Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Rahul+Kedarnath= Earthquake! With Friends like Sakshi, Does Modi Need Enemies?

SOURCE:
http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/national/rahulpluskedarnathequals-earthquake-with-friends-like-sakshi-does-modi-need-enemies/ar-BBiLHXS













Rahul+Kedarnath= Earthquake! With Friends like Sakshi, Does Modi Need Enemies?



    28 Apr, 2015

© Provided by Firstpost 
 
Sakshi Maharaj is just made to order for today's news cycle - where the more outrageous you are , the more TRPs you garner. He can be relied on to outdo himself when it comes to ratcheting up the shock factor.

Not content with advising Hindus to produce four children apiece and praising Mahatma Gandhi's assassin, now Sakshi Maharaj has apparently blamed Rahul Gandhi's Kedarnath yatra for the Nepal earthquake.



"Rahul Gandhi eats beef, and goes to the holy shrine (Kedarnath) without purifying himself. The earthquake was bound to happen," Maharaj told reporters in Haridwar says the Times of India. Present on the occasion was VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi who according to The Tribune said Rahul's Kedarnath's pilgrimage was an "ill omen." The last time he had visited Uttarakhand there had been a flash flood, this time an earthquake. "This is due to the visit of Rahul Gandhi, who is non-vegetarian," Sadhvi Prachi allegedly told a gathering of religious leaders.

Rahul Gandhi might eat beef or he might not eat beef. But that is not Sakshi Maharaj's or Sadhvi Prachi's business. Whether he made the remarks in sardonic jest or in all seriousness, Maharaj was displaying classic troll behavior - no matter what the event, no matter how unrelated, find a way to tie it to your opposition leader and flog your pet cause.

In Sakshi Maharaj's case it was a twofer - the sacred cow and his beef with Rahul Gandhi.

It's a strange and whimsical God that punishes hapless people in Nepal for the alleged transgressions of Rahul Gandhi in Kedarnath but logic never stands in the way of those who want to shamelessly use an earthquake as their bully pulpit for a little bonus PR.

Sakshi Maharaj and Sadhvi Prachi are hardly unique in this regard. The Advocate listed many religious leaders who are prone to read signs into all calamities as if they are Delphic oracles.

American preacher Pat Robertson blamed the 6.7 Northridge earthquake in California on "God's displeasure with gays and lesbians, pro-choice activists and perversity." Orthodox rabbi Yehuda Levin blamed the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti on the island's high HIV rates. After the 9/11 attack, American preacher Jerry Falwell said "pagans and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle" were among those who "helped this happen."

God sometimes does have the last laugh. Robertson once blamed the approaching Hurricane Bonnie in Florida on Disney launching Gay Day in Disney World. But the hurricane suddenly veered away, gave Florida a miss and battered the east coast instead. One of the places hardest hit was the headquarters of Robertson's own 700 Club in Virginia.

But that has not shut up Robertson and his ilk. Sakshi Maharaj merely follows in that grand tradition.

The difference, however, is Maharaj is a BJP MP, elected and accountable, a representative of the people in the way the wild and woolly Robertsons are not. The fulminations of an American televangelist can be dismissed as wild-eyed ranting of deluded PR-hungry self-styled godmen. And they are the bosses of their little religious empires and can decide the earth is flat if they want.

 With Sakshi Maharaj however this is our tax rupees at work.

He is the representative of a party and supposedly answerable to its leadership. And the more the likes of him get away with outrageous statements, the more they sully their own party.



Sakshi Maharaj, of course, is a fine one to be pointing fingers at anyone. He was booked in 2013 along with his brother and two others for the murder of a college principal in UP who was his former disciple and involved in a property dispute with him. He was expelled from the Rajya Sabha for misusing constituency funds, is an accused in the Babri Masjid demolition and spent a month in Tihar jail on rape charges.

He was acquitted for lack of evidence but his career has been a colourful one as he built himself an empire of ashrams.

It's not that the BJP is entirely unaware of the damage caused by its un-reined motormouths. The BJP did issue a show-cause notice to Sakshi Maharaj but he remained disdainfully defiant saying he had not got any notice.

In a recent interview with the Indian Express, BJP minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy was asked about the party's other motormouth, his fellow minister Giriraj Singh.

"Giriraj is not fit for the scheme of things at the national level," Rudy replied. "He absolutely should refrain from making any national statement. We absolutely do not endorse it. But in Lalu's land, I think he is the right voice."

That's a rather damning indictment of Bihar but it also betrays the helplessness of a party that wants to put forward a clean-cut development face but is saddled with the likes of loose cannons like Giriraj Singh and Sakshi Maharaj who collectively can do it more harm than anything Rahul Gandhi can dream up.

The RSS, usually in the news these days for stories about ghar wapisi and political meddling and text book tinkering, is gearing up to do something it is very competent at - humanitarian service during a natural disaster. That sets it clearly apart from groups like those of US pastor Tony Miano who are fishing for conversions in the middle of the debris. He hoped that not a " single destroyed pagan temple will be rebuilt & the people will repent/receive Christ". The last thing the RSS needed right now were Hindu swamis and saints hijacking the conversation with their self-serving cock-eyed theories.

Even worse at a time when the Modi government is winning praise from all sides for its prompt and generous response to the earthquake, Sakshi Maharaj provides the Congress with an excuse to cry foul.




With friends like these does Narendra Modi need enemies?














 

OROP :Ex-servicemen Meet Union Minister!?!?!

Source:
http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/Ex-servicemen-Meet-Union-Minister/2015/04/26/article2783507.ece







Ex-servicemen Meet Union Minister!?!?!

                                 By

SOURCE: NATIONAL EX-SERVICEMEN COORDINATING COMMITTEE, kochi , Ernakulam





26th April 2015



 





























KOCHI:Delegates of the National Ex-servicemen Coordination Committee met Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar at his office in New Delhi on Wednesday and took up the issue of ‘One-Rank-One-Pension’ (OROP), which is pending before the Ministry for some time.


The Committee briefed the Minister about the concerns of the ex-servicemen community over the non-implementation of the OROP scheme by the Defence Ministry, though he had promised prompt action at a meeting held on March 18.
National Ex-servicemen Coordination Committee vice-chairman V S John, who was part of the delegation, said the Minister assured that all modalities and formalities to implement the One-Rank-One-Pension scheme were completed for issuing order. However, the Minister said the matter required a second approval from the  Parliament. “The Minister was very considerate of the Pension of Personnel Below Officer Rank issue, and assured that he would obtain the approval of Parliament in the current session itself. The orders to implement the decisions will be issued before the current Parliament session concludes,” he said.






OBSERVATION by this reader :




However, the Minister said the matter required              
                           'a second approval' 
 
                          from the  Parliament.

   



WHY RAKSHA MANTRI WILL REQUIRE

 "SECOND APPROVAL " FROM PARLIAMENT!!!?????

   THE ONLY THING THAT COMES TO MY MIND IS  THE DEFINITION
        " MILITARY PENSION".

 As far as my knowledge goes no where in any regulations or  any CPCs  "military pensions" is defined. If that  so  be   the case, than it will open up many imponderable probabilities. Parliament in  its existing 'AVTAR' is a big "X" factor !!??!?  













 

Monday, April 27, 2015

The Method behind the Islamic State’s Madness

SOURCE:http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/the-method-behind-the-islamic-states-madness/?singlepage=1



The Method behind the Islamic State’s Madness
                                  By




Thursday, April 23, 2015

ARE HINDUS COWARDS?



                    ARE HINDUS COWARDS?
                                     By    
                                     Francois Gautier





Face Book deleted my article "Are Hindus Cowards"; because of 'inappropriate content'! Do you think that is fair? the ISIS and Al Qaeda use freely Internet, Twitter and FB for their murderous purposes, but when you dare say that there is a problem with Islam, as I have personally witnessed a journalist, in Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, you are censored. I am reposting the article below. You judge. FG

                    ARE HINDUS COWARDS?





“A dark fear is growing in our minds that we Hindus cannot rule. The art of ruling requires special upbringing, grooming and attitude besides guts and courage.




And this raises the question: are Hindus good people, but nevertheless cowards?





“Muslims are bullies and Hindus cowards”, the Mahatma Gandhi once said. He was right – at least about Hindus: there has been in the past 1400 years, since the first invasions started, very few Shivaji Maharaj’s and Rana Pratap’s to fight the bloody rule of the Moghuls, or hardly any Rani of Jhansi’s to stand against the humiliating colonial yoke of the British.




 If a nation’s soul is measured by the courage of its children, then India is definitely doomed: without the Sikhs, whose bravery is unparalleled in the more recent history of India, Hindus would have even lost additional land to the Muslim invaders and there would have been infinitely more massacres of Hindus by Muslims during the first weeks of Partition. Are Hindus more courageous since they have an independent nation (thanks - not to the non-violence of Gandhi – but to the true nationalists, such as Sri Aurobindo and Tilak, who prepared the ground for the Mahatma at the beginning of the century)? Not at all! 
 
 

Because of Nehru’s absurd and naïve “hindi-chini-bhai-bhai” policy, the Indian army was shamefully routed in 1962 by the Chinese, a humiliation which rankles even today.

  Beijing is still able to hoodwink Indian politicians, by pretending it has good intentions, through the interviews the Chinese leaders very generously give to the Hindu newspaper (which should rightly be called the “anti-Hindu”) and Frontline (“the mouthpiece in India for the Chinese communist party”), while quietly keeping on giving nuclear know-how to Pakistan, as well as the missiles to carry their atomic warheads to Indian cities, arm separatists groups in the north-east and continuing to claim Arunachal Pradesh or Sikkim. 
 

Everywhere in the world, Hindus are hounded, humiliated, routed, be it in Fiji where, an elected democratic government was deposed in an armed coup, or in Pakistan and Bangladesh, where Muslims indulge in pogroms against Hindus every time they want to vent their hunger against India (read Taslima Nasreen’s book “Lalja”). In Kashmir, the land of yogis, where Hindu sadhus and sages have meditated for 5000 years, Hindus have been chased out of their ancestral home by death, terror and intimidation: there were 25% of Hindus at the beginning of the century in the Kashmir valley… and hardly a handful today. 
 
 

And this is exactly what happened in Bombay, after the Ayodya mosque was brought down by Hindu militants : Muslims, angry of the “terrible” affront done to Islam, started pelting the police with stones and burning shops; but unfortunately for the Muslims, who have made of riots an art (please read the passages of the Koran which deal with riots as part of jihad), they found that for once, the Hindus under the leadership of the Shiv Sena, retaliated blow for blow – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – as the Israelis, who have been so long at the receiving end of Muslim bullying, say so well. 
 
 

It is not for us to condone violence: but how long can the Hindus be the butt of killings and persecution, be sacrificial lambs that meekly go to slaughter ?

For in a way, Gandhi was right: Muslims are bullies, they have bullied India and they continue to bully Hindu India, as Pakistan demonstrates time and again by shelling in Kashmir, which make the US apply time and again pressure on India to ‘negotiate’ with Pakistan. Remember how Musharraf deceived New Delhi by receiving a well-meaning, but naïve Vajpayee at Lahore, while its soldiers were quietly invading the heights above Kargil.
 
 

The truth is that there are two standards in India: one for the Hindus; and one for the Muslims.


 Did the “fanatic” Hindus who brought down Ayodhya (and brought shame onto secular India, according to the Indian media) kill or even injure anyone in the process?                    No. 


But Muslims do not have such qualms. When Gandhi said they were bullies, he was being very nice or very polite. For forget about the millions of Hindus killed during the ten centuries of Muslim invasions, probably the worst Holocaust in world history; forget about the hundreds of thousands of Hindu temples razed to the ground, whose destruction - whatever our “secular” Hindus of today say - was carefully recorded by the Muslims themselves, because they were proud of it

(see Aurangzeb’s own chronicles); forget about the millions of Hindus forcibly converted to Islam, and who sadly are now rallying under a banner, a language, a scripture which have nothing to do with their own ethos and culture. 

Yesterday and also today, when the Muslim world feels it has been slighted, in even a small measure by Hindus, these Infidels, who submitted meekly to Muslim rule for ten centuries, it retaliates a hundred fold – this is the only way one intimidates cowards. After Ayodhya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (at least in a passive way by giving shelter for a while to Tiger Memon) with the help of Indian Muslims, planted bombs in the heart of Bombay and killed a thousand innocent human beings, most of them, once more, Hindus. 
 

Tomorrow, Pakistan might wage, with the blessing of the Muslim word, the ultimate jihad against India, which if necessary, will utilise the ultimate weapon, nuclear bombs. For has not the Koran said

“'Choose not thy friends among the Infidels till they forsake their homes and the way of idolatry. If they return to paganism then take them whenever you find them and kill them” (Koran 98:51-9:5-4:89) ?


Unfortunately for India, the British, when they were here, had created an intellectual elite, to act as a go-between themselves and the “natives”, which today, thanks to the Nehruvian culture of successive Congress governments, looks at its own country, not by means of its own Indian eyes, but through a western prism, as fashioned by the white colonizers and the missionaries. These « Brown Shahibs », these true children of Macaulay, the « secular » politicians, the journalists, the top bureaucrats, in fact the whole westernised cream of India are very critical of anything Hindu. And what is even more paradoxical, is that 98% of them are Hindus ! It is they, who upon getting independence, have denied India its true identity and borrowed blindly from the British education system, without trying to adapt it to the unique Indian mentality and psychology; and it is they who are refusing to accept a change of India’s education system, which is totally western-oriented and is churning out machines, learning by heart boring statistics which are of little usefulness in life. 
 

And what India is getting from this education is a youth which apes the West : they go to Mac Donald’s, thrive on MTV culture, wear the latest Klein jeans and Lacoste T Shirts, and in general are useless, rich parasites, in a country which has so many talented youngsters who live in poverty. They will grow-up like millions of other western clones in the developing world, who wear a tie, read the New York Times and swear by liberalism and secularism to save their countries from doom. In time, they will reach elevated positions and write books and articles which make fun of their own country, ridicule the Narendra Modi’s of India and preside human-right committees, be “secular” high bureaucrats who take the wrong decisions and generally do tremendous harm to India, because it has been programmed in their genes to always run down their own country.


 It is said that a nation has to be proud of itself to move forward - and unless there is a big change in this intellectual elite, unless it is more conscious of its heritage and of India’s greatness, which has begun to happen in a small way, it is going to be very difficult for India to emerge as a real 21st century superpower. 
 
 

One would be tempted to say in conclusion : “Arise ô Hindus, stop being cowards, remember that a nation requires Kshatriyas, warriors, to defend Knowledge, to protect one’s women and children, to guard one’s borders from the Enemy”…. 

And do Indians need a Narendra Modi to remind them of that simple truth ? FRANCOIS GAUTIER (*) 
 

This is no to say that all Muslims are fanatics; on the contrary, many of India’s Muslims are extremely gentle and their sense of hospitality unsurpassed. The same thing can be said about Pakistan: Pakistani politicians, for instance, are much more accessible than in India and Pakistan has its own identity, which cannot be wished away. 






No, the problem is not with Muslims, whether they are Indians or Pakistanis, the problem is with Islam, which teaches Indian Muslims from an early age, to look beyond their national identity to a country - the Mecca, in Saudi Arabia - which is not their country, to read a Scripture which is not written in their own language, to espouse a way of thinking, which is inimical to their own roots and indigenous culture. Indian Muslims, have to think of themselves first as Muslims and secondly only as Muslims.



Muslim soldiers fighting against Pakistan in Kargil, have shown the way.
























The Geopolitics of India: A Shifting, Self-Contained World

SOURCE:
https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-india-shifting-self-contained-world

Analysis

                     The Geopolitics of India

             : A Shifting, Self-Contained World 
 
 

Analysis

Editor's Note: This is the fifth in a series of Stratfor monographs on the geopolitics of countries influential in world affairs. It was originally published on Dec. 16, 2008.
 
 
 
The geopolitics of India must be considered in the geographical context of the Indian subcontinent — a self-contained region that includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and, depending how one defines it, Nepal and Bhutan. We call the subcontinent "self-contained" because it is a region that is isolated on all sides by difficult terrain or by ocean. In geopolitical terms it is, in effect, an island.
 
 
 
This "island" is surrounded on the southeast, south and southwest by the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. To the west, it is isolated by mountains that rise from the Arabian Sea and run through Pakistan's Baluchistan province, stretching northward and rising higher and higher to the northwestern corner of Pakistan. There, at the Hindu Kush, the mountain chain swings east, connecting with the Pamir and Karakoram ranges. These finally become the Himalayas, which sweep southeast some 2,000 miles to the border of Myanmar, where the Rakhine Mountains emerge, and from there south to India's border with Bangladesh and to the Bay of Bengal. The Rakhine are difficult terrain not because they are high but because, particularly in the south, they are covered with dense jungle.

The Geography of the Subcontinent

The subcontinent physically divides into four parts:
 
  • The mountainous frame that stretches in an arc from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal.


  • The North Indian Plain, stretching from Delhi southeast through the Ganges River delta to the Myanmar border, and from the Himalayas in the north to the southern hills.

  • The Indian Peninsula, which juts southward into the Indian Ocean, consisting of a variety of terrain but primarily hilly.

  • The deserts in the west between the North Indian Plain and Pakistan's Indus River Valley.

Pakistan occupies the western region of the subcontinent and is based around the Indus Valley. It is separated from India proper by fairly impassable desert and by swamps in the south, leaving only Punjab, in the central part of the country, as a point of contact.

 Pakistan is the major modern-day remnant of Muslim rule over medieval India, and the country's southwest is the region first occupied by Arab Muslims invading from what is today southwestern Iran and southern Afghanistan.




The third major state in the subcontinent is the Muslim-majority Ganges delta state of Bangladesh, which occupies the area southeast of Nepal. Situated mainly at sea level, Bangladesh is constantly vulnerable to inundations from the Bay of Bengal. The kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan rest on the heights of the Himalayas themselves, and therefore on the edge of the subcontinent. There is also a small east-west corridor between Nepal and Bangladesh connecting the bulk of India to its restive northeastern states and its eastern border with Myanmar. In this region is India's easternmost state, Arunachal Pradesh, whose territory is also claimed by China.


The bulk of India's population lives on the northern plain. This area of highest population density is the Indian heartland. It runs through the area around Lahore, spreading northwest into Pakistan and intermittently to Kabul in Afghanistan, and also stretching east into Bangladesh and to the Myanmar border. It is not, however, the only population center. Peninsular India also has an irregular pattern of intense population, with lightly settled areas intermingling with heavily settled areas. This pattern primarily has to do with the availability of water and the quality of soil. Wherever both are available in sufficient quantity, India's population accumulates and grows.


India is frequently compared geographically to non-Russian Europe because both are peninsulas jutting out of the Eurasian land mass. They have had radically different patterns of development, however.



The Europeans developed long-standing and highly differentiated populations and cultures, which evolved into separate nation-states such as Spain, France, Germany and Poland. Their precise frontiers and even independence have varied over time, but the distinctions have been present for centuries — in many cases predating the Roman Empire. The Indian subcontinent, on the other hand, historically has been highly fragmented but also fluid (except when conquered from the outside). Over fairly short periods of time, the internal political boundaries have been known to shift dramatically.


The reason for the difference is fairly simple. Europe is filled with internal geographic barriers: The Alps and Pyrenees and Carpathians present natural boundaries and defensive lines, and numerous rivers and forests supplement these. These give Europe a number of permanent, built-in divisions, with defined political entities and clear areas of conflict. India lacks such definitive features. There are no internal fortresses in the Indian subcontinent, except perhaps for the Thar Desert.

[ "THAR DESERT" IS  A NATURE's  MISCHIEF  WHICH IS THE KEY TO THE MISERIES OF INDIA AS  A "NATION" . IN WHICH A RIVER HAS BEEN POACHED  FROM INDUS VALLEY SYSTEM BY NATURE & HANDED OVER TO THE GANGETIC VALLEY SYSTEM. THIS IS A SUBJECT BY ITSELF & WILL BE TACKLED AS A SEPARATE SUBJECT -  Vasundhra ]

Instead, India's internal divisions are defined by its river systems: the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Narmada and so on. All of India's major cities are centered around one of these river systems, a fact that has been instrumental in the rise of so many distinct cultures in India — Punjabis, Gujaratis, Marathis, Tamils and others — which have manifested in modern times as states within India. That said, Indian Nationalism is very strong and counters the separatist tendencies. There is a balance between a strong central governance and substantial regional autonomy.


What is permanent in the subcontinent is the frame, the mountains, and beyond these the wastelands. We can see this most clearly when looking at the population distribution of the surrounding regions. The subcontinent is isolated as a population center, surrounded by comparatively empty regions. It is not only a question of the mountains around it, although those are substantial barriers; the terrain beyond the mountains in every direction is sparsely populated, and in many ways its resources are insufficient to support a sizable, sedentary civilization. As a result, India has rarely demonstrated an appetite for adventurism beyond the subcontinent.

If India can find a way to manage Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is little pressure to do anything more.

 [THE SOLUTION TO THIS TENDENCY TOWARDS TUG OF WAR OF FRAGMENTATION & UNIFICATION OF THE SUB-CONTINENT LIES IN THE Capt Dastur's  INTERLINKING OF RIVER VALLEY SYSTEMS WITHIN "FIFTY YEARs"  India will become one "MONOLITH CULTURAL ENTITY" - Vasundhra ] 

India's Geopolitical Imperatives

The geography of the subcontinent constrains the behavior of governments that arise there. If there is to be an independent India, and if it is to be a stable and secure nation-state, it must do the following things:
  • Achieve suzerainty in the Ganges River basin. The broad, braided plains of the Ganges basin are among the most fertile in the world and guarantee a massive population. India must become the premier power in this heartland. This does not mean that such power must be wielded by a unified, centralized authority. A coalition of powers can be functional, and even somewhat hostile powers such as Bangladesh can be tolerated so long as they do not challenge India's authority or security.

  • Expand throughout the core of the subcontinent until it reaches all natural barriers. Forests, hills and rivers aside, there is little else in the confines of the subcontinent that limits India's writ. "Control" of the additional territories can be a somewhat informal and loose affair.

  •  The sheer population of the Ganges basin really requires only that no foreign entity be allowed to amass a force capable of overwhelming the Ganges region.

  • Advance past the patch of land separating the Ganges basin from the Indus River basin and dominate the Indus region (meaning Pakistan). The Indus Valley is the only other significant real estate within reach of India, and the corridor that accesses it is the only viable land invasion route into India proper. (Modern India has not achieved this objective, with implications that will be discussed below.)

  • With the entire subcontinent under the control (or at least the influence) of a centralized power, begin building a navy. Given the isolation of the subcontinent, any further Indian expansion is limited to the naval sphere. A robust navy also acts as a restraint upon any outside power that might attempt to penetrate the subcontinent from the sea.

[LASTLY CARRY OUT INTERLINKING OF 



              RIVER VALLEY SYSTEMs

                                    TO  
   
  ENSURE  GRANTED  EMERGENCE                           
                                  OF     
                                         
       MONOLITH CULTURAL ENTITY                                                    -Vasundhra   ]

These imperatives shape the behavior of every indigenous Indian government, regardless of its ideology or its politics. They are the fundamental drivers that define India as a country, shaped by its unique geography. An Indian government that ignores these imperatives does so at the risk of being replaced by another entity — whether indigenous or foreign — that understands them better.



A History of External Domination


India's geopolitical reality — relative isolation from the outside world, a lack of imposed boundaries, the immense population and the dynamic of a central government facing a vast region — has created localized systems that shift constantly, resist central authority, and ultimately cannot be organized into a coherent whole, either by foreign occupiers or by a native government. It is a landscape of shifting political entities, constantly struggling against each other or allying with each other, amid an endless kaleidoscope of political entities and coalitions. This divided landscape historically has created opportunities for foreign powers to divide India and conquer it — and indeed, the subcontinent was under foreign domination from the 11th century until 1947.



Externally, the threats to India historically have come from the passes along the Afghan-Pakistani border and from the sea. India's solution to both threats has been to accommodate them rather than resist directly, while using the complexity of Indian society to maintain a distance from the conqueror and preserve the cultural integrity of India. (In a sense, Mahatma Gandhi's strategy of nonviolent resistance represents the foundation of India's historical strategy, although the historical basis for Indian nonviolent resistance has been more commercial than ethical.) But essentially, India's isolation, coupled with its great population, allows it to maintain a more or less independent foreign policy and balance itself between great powers.






 
 
 
 
Between the 11th and 18th centuries, India was ruled by Muslims. The first invasion occupied the area of what is today Pakistan. Over the centuries — under various rulers and dynasties, particularly the Mughals — Muslims expanded their power until they dominated much of India. But that domination was peculiar, because the Muslims did not conquer the Hindus outright. Except in the area west of the Thar Desert and the Ganges delta, they did not convert masses of Indians to their religion. What they did was take advantage of the underlying disunity of India to create coalitions of native powers prepared to cooperate with the invaders. The urge to convert Hindus to Islam was secondary to the urge to exploit India's wealth. Political and military power was a means toward this end, rather than toward conversion, and because of this, the Hindus were prepared to collaborate.

In the end, the Indians' internal tensions were greater than their resentment of outsiders.


European powers followed the Muslims into India en masse. Unlike the Muslims, they arrived from the sea, but like the Muslims, their primary motive was economic, and they sought political power as a means toward economic ends. The British, the most permanent European presence in the subcontinent, used India's internal tensions to solidify their own position. They did not conquer India so much as they managed the internal conflicts to their advantage.


What was left behind when the British departed was the same sea of complex and shifting divisions that had defined India before they came. Most of the regions that were Muslim-majority areas became Islamic entities, eventually dividing into Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The rest of India was united under a single government, but in a sense, that government ruled in the same way the British had.




         The Geopolitics of Modern India



Modern India has its origins in the collapse of the British Empire. Indeed, it was the loss of India that ultimately doomed the British Empire. The entire focus of imperial Britain, from the Suez Canal to Gibraltar and Singapore, was to maintain the lines of supply to India. Many of the colonies and protectorates around the world secured by Britain in the 19th century were designed to provide coaling stations to and from India. In short, the architecture of the British Empire was built around India, and once India was lost, the purpose of that architecture dissolved as well. The historical importance of India could not be overestimated. Lenin once referred to it as the supply depot of humanity — which overstated the case perhaps, but did not overstate India's importance to Britain.


   [ India indeed is  -----as the supply depot of humanity -----]



The British gave up India for several reasons, the most important of which was commercial: The cost of controlling India had outstripped the value derived. This happened in two ways.


The first was that the cost of maintaining control of the sea-lanes became prohibitive. After World War II, the Royal Navy was far from a global navy. That role had been taken over by the United States, which did not have an interest in supporting British control of India. As was seen in the Suez crisis of 1956, when the British and French tried to block Egyptian nationalization of the canal, the United States was unprepared to support or underwrite British access to its colonies (and the United States had made this clear during World War II as well).

 Second, the cost of controlling India had soared. Indigenous political movements had increased friction in India, and that friction had increased the cost of exploiting India's resources. As the economics shifted, the geopolitical reality did as well.



The independence of India resulted in the unification of the country under an authentically Indian government. It also led to the political subdivision of the subcontinent. The Muslim-majority areas — the Indus Valley region west and northwest of the Thar Desert, and the Ganges River basin — both seceded from India, forming a separate country that itself later split into modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh.


 It was this separatism that came to frame Indian geopolitics.


India and Pakistan, for the bulk of their mutual existence, have had an adversarial relationship. For a long time, the Indian sentiment was that Pakistan's separation from India could have been avoided. This attitude, coupled with Pakistan's own geographic, demographic and economic inferiority, has forced Islamabad to craft its entire foreign policy around the threat from India. As a result, the two sides have fought four wars, mostly over Kashmir, along with one that resulted in the hiving off of Bangladesh.


As noted earlier, the Indian heartland is the northern plain of the Ganges River basin. This plain is separated from Pakistan's heartland, the Indus Valley, only by a small saddle of easily traversed land; fewer than 200 miles separate the two rivers. If India is to have any ambition in terms of expansion on land, the Indus is the only option available — all other routes end either in barriers or in near-wasteland. Meanwhile, the closeness — and sheer overwhelming size — of India is central to Pakistan's mind-set. The two are locked into rivalry.

                            [ TO DESTROY "PAKISTAN"
                                                      & 
                 THROW  OUT  "ISLAM" FROM THE 



                                       SUB -CONTINENT


            APPLY CAPT  DASTUR'S PLAN - Vasundhra]



China and the Himalayan Wall


Apart from this enmity, however, modern India has faced little in the way of existential threats. On its side of the mountain wall, there are two states, Nepal and Bhutan, which pose no threat to it. On the other side lies China.


China has been seen as a threat to India, and simplistic models show them to be potential rivals. In fact, however, China and India might as well be on different planets. Their entire frontier runs through the highest elevations of the Himalayas. It would be impossible for a substantial army to fight its way through the few passes that exist, and it would be utterly impossible for either country to sustain an army there in the long term. The two countries are irrevocably walled off from each other. The only major direct clash between Indian and Chinese forces, which occurred in 1962, was an inconclusive battle over border territories high in the mountains — both in the northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Kashmiri border region of Aksai Chin — that could lead nowhere.


A potential geopolitical shift would come if the status of Tibet changed, however.

China's main population centers are surrounded by buffer states — Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. So long as all are in Chinese hands, the core of China is invulnerable to land attack. If, however, Tibet were to become independent, and if it allied with India, and if it permitted India to base substantial forces in its territory and to build major supply infrastructure there, then — and only then — India could be a threat to China. This is why the Indians for a long time championed the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence movements, and why the Chinese until fairly recently regarded this as a major threat.
Had a pro-Indian, independent government been installed in Tibet, the threat to China would be significant.


Because New Delhi
 held open the option of supporting Tibetan independence,
Beijing saw the Indians as engaged in developing a threat to China.



The Chinese tried to develop equivalent threats in India, particularly in the form of Maoist communist insurgencies. Indian Maoists (Naxalites) and Nepalese Maoists have been supported by Beijing, though that support is no longer what it used to be. The Chinese have lost interest in aggressive Maoism, but they do have an interest in maintaining influence in Nepal, where the Maoists recently increased their power through electoral gains. This is China's counter to India's Tibet policy.


But for both, this is merely fencing. Neither would be in a position militarily to exploit an opening. Stationing sufficient force in Tibet to challenge the Chinese People's Liberation Army would outstrip India's resources, and for little purpose. Using Nepal as a base from which to invade India would be similarly difficult and pointless for Beijing. At the moment, therefore, there is no Indo-Chinese geopolitical hostility. However, these would be points of friction if such hostility were to occur in the distant future.




Russia, the United States and Pakistan

In the absence of direct external threats, modern India's strategic outlook has been shaped by the dynamics of the Cold War and its aftermath. The most important strategic relationship that India had after gaining independence from Britain in 1947 was with the Soviet Union. There was some limited ideological affinity between them. India's fundamental national interest was not in Marxism, however, but in creating a state that was secure against a new round of imperialism. The Soviets and Americans were engaged in a massive global competition, and India was inevitably a prize.

 It was a prize that the Soviets could not easily take: The Soviets had neither an overland route to India nor a navy that could reach it.



The United States, however, did have a navy. The Indians believed (with good reason) that the United States might well want to replace Britain as a global maritime power, a development that might put India squarely in Washington's sights. The Indians saw in the United States all the same characteristics that had drawn Britain to India. Elsewhere, India saw the United States acting both to hurry the disintegration of the European empires and to fill the ensuing vacuum. India did not want to replace the British with the Americans — its fundamental interest was to retain its internal cohesion and independence.

 Regardless of American intent — which the Indians saw as ambiguous — American capability was very real, and from the beginning the Indians sought to block it.


For the Indians, the solution was a relationship, if not quite an alliance, with the Soviet Union. The Soviets could provide economic aid and military hardware, as well as a potential nuclear umbrella (or at least nuclear technical assistance). The relationship with the Soviet Union was perfect for the Indians, since they did not see the Soviets as able to impose satellite status on India. From the American point of view, however, there was serious danger in the Indo-Soviet relationship. The United States saw it as potentially threatening U.S. access to the Indian Ocean and lines of supply to the Persian Gulf. If the Soviets were given naval bases in India, or if India were able to construct a navy significant enough to threaten American interests and were willing to act in concert with the Soviets, it would represent a serious strategic challenge to the United States.


In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the United States was facing a series of challenges. The British were going to leave Singapore, and the Indonesian independence movement was heavily influenced by the Soviets. The Egyptians, and therefore the Suez Canal, also were moving into the Soviet camp. If India became a pro-Soviet maritime power, it would simply be one more element along Asia's southern rim threatening U.S. interests.
The Americans had to act throughout the region, but they needed to deal with India fast.





The U.S. solution was an alliance with Pakistan.

This served two purposes.

First, it provided another Muslim counterweight to Nasserite Egypt and left-leaning Arab nationalism.

 Second, it posed a potential threat to India on land.

This would force India to divert resources from naval construction and focus on building ground and air forces to deal with the Pakistanis. For Pakistan, geographically isolated and facing both India and a not-very-distant Russia, the relationship with the United States was a godsend.


It also created a very complex geographical situation.


The Soviet Union did not directly abut Pakistan — the two were separated by a narrow strip of territory in the northeasternmost confines of Afghanistan known as the Wakhan Corridor. The Soviets could not seriously threaten Pakistan from that direction, but the U.S. relationship with Pakistan made Afghanistan a permanent Soviet interest (with full encouragement of the Indians, who wanted Pakistan bracketed on both sides). The Soviets did not make a direct move into Afghanistan until late 1979, but well before then they tried to influence the direction of the Afghans — and after moving, they posed a direct threat to Pakistan.


China, on the other hand, did border on Pakistan and developed an interest there. The aforementioned Himalayan clash in 1962 did not involve only India and China. It also involved the Soviets. India and China were both putatively allied with the Soviet Union. What was not well known at the time was that Sino-Soviet relations had deteriorated. The Chinese were very suspicious of Soviet intentions and saw Moscow's relationship with New Delhi as potentially an alliance against China. Like the Americans, the Chinese were uneasy about the Indo-Soviet relationship. Therefore, China also moved to aid Pakistan.


It was a situation as tangled as the geography, with Maoist China and the United States backing the military dictatorship of Pakistan and the Soviets backing democratic India.


From the Indian point of view, the borderland between Pakistan and China — that is, Kashmir — then became a strategically critical matter of fundamental national interest. The more of Kashmir that India held, the less viable was the Sino-Pakistani relationship. Whatever emotional attachment India might have had to Kashmir, Indian control of at least part of the region gave it control over the axis of a possible Pakistani threat and placed limits on Chinese assistance.

Thus, Kashmir became an ideological and strategic issue for the Indians.



Shifting Alliances and Enduring Interests

In 1992, India's strategic environment shifted: The Soviet Union collapsed, and India lost its counterweight to the United States. Uncomfortable in a world that had no balancing power to the United States, but lacking options of its own, India became inward and cautious. It observed uneasily the rise of the pro-Pakistani Taliban government in Afghanistan — replacing the Indian-allied Soviets — but it lacked the power to do anything significant. The indifference of the United States and its continued relationship with Pakistan were particularly troubling to India.


Then, 2001 was a clarifying year in which the balance shifted again. The attack on the United States by al Qaeda threw the United States into conflict with the Taliban. More important, it strained the American relationship with Pakistan almost to the breaking point. The threat posed to India by Kashmiri groups paralleled the threat to the United States by al Qaeda.


American and Indian interests suddenly were aligned. Both wanted Pakistan to be more aggressive against radical Islamist groups. Neither wanted further development of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Both were happy to be confronting the Pakistanis with more and more aggressive demands.


The realignment of Indian relations with the United States did not represent a fundamental shift in Indian geopolitics, however. India continues to be an island contained by a ring of mountains. Its primary interest remains its own unity, something that is always at risk due to the internal geography of the subcontinent. It has one enemy on the island with it, but not one that poses a significant threat — there is no danger of a new generation of Muslim princes entering from Pakistan to occupy the Indian plain. Ideally, New Delhi wants to see a Pakistan that is fragmented, or at least able to be controlled. Toward this end, it will work with any power that has a common interest and has no interest in invading India. For the moment, that is the United States, but the alliance is one of convenience.


India will go with the flow, but given its mountainous enclosure it will feel little of the flow. Outside its region, India has no major strategic interests — though it would be happy to see a devolution of Tibet from China if that carried no risk to India, and it is always interested in the possibility of increasing its own naval power (but never at the cost of seriously reshaping its economy). India's fundamental interest will always come from within — from its endless, shifting array of regional interests, ethnic groups and powers. The modern Indian republic governs India. And that is more important than any other fact in India.



            INDIA WILL NOT CHANGE

                                                             Vasundhra