Two Serial Bomb blasts in two days and what is this incompetent and impotent government doing? Write to the PM and demand answers NOW.
New Delhi, July 25 (IANS) China has formally invited United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her “family members” to attend the August 8 inaugural ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. Sources said Chinese ambassador to India Zhang Yan called on Gandhi Thursday at her 10, Janpath residence and handed over a formal invitation from the Communist Party of China (CPC).
“The Chinese ambassador took the opportunity to congratulate her on the UPA government winning a confidence vote in parliament and also handed over the invitation to attend the inaugural function of the Olympic Games,” the sources said.
A number of heads of states and governments, including US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and French President Nikolas Sarkozy have already confirmed their participation at the Olympics’ inaugural.[link]
While China has taken care to invite the formal heads of State and Government from all other countries. In the case of India it has deliberately decided to not invite either the President or the Prime Minister of the country and has instead extended an invitation to Sonia Gandhi and her “family members”. While it is common knowledge that she is indeed the power behind the throne in the current ruling setup and the PM is a mere puppet of hers. This arrangement is India’s internal matter and for all official purposes Sonia Gandhi and her “family members” who hold no official position as ministers or cabinet members are to be considered as private citizens.
China has to go through the official procedures and invite the formal heads of state and government of India which is only when it will be considered as an invitation to India. Inviting a private family is not the same as inviting India to the opening ceremony.
It is unfortunate that nobody either in Parliament or the Media has raised this issue and it is even more unfortunate that the Indian government and the MEA have remained quite in the face of this deliberate snub by the Chinese and have not lodged a formal protest with the Chinese.
Harsh V Pant in an article titled “India’s Power Challenge” in Outlook in response to Guha’s earlier article in the same magazine saying that India shouldn’t indulge itself in the so called skulduggery of international power politics makes the point that international relations are anarchic and involve skulduggery in the first place to begin with and India cannot close its eyes to that fact and avoid the situation by chanting the peace and goodwill mantra alone.
He also wonders why Indian politicians who practice the worst form of realpolitik in the domestic arena shy away from power politics when it comes to the international arena.
A fundamental quandary that has long dogged India in the realm of foreign affairs and that has become even more acute with India’s ascent in the international order is what Sunil Khilnani has referred to as India’s lack of an “instinct for power”.
Most recently, this ambivalence was expressed by the Indian minister of commerce in a speech when he said: “this word power often makes me uncomfortable”. Though he was talking about the economic rise of India and the challenges that India continues to face as it continues to strive for sustained economic growth, his discomfort with the notion of India as a rising power was indicative of a larger reality in Indian polity. This ambivalence about the use of power in international relations where any prestige or authority eventually rely upon traditional measures of power, whether military or economic is curious as the Indian political elites have rarely shied away from the maximization of power in the realm of domestic politics, thereby corroding the institutional fabric of liberal democracy in the country. It was Indira Gandhi who long back, while addressing a foreign audience, suggested that India doesn’t believe in power (apparently only when it came to foreign policy it might seem).
Well the reality is actually quite down to earth. This is because most Indian politicians and bureaucrats and so called “intellectuals” included do not understand the outside world the way it is. They are more comfortable politicking in a domestic arena where they can easily recognize themselves with their opponents, rivals, supporters and other assorted cast of characters and even second guess them. On the other hand the rest of the outside world is indeed very foreign to them. They do not understand the ideologies, the fears, the ambitions and the desires that animate those outside India and thus their instinct since the last six decades has been to stick to a formula, that of professing its peaceful intentions and goodwill towards the outside world and hoping that they will leave them alone so that they can continue to indulge all their politicking energies in the domestic arena.
And one cannot blame them since they are the product of a culture that has been very insular and did not seek to know very much about the outside world until very recently. Only in modern times perhaps since the mid-nineteenth century have Indians traveled abroad in significant numbers. Until then it was even a religious taboo to travel abroad and those who did faced social ostracism on their return.Nowadays it is becoming more and more common and the globalization process means that more and more Indians are coming in direct contact with the outside world in some way or form.
And resultantly the current generation is much more aware of the outside world and India’s place in it. So it is largely a matter of a generation gap and once the current generation of politicians and bureaucrats who had their young formative years back in the era when the dinousaurs roamed the earth retire and ride into the sunset over the course of the next decade and the new generation takes over India will begin to engage with world in a significantly more assertive manner.
According to this IDRW article dated July 4, 2008 China at this stage is ahead in building and deploying Submarines for its navy while India is ahead in building and deploying surface ships and has decades of experience in operating Aircraft carriers compared to the PLA Navy which is still to obtain one.
After 10 years of steady effort, both India and China have made significant qualitative changes in their navies. In terms of submarine capabilities – the construction of SSNs and SSBNs – China is now far ahead of India, however.
China has built two 094 SSBNs and two 093 SSNs, along with JL2 and JL1M submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that are ready to go into service in the PLA Navy, if they have not already done so.
In contrast, India is only preparing to receive one Russian-made Akura SSN for testing purposes by the end of 2008. In February 2008, the Indian Navy also launched from under water a 700-kilometer-range K-15 ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
Nonetheless, India’s pace in the construction of large-tonnage surface battleships and an aircraft carrier is faster than China’s. Thanks to the 290-kilometer-range BrahMos supersonic multirole missile jointly developed by India and Russia, the overall technological standard of the Indian Navy’s ship-to-ship missile is superior to that of China’s PLA Navy. India’s surface battleships currently being built will all be fitted with BrahMos SSMs, according to the plan of the Indian Navy.
Ships added to the PLA Navy over the past 10 years include two 051C DDGs, two 052B DDGs, two 052C DDGs, four 956E/EM DDGs and one 051B DDG, all of which have a full-load displacement of over 6,000 tons. Six additional ships, 054 and 054A FFGs, have also been built. These surface battleships are the flagships of the modern Chinese navy.
In the Indian Navy over the past 10 years three Delhi Class DDGs and three 4,000-ton class Type 1135.6 FFGs have been commissioned, with the latter armed with 300-kilomter-range Club-N surface-to-surface missiles. The Indian Navy has also received three Type 16A FFGs with full-load displacement of 4,500 tons and armed with 16 units of H-35 surface-to-surface missiles.
As a result, in terms of the construction of surface battleships above 6,000 tons, China is temporarily ahead of India, while in the building of 4,000-ton class missile frigates, India and China are about equal, with India slightly ahead in technology.
The Indian Navy is also armed with one Hermes aircraft carrier with a full-load displacement of 28,000 tons as well as 12 Sea Harrier FRS Mk 51 fighters. Obviously, the Indian Navy’s experience in the use of an aircraft carrier is surely superior to that of the PLA Navy.
Regarding the surface battleships under construction right now, India seems to be much more ambitious than China. Since 2007, the only large surface battleship China has been building is the 054A FFG. In contrast, the Indian Navy has started to build three P-15A DDGs at its Mazagon Shipyard. This is an upgraded variant of the Delhi Class DDG, with drastic changes. So far one P-15A has already been launched.
A source from the Mazagon Shipyard told the author in New Delhi that the P-15A construction program is now giving way to the Shivalik, or P-17 FFG. The first P-17 will be delivered to the Indian Navy within this year, and the second and third will be delivered in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
The two types of surface battleships mentioned above will all be fitted with a vertical-launched version of the BrahMos SSM. The P-15A will be armed with 16 such missiles. The P15A DDG has a full-load displacement of 7,000 tons, and still uses the Shtil-1 ship-to-air missile. The P-17 is India’s indigenous stealthy FFG and has a full-load displacement of 5,300 tons. It is also armed with Shtil-1 ship-to-air missiles. [link]
The good folks at Bharat-Rakshak are war gaming a war scenario with China on the Tibetan plateau. While a similar exercise is being done by some on the Chinese side too.
Andrei Chang writing in his column Military might on UPIAsiaOnline has this to say about a possible Indo-China conflict after the Beijing Olympics.
Should China-India relations deteriorate to the verge of military confrontation and the riots in Tibet spread extensively, the first combat units of the PLA to be called to action would be the No. 52 and No. 53 Mountain Brigades under the Tibet Military Region.
The No. 52 Brigade, stationed at Linzhi, is highly mechanized and armed with T-92 wheeled armored vehicles and HJ-8/9 anti-tank missiles. National highway 318 directly connects Linzhi and Lhasa; thus it is logical to conclude that the T-92 wheeled armored vehicles on the streets of Lhasa were from this brigade. The No. 52 Mountain Brigade is stationed at Milin and is also the PLA combat unit stationed closest to the city of Lhasa.
National highway 318 is in fact the southern route of the Sichuan-Tibet highway. In the event of war or future large-scale riots in Tibet, the highway will be the key passageway for combat troops from the Chengdu Military Region to enter Tibet.
However, this key highway runs across the Minjiang River and the Daduhe River in a region with an average altitude of 4,250 meters (around 14,000 feet) above sea level, and thus is very susceptible to attack by the Indian Air Force or assault by organized rioters. Most of the highways within the Tibet region will be within striking range of the Su-30MKI fighters soon to be deployed in the No. 30 Squadron of the Indian Air Force at Tezpur.
When the External Affairs minister Padmashri Shri Pranab Mukherjee landed in Beijing for his scheduled meeting with the Chinese leadership. He found that neither Hu or grandpa Wen could spare any time to meet him. But they instead fixed up a meeting with the newly appointed Vice President Xi Jinping who is currently assigned for dealing with crank cases.
That has left the Indian side including both the MEA and MEdiA quite confused and they are trying to figure out whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.The current leadership shows no inclination to meet him while at the same they arrange a meeting with the supposed future leadership.
Well let me help them out of their stupor. In one short sentence- It is a BAD thing and it is a straightforward diplomatic slap in the face.
Xi Jinping might be the chosen successor of Hu Jintao slated to succeed him in 2012. but the CCP history is littered with the corpses of such “chosen ones”. from President Lin Biao to Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang there are many who one day were on the path to superstardom only to find themselves in a dark dungeon the next day holding their intenstines in their hands and begging for mercy from the red guards just because of one small real or perceived misstep.
Xi knows this very well. So all that Pranab can expect from this encounter is more homilies, platitudes, joint declarations ad hominem but nothing of substance.
And one more thing that has missed the notice of most Padmashri Shri Pranab should have chosen a better day to make his trip to Beijing than preferring to go on the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in an Olympic year when the whole world is trying to use the Olympics as a leverage to pressure Beijing to improve its record on human rights. It is said that diplomacy is a lot about symbolism. The posturing matters just as much as the substance. It is unlikely that the either Pranabda or the babus of the MEA were unaware of the significance of the day.
Now the timing is definitely not an issue between India and China. Most certainly the Chinese would have been just as boorish as they have been today even if the Indian foreign minister had landed on June 6th, 7th or 8th or whenever. it wouldn’t make a dime of a difference.
But where it will come to matter is in the court of International opinion which the Indian diplomats are trying to woo for myriad reasons and especially for their coveted permanent security council seat. For a country that is drumbeating its credentials as the largest democracy in the world to gain a seat at that supposed high table. It matters what message each of its words and actions sends to the rest of the world. This unfortunately has only sent the message that India really doesn’t have any courage of conviction to act on its own professed principles and again when they see the craven attitude of Mukherjee and his ministry in the light of Chinese boorishness it doesn’t raise their confidence that India has the ability to even stand up for its own self. No wonder governments in most world capitals do not take the Indian diplomats seriously.
it didn’t take very long for this to happen did it? barely has the ink dried on the post warning against Prachanda’s Charm offensive where this blogger contended that Maoist leader is merely trying to lull his enemies into complacency while aiming to seize absolute power for himself and his motley crew comes the news that the slimy snake that he is he has already began to hiss and bare his fangs.
Maoist chairman Prachanda, expected to lead the next government in Nepal, has warned the media against criticising his party, saying that “we will no longer tolerate criticism as we have already been elected by the people”.
Addressing a rally to celebrate the declaration of republic in Kathmandu Prachanda said his CPN-Maoist will not tolerate further criticism by the media and warned of serious consequences if it continued to criticise the party.
Targeting the Kantipur publication that brings out the largest circulated dailies Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post, the former rebel leader said, “You journalists did well to continuously criticise the Maoists before the constituent assembly polls, otherwise the election would not have taken place at all.”
“Now we will no longer tolerate criticism as we have already been elected by the people,” he said, adding that the other newspapers criticising the Maoist will also meet the same fate.[link]
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that it didn’t take him long to start operationalising the standard operating procedures manual used by the communists worldwide to incrementally seize absolute power by first threatening the Free and thriving Nepali media. simply because a free media with its ability to scrutinise their working is what the Communists universally dislike. since it is a huge obstacle in executing the next step of their manual, viz blowing off the heads of all the opposition leaders and supporters, subverting the autonomous institutions of the state such as the Judiciary, the Election commission and the Nepali Army, and installing a banana republic in place where a small privileged elite called the politburo led by himself ofcourse get to dictate the lives of millions of Nepalis.
and all this While the left-liberal Indian and Western media go gaga over Prachanda’s charm offensive and give him and his band of thuggies a free pass and look the other way while they get down to the work of destroying Nepal and terrorising its people into submission.
It is therefore imperative on all free thinking people both in Nepal and the rest of the world to frustrate the dubious Maoist-Communist agenda in Nepal. The Nepali people unfortunately conceded far too easily on the Maoist demands to abolish the monarchy which was a very big mistake. I believe they should have instead replaced Gynanedra with a more acceptable individual and retained the institution as a constitutional monarchy which would have been a symbol of stability for Nepal.
But now that the deed has been done it is doubly important that they do not concede ground on the Right to freedom of speech and expression. Prachanda’s contention that the Media should not criticise him and his party because now they have been elected by the people is laughable. if that is the case then no one should criticise George bush or Gordon brown or Manmohan singh or any of the parties they belong to since even they were elected by the people.
The Nepali mediamen did the right thing by immediately condemning Prachanda’s statement and asking him and his party to demonstrate their commitment to the democratic process.
On India’s part it is absolutely imperative that the Indian government should openly come out in support of the Right to Freedom of Speech and association in Nepal and roundly condemn this statement by Prachanda and demand that he disarm his militia and submit to the democratic political process in Nepal.
Update: Nepal’s newly minted Propoganda minister seems to have disappeared and is suspected to have gone to China on an all expenses paid trip sponsored by the Chinese embassy ostensibly perhaps for some advanced training on the nuances of terrorising the Nepali media into toeing the party line. coincidentally at the same time as his boss Prachanda has begun to threaten the Nepali media of “serious consequences” if they continued to hold him and his motley crew accountable for their actions.
One another item to add to the long list of inglorious achievements of the UPA regime that will haunt India in the coming decades is helping establish a pro-China regime in neighbouring Nepal which effectively brings the communist sickle right upto India’s heartland endangering its security in ways that will only become apparent as time rolls by.
One of the first acts of the Maoists after seizing power in the recently held elections was to dictate the end of Nepal’s 240 year old monarchy thus removing a sizeable thorn in the way of their ultimate aim of seizing absolute power in Nepal in incremental steps. They haven’t yet disbanded their militia and reports are that they used them extensively to intimidate opposition party candidates and supporters in the recent elections.
In the meanwhile the Maoist leader is on a charm offensive. In an interview with Karan Thapar on Devil’s Advocate he has laid out his vision for the future course of Indo-Nepal relations. It is a very charming interview where Prachanda or Pushpa Kumar Dhamal has tried to make all the right noises and lull his enemies into a false sense of security. In that he has learnt from the example of his predecessors from across the globe ranging from Stalin to Mao to Castro and others on how to charm the gullible left-liberals and use the enemy’s own free media against him. that in itself begs the need to keep an eye out for this hooded serpent.
NEW DELHI: In a strange move, at a time when the government is promoting “Come to India — Walk with the Buddha” to attract foreign tourists to Buddhist circuit in the country, five foreigners have been given Quit India notice to leave the country within seven days “for participating in a religious activity”.
James Petersen, Lex Pelger and David Huang from US, Maryla Cross from UK and Paul Christians Buntz from Norway were given the notices for “violating the visa rules” by Pithoragarh SP Puran Singh Rawat on Friday as they reached Banspatan in Uttarkhand’s border district with the Tibetan marchers who have been walking towards Tibet since March 10.[source- Quit India notice to five foreign marchers]
As is obvious from the above passage these men were detained for participating in a peace march- a political activity. and maybe just maybe even that is a violation of the rules of the tourist visas issued to them. but the haughty idiots that man India’s foreign policy citadels simply cannot be bothered to even refer back to the very rulebook under which they claim to be operating.
The government insists that the five have violated visa rules. “On tourist visa, you cannot take part in a religious activity. If we allow that, you will have people coming here to propagate their religion. It’s only for travelling and sightseeing, etc. So, they have violated the visa rule by participation in the march,” said Ashim Khurana, joint secretary (Foreigners) in the ministry of home affairs. Read the rest…
A little under two years ago on July 6, 2006, the Nathu-La Pass situated on the border between India and now illegally occupied Tibet was opened for border trade between the Indian state of Sikkim and the so called Tibetan Autonomous region.
At that time much of the media and officialdom had gone on an overdrive peddling the line that this was being done because China had finally recognised Sikkim as an integral part of India, in exchange for the India’s unequivocal recognition of Tibet as a part of China.
But since then though countless Indian officials, mediamen and politicians cutting across party lines have many times chanted the mantra that India recognises Tibet as an integral part of China without the slightest provocation, no Chinese leader has ever made a similar statement on Sikkim even when asked pointed questions in that regard. The closest that they ever came was when Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in his April 2005 visit to India in reply to a pointed question tactfully replied “It is well known that the issue of Sikkim is no longer the problem between China and India. This is the common consensus reached by the leaders of both countries.”
The Indian side unfortunately did not push this matter forcefully enough with the Chinese side and extract a unambiguous written statement from the Chinese declaring that they accepted that Sikkim was an integral part of India and chose to be content with the Chinese statement that “Sikkim was no longer a problem between China and India”.
Well now they have decided to make it a problem. A year after they demolished a makeshift bunker on the Indian side comes the news that they have now laid claim to a piece of land in North Sikkim.
China has surprised India by laying claim on a small tract of land in North Sikkim, even threatening this week to demolish existing stone structures there. India has strongly rebutted these claims, lodged an official protest and barred Chinese troops from entering the area.
Referred to as the “Finger Area” by Indian armed forces, this territory falls north of Gyangyong in Sikkim and overlooks a strategically important valley known as the Sora Funnel. It contains several stone cairns, which are essentially heaps of stones that can be used for shelter. The area is in the northernmost tip of Sikkim, north of a place called Gyangyong, and appears like a protruding finger on the map — hence the name Finger Area.[link]
The bottomline is that the Indian side brought this upon itself by not extracting a written and unambiguous statement from the Chinese side that they regarded Sikkim as an integral part of India and lulling themselves into complacency. The Media is not entirely blameless in this episode as it had back then shirked its duty of playing the role of a vigilant watchdog and allowed itself to be taken in by the government line that the absence of an unambiguous statement from the Chinese side was not a big deal at all. so this despairing statement at the end of the article in the Indian express appears quite disingenuous.
But clearly, what was considered a settled issue once China recognized Sikkim as part of India is now making an uncomfortable re-entry into the boundary settlement discourse.
can we hear that collective refrain from the Indian establishment and the media- oh! the wicked Chinese not respecting the “spirit” of that “settlement” .
got news for you guys with Communist China even the letter doesn’t matter. but it would have atleast made you guys look less stupid now if you had only managed to get it.