by which its citizens live. Hence, for example, Pakistan is Islam, and Islam is Pakistan.

<snip>

Fascist states, like Pakistan, survive because for the most part, their people are sufficiently motivated by that instinctive drive for safety and strength to go along and cooperate willingly. For us to confuse this instinctive drive with some magical power of Islam to induce fanatical conformity... may well amount to giving far too much credit to Islam as a particular ideology. Even people who have doubts in the ideology at an intellectual level, don't want to relegate themselves to the straggling edge of the herd.

Absolutely. Too much credit is given to Islam. But when we concentrate on the Pakistani army we ignore. to our peril the role of the imperial USA which plays that Islam off against the Hindu.

The story of India and Pakistan started with India and Britain. In 1947 that changed to a trilateral India Pakistan and Britain relationship. Even today the relationship is not a pure India-Pakistan relationship. It is an India, Pakistan and USA relationship.

No problem between India and Pakistan can be solved, ever, if the USA's role is not recognized and controlled.

On a historic note the USA's relationship is one of the white Christian west stabilizing and civilizing the uncvilized and warring twin evils of Islam and Hinduism. The USA or the civilized white Christian west loses its role the minute India and Pakistan stop warring. It is in the interest of the West that the paranoia, fear (real or contrived) and war continue.

We tend to see the war with TSP as one big mother of all battles to end all battles. In reality its a series of confrontations to change their behavior and make them comply with our will, tempered with fits of WKKitis. Let me explain my self.

The 1948 J&K campaign effectively put paid to the Pak claim of being the representatives of all Muslims in India. Kashmir was won and is still with India. It ended the idea of dar-ul-Islam and dar-ul-Harb in the sub-continent and brought about a literal Westphalian construct i.e. people of different faith can live in a modern nation state.

The 1965 put paid to the TSP claims of martial superiority and put their heartland of Pakjab at risk despite all the US aid and all the Canals with bunkers.

1971 ended the two nation theory and rolled back the Islamist force of history driving their dogma. They ended up with Nazariya-e-Paksitan from Pakistan ka matlab Islam.

1999 Vijay ended their plans for carrying out war under nuclear umbrella.

2001 Parakram ended their major terrorist campaigns.

The next one will make them disband their army and make it a police force so they can settle down in the land and become peaceful.

ramana garu,
the last one won't happen for a few more decades. major reason being the nature of regimes in India must change. for that to happen a lot of things need to happen. so based on our own constraints, that point is still at least 40-50 years away.

devesh wrote:ramana garu,
the last one won't happen for a few more decades. major reason being the nature of regimes in India must change. for that to happen a lot of things need to happen. so based on our own constraints, that point is still at least 40-50 years away.

Devesh ji, I must admit that is the most optimistic expiry date anyone has given Pakistan of late.
- Pakistan practically died after Jinnah,
- Ideologically pakistan died in 1971,
- economically it died in 90's, and
- linguistically it is dying now.

But that's Pakistan isn't it? You could have Pakistan breaking up and all of pakistanis integrating with India, but the pakistan in the separatist Muslims will continue to live on, its like the virus strain which never goes away.

Pakistan is like the terminator, it keeps coming back even when you think its dead. zombies dont die.

Like the proverbial cat that has seven lives TSP keep susing them up. What happens is when its about to expire for real a crisis erputs and makes them a frontline state and US rushes in with aid which is really AIDs for them as it prolongs the misery.
By end of the 70s TSP should have fractured into the Balkans buffer state of Indian sub-continent. However the FSU moved into Afghanistan and the US propped them up. Even this was not a problem but for US thinking that an Islamised TSP is useful against India, a defacto ally of the FSU, hadnt colluded with PRC in arming them with nukes in mid 80s to early 90s.

Hadn't this happened, Af-Pak would not be the fanatic mess it is.

We should keep in mind that by 2022, Indian defence budget will exceed their GDP. This itself will cause many internal troubles in Paonstan. Army will find it harder to convince the BNP Abduls living miserable life that it can defend against India and win Kaaaash-mir . Yesterday news claimed that almost half of the small farmers have now sold or leased their land and working as landless labor or moving to the cities. the preassure is just beginimg to build and with population growth its gonna be Poaqfully intense whenever it explode.

Jhujar ji, it will be very interesting to see what path Pakistan will take? there really is no precedent for Pak like countries before Pakistan. but Pak can be summed up like this: a contracting economic productivity with a booming population. Population saturation is nowhere in sight, and all the while the economy shows no signs of any kind of dynamism. how long can Pak keep up the pretense of "high society" when the reality becomes increasingly difficult to cover up? even Islamism might not be successful in covering it up. the sheer magnitude of problems might be too much for even Islam to cover up. do societies like this eventually wake up and stage a violent revolution against the entire existing order, which will necessarily mean a murderous response to the Islamists for screwing up generation after generation???

With increasing poverty and simultaneous radicalism in Paki society, Paki's have to go the taliban way. They are longing to put the 7th century back in Afghanistan and for themselves it is the only thing that will work. Unwashed, uncouth masses masquerading as soldiers of the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue/ enforcement of Morals and control of Vice..brandishing AKs and throaty AoA's will control the population easily. The futuire of Pakistan will lie in a future Ministry of Vice and Virtue..

We want a new way of looking at TSP. What we see above are old ways of seeing TSP!

From an East-West angle, TSP is about Plains Settlers vs Mountain People. Curiously it is the same even from a North vs South angle.

With increasing number of Pashtun in plains areas (Pakjab, Karachi and parts of Balochisthan), the settled nature of the soft Kabila gets disturbed a bit. The Mohajirs play the opposite role, that of increasing the 'softness' of the plains Kabila.

One way to split TSP is to get all the Mohajirs to choose to settle in only one province, i.e Sindh. Instead of dispersing them throughout TSP.

TSP's badlands are typically mountain and desert/arid areas (portions of Thar and Balochistan) and the soft areas are the riverine ones. If the IWT is made history and thrown into the dustbin, then all the soft kabilas turn hard, TSP becomes a brittle case.

As I have noted several times in the past on BRF, the European "Thirty years war" in the 1600s ending in the "Peace of Westphalia" taught the Europeans several useful things, which they learned after killing off 25% of Europe's population in Christian sectarian warfare. Europe learned that having a nation next door that interfered with its neighbour's affairs based on religion was always bad news. That is why the "Peace of Westphalia" was a treaty that barred religious groups and Churches from trying to change borders. But this treaty also "solidified" the concept of nation state. "borders" between nation states became sacrosanct and it was these borders that decided how the treaty could be implemented. Clearly a treaty that stopped Church interference across borders could not be implemented in the absence of clear borders. Well defined borders created the nation state because a government now had full responsibility for people within those borders and they could ignore them at their own peril.

But the principles that were established in Europe by the peace of Westphalia, and the nation states created by that treaty were not applicable anywhere outside Europe. No fixed borders existed anywhere else in the world. There were no fixed borders that were agreed upon by international treaties. Borders in the rest of the world varied with King , conqueror and geographic barriers like difficult to cross ocean, river or mountain range.

The very Churches that fought with each other in Europe were restricted to within nation-state borders in Europe. But the development of good ships and navigation and the need to "discover" a sea route to India because the Muslims controlled the land route from India eventually led to the establishment of colonies, and India was one of those colonies. But colonial conquests by the Christian nation states of Europe did not stop with India, America and Africa. The Muslim empire (Caliphate) too was overwhelmed by the early 20th century.

So in a period of about 200 years - from 1700 to 1900 the world was changed in a remarkable way that even the sole superpower of today, the USA has not achieved. The Christian nation-states of Europe set up "nation-state" territories all over the world. They defined arbitrary borders because they had to define borders to defend. Those were the very principles that worked for them. Colonialism created the fixed borders that we have today and those borders were very frequently not "natural" borders that had evolved over millennia of human social interaction.

India was blessed by having relatively fixed borders. Sea and mountains all around except to the north and west. The Sindhu and its tributaries were the main boundary in that direction, but going west from the Sindhu were the mountains of Afghanistan and a few narrow passes - or the deserts of Baluchistan. Desert + Mountain + River formed the Northwest boundary of India. The land around the Sindhu (indus) river was fought over time and time again, and it was in this region that Islamic invaders established themselves 1000 years ago. But still, it was the definitive border of Bharat. You don't have to go far west beyond that river to get into hostile terrain, so even the colonizing Brits did not exert much control beyond the river.

What partition did was to create a nation-state with "fixed borders" cutting through a part of India that was never a border in the past. The real border was at the river. A strip of land on either side of the river became Pakistan. Further to the west, Pakistan was awarded desert and mountains that the British themselves had little control over and had never maintained any great presence. Pakistan is a strip of Indian border plus badlands to the west. And this was called a "nation state" with fixed borders to defend. The "fixed borders" of Pakistan that the nation state of Pakistan had to defend were totally imaginary. Never before have such borders existed and the borders defy all logic.

Modern India "created" at the same time was also a nation state and being a Westphalian nation state it needed to protect a strictly defined border. India had a lot of borders that were not strictly defined, and borders such as existed were defined sometimes by British convenience. But back to Pakistan. The border via Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat were crazy. Borders running through fertile fields and communities. And the Pakistani Westphalian nation state, like the Indian counterpart suddenly had these borders to "protect" because Westphalian nation states are defined by their borders.

Pakistan's borders to the east, west and north were all fluid and undefined. Pakistan's survival from the word go would have been difficult as a Westphalian nation state in which the central government has to write and implement the laws for people within its borders. The border was not accepted by too many people. Such a border could be maintained only by an armed force. Only a militarized nation ready for war can hold such borders. No wonder the Pakistan army became paramount. If you take the long view of history, Pakistan cannot survive. the attempt to make Pakistan a nation state based on Islam was even more outrageous. The dying British empire took the Nike route and "Just did it" Westphalian nation states in Europe were set up in order that nations could be protected by fixed borders against the expansionism and irredentism of religions. Pakistan as a nation state based on religion was a contradiction.

In the long term the people of the subcontinent who live in Pakistan must be reintegrated with the rest of the subcontinent. The subcontinent needs to revert to its natural boundaries not just for "peace, stability and development" of people but for old links between India, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia to be revived. I believe that the goal is well defined. The only question is how to get there with the least amount of warfare and death.

But we need to think of this without damaging the "Westphalian Nation-state" concept of india with its fixed borders. The contradiction here is that we cannot do this without extending the same to "Pakistan". So the reintegration of the people of the subcontinent should ideally be done in such a way that India gets to protect its borders from Islamic irredentism and Pakistan gets some sort of reduction in paranoia that it will be wiped out. If this trick can be achieved, Kashmir become irrelevant because Kashmir falls in the overall plan of preserving both the Indian nation state and Pakistan but making the contentious border less prone to interference by the other side.

This is fact is what India has attempted for many decades. The biggest hurdle has been the Pakistani army which has benefited immensely from US aid. It is not clear if the US really knows what it is doing. The US may well be "doing things in its interest without giving a rats ass if it is not in Indian interest". More recently the Pakistani army has made Islamic extremism its ally. The most likely reason is that the army is finding it more difficult to hold on to the borders of Pakistan without such an alliance. But religion does not accept borders. A new border will have to be drawn inside Pakistan to create a new nation state to separate Islamic extremism from the "non extremists" if any. This ain't gonna happen (no need to expand on this for BRF).

America's meddling is a real problem here. The US is trying to support the Pakistan army as a way of holding Pakistan together, but is asking the Pakistani army to fight extremists. Like I said, this ain't gonna happen. The US plan is doomed to failure. This is one more of the US's failed experiments.

The only way forward for Pakistan is to make the Pakistan army weak enough to allow Pakistani political groups to survive. Pakistan's future may have to be hitched to an India type model of linguistic/ethnic states in a confederation called the United Islamic States of Pakistan. UPIS? PISU? PIUS? All sound good to me anyway. India will deal with a separate country - Pakistan, but a more democratic one where the provinces away from India and less threatened by India but with more resources and links to other parts of the world also have a say in Pakistan's policy.

The survival of the Pakistani army with US support is a problem. Someone has to teach the USA. Alternatively the UUS plan must be sabotaged and the US booted out of the subcontinent. the US is not needed in what was formerl India. How come we are so upset about China occupying a small part of Pakistan when the elephant in the room is the USA? Excuses that the US is a better country is like saying "I prefer friend X over friend Y to sleep with my wife because he is a better guy. He believes in freedom"

shivamullah, if you are gonna treat Pakistan as your wife, please do treat her as a Paki does..

At least on BRF, where people in some numbers have some detailed knowledge of Pakistan and India, it should be possible to look at the possible implications of expressions like "Open border", "Closed border", "soft border", "irrelevant border" etc.

Then India was spit to create two "modern, Westphalian" nation states one shared border between India and Pakistan was created where no border existed.

For the existence of "nation states" borders and their preservation is important. The borders exactly define where the nation begins and ends, never mind history, geography, sociology, religion whatever. No border, no nation state. The only way these borders can get changed would be:
1. War
2. Some kind of mutual adjustment between the two nations.

It is important to recall that a "World order" exists. I may want to twist my ungli in the backside of that world order, but that is a separate issue. The world order that came into existence after WW 2 was the creation of a large number of Westphalian "nation States" - some with absolutely absurd borders created by imperial colonial powers (as in some African nations) These nation states became members of a United Nations that "recognised" them. Now any nation that attacks any other nation to change borders can come under all sorts if "International pressure" and "sanctions" as a first step. But over and beyond this the UN also has a "gang or Five" "world powers" (P5) who can technically step in militarily and support one side or other. And they can veto each others decisions in the UNSC.

So unless one or more of the P5 themselves decide to change borders, other "inferior" ghulaam, SDRE countries have to take into account what UN and UNSC says. This is true for all wars, and true for India as well as Saddam.

Pakistan attacks India. India gets sanctioned like it started the war, but so does Pakistan. Courtesy UN. Saddam attacks Kuwait. Saddam gets busted. Courtesy UN. Vietnam needs punishment. No need for UN. Afghanistan needs to be attacked, no need for UN. The lesson here is that unless India can thumb its nose at UN and complete a war before UN can evacuate all the gas it needs to let out, making war to change borders is costly business. India managed to pull that off on a few occasions (Goa action, Bangladesh war) but no guarantees.

There is another thing that needs to be understood. India is a willing coalition of states. The brouhaha over the new NCTC shows how taking states into account is essential for India. India cannot simply declare war to attack and take over Pakistan without mobilizing support and creating a mood for war in the country. It is a different matter if anyone attacks. All this has nothing to do with "strong leader" "spine" etc which is so much hot air.

What this means is that an India Pakistan border exists and attempting to change it by force has not got Pakistan very far, and India is unlikely to proceed in that direction either.

That leaves us with the other "border options" I mentioned earlier

"Open border", "Closed border", "soft border", "irrelevant border"

Having failed to change the border Pakistan has tried to make the India border open to Pakistanis, while keeping the Pakistani border closed to Indians. India has tried to close its border to illegal" Pakistanis, and has not attempted to violate Pakistan's border. Both sides have accepted a degree of exchange between the borders.

Clearly an open border between India and Pakistan would benefit only Pakistan, because they could selectively close their side but push in whom they want.

A totally closed border is not 100% possible. Some Pakis will get through. Indians too can get across. Nearly closed is the best we can get.

"Soft border" and "irrelevant" border are clever expressions with no specific meaning. Irrelevant border sounds like the border exists but doesn't stop anything. Some people would argue that what we have today is an irrelevant border, but the stories of Indian soldiers getting hurt/killed in action in the other forum belie this cynical joke that the border is irrelevant. It is not. It is a nearly closed border.

This "nearly closed" border IMO needs to be opened up so that Indian lorries and goods can travel to and from Afghanistan and Iran. Pakistan will not allow that. But it is still a desirable goal. The border should be porous enough to allow goods, but closed enough to stop terrorists and smugglers and irredentist claims.