Two Serial Bomb blasts in two days and what is this incompetent and impotent government doing? Write to the PM and demand answers NOW.
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.
Karan Thapar: You always believed that India should stand up to China. How did they receive you when you went to China as defence minister?
George Fernandes: I was well received. The Prime Minister had come to receive me.
Karan Thapar: Breaking protocol?
George Fernandes: I don’t know if it was protocol.
Karan Thapar: I believe he also put his personal plane at your disposal.
George Fernandes: Yes the entire plane was at my disposal.
Karan Thapar: For the full one week.
George Fernandes: For one full week and if I wanted to stay more as long as I stay there.
Karan Thapar: I believe they also tried to make you happy. They put women at your disposal.
George Fernandes: Not in that sense. Some people will think that I had some fun. I didn’t have any fun.
Karan Thapar: But the women were made available. You had three or four women with you all the time – pretty women.
George Fernandes: Yes. When I came back they were waiting at the doors.
Karan Thapar: Whenever you came back they were waiting at the door?
George Fernandes: Yes.
Karan Thapar: So China in other words, despite the fact that you are a critic, went out of its way to make you happy. This is proof that if you stand up to China, China respects you.
George Fernandes:Yes I believe that.
The only problem here is Karan’s Interpretation. He doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility of Honeytrapping. One of the oldest tricks of trade in the spying and subversion profession[link].
Update: An earlier post on Chinese subversive activities targeting important Indian politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders with gifts, bribes and inducements.
The situation today has many parallels to the situation just before 1962. We have a defence minister AK Antony in the mould of VK Menon, a foreign secretary Shivashankar Menon in the mould of KM Panikker, an Army General Gen Deepak Kapoor, an ignorant and pompous chief in the mould of BM Kaul, and ofcourse the most pusillanimous PM India has ever seen in the shape of Manmohan Singh, a Nehru wannabe to square it up and all this ofcourse in the backdrop of a rapid Chinese military buildup on the Tibetan plateau and increased incursions long the Indo-Tibetan border by Chinese occupation troops just like back in the late 1950s. History repeating itself again as a farce.
The only silver lining is that we have the option of kicking this crowd out anytime within the next one year unlike back in the 1950s when there was no credible opposition party to get rid of that romantic statesman and his rotten core of sycophants.hopefully we get to the polling booth sooner than later.
NEW DELHI: India’s defensive and ultra-cautious mindset towards China has now firmly made its way even to the normally hawkish environs of the Defence Ministry (MoD).
The latest MoD annual report makes it seems that all is hunky-dory as far as the Chinese military threat is concerned, with Beijing even coming in for some glowing mention as an ”important player in global affairs”, proceeding firmly ahead on its ”well chartered out goals”.
It’s not as if the extreme wariness of the armed forces towards China has suddenly vanished into thin air, but the MoD report is yet another indicator of India’s reluctance to say anything to ruffle a prickly Beijing.
China’s hugely aggressive border posture with India is evident from the fact that around 350 cases of intrusions by its troops have been recorded all along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control - right from east Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh to Joshimath in Uttarakhand and Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh - over the last three years.[link]
Shortly after his release from a Pakistani jail after nearly three decades of solitary confinement Kashmir Singh has admitted that he was a spy who was captured on the line of duty. And what did the Indian government do for him all these years when he was kept chained in solitary confinement in a Pakistani jail and most certainly brutally tortured?
Did it try to get him released in a prisoner exchange which is what most foreign countries routinely do?
Did it take care of his family in his absence?
The answers are self evident and reflects very very poorly on the Indian state. If people do not have confidence that they and their family will be well compensated and supported by the government for their services to the nation in case something happens to them on the line of duty then obviously fewer and fewer people will come forward. It is a virtual no brainer. The expected sixth pay commission largesse not withstanding.
Kashmir Singh, who was freed from Pakistani jail after 35 years, on Friday admitted that he was an Indian spy and did his best to serve the country, but deplored that successive governments at the Centre did nothing for his family.
“After my arrest in 1974, the successive governments did nothing for my family. I did the duty assigned to me as a spy, but the government, after my arrest, did not bother to spend a single penny for my family,” a calm and composed looking Singh, who was accompanied by his wife Paramjeet Kaur, said.
“The Central government did not bother to take care of my family following my arrest. The government does only the paper work,” he said.
Asked whether he was sent to Pakistan by the military intelligence and the route he took to go there, Singh said, “Even Pakistan authorities failed to get this information from me. I was paid Rs 400 as salary. As per duty, I went to serve the country,” he said.
Asked what he would like to say for some other people who are working in similar kind of professions, Singh said, “I was a spy and did my duty. About others I will not comment, I am not President of the country to give a reply to such queries”.
Singh, who was lodged in seven different jails in Pakistan, said, “I will not tell the story of my ordeal in Pakistani prisons as it will damage the cases of about 100 other such prisoners languishing in jails there”.
“After my husband’s arrest, the Central government gave no compensation to the family and left me in a lurch,” she said.
He said in Pakistani prisons, he was known by the name ‘Ibrahim’. “I was kept in solitary confinement and remained chained for 17 long years”, he said.
The Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor in an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN to be telecast at 8:30pm IST(GMT + 5.5) tonight has gone on record saying that India can be held equally to blame of intruding into Chinese territory!
“The Chinese have a different perception of the Line Of Actual Control as do we – when they come up to their perception we call it an incursion, likewise they do.”
His shocking statement that India can be equally blamed for intruding into Chinese territory is based on a presumed logic that since the two sides have not agreed on a mutual Line of Actual Control both sides can accuse each other of intruding into their territories.
Infact the Army chief by making such a statement has exposed his ignorance of the history of the India-China border issue and also gives the impression that he is completely ignorant of the proceedings of the nearly 11 rounds of border talks that have been taking place since the last two and a half decades which coincided with much of his Army career.
He doesn’t seem to realise that technically India and China do not share a border. The entire length of the India-China border as it is today is actually the borders of occupied Tibet and Chinese Turkestan both forcibly incorporated into Chinese territory in the years immediately after the Maoists seized power from the nationalists in China in 1949. And the entire historical Chinese claim to these two territories is based on the premise that they were both part of Chinese territory during the Yuan dynasty of Kublai Khan.The so called “Middle Kingdom” hypothesis. The only fly in the ointment is that Kublai Khan was a Mongol vassal for much of his rule and thus it is more correct to say that Mongolia has more historical claim to China, Tibet and Chinese Turkestan rather than China has a claim on Inner Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan and Tibet.
The wily Chinese get around this by peddling the fiction that Kublai Khan became a “Chinese emperor” after the death of Mongke Khan and his subsequent defeating of his younger brother Arik Boke who had succeeded Mongke as Khan of the Mongol empire. That is absolute nonsense because after defeating Arik Boke, Kublai Khan had declared himself as the Khan of the Mongol empire the only problem was that the rest of the Golden family refused to recognise him as such. On the other hand Kublai Khan like a lot of other pragmatic conquerors in history also adopted some local Chinese titles and symbols to make himself more acceptable to the Chinese masses and cement his rule over the part of the empire directly under him [1] and by the time the Yuan dynasty was overthrown a century later by the indigenous Ming dynasty Tibet and Chinese turkestan did not form a part of their realm.
In short while the Chinese refuse to recognise the McMohan line terming it as a product of British imperialism their entire claim on Chinese Turkestan and Tibet which brings them to that Border line in the first place is itself a product of their past allegiance to Mongol imperialism which they cleverly disguise as the “Middle Kingdom” for consumption by gullibles!
Gen Kapoor has also conveniently sidestepped the fact that the Line of Actual Control remains undefined because the Chinese side inspite of nearly two decades of border talks have refused to exchange maps of the Western and eastern sectors with India while India’s own claim line is crystal clear for all including the Chinese side to see. It is therefore the responsibility of the Chinese side as a claimant to submit maps clarifying their own stand on where they think the Border in their opinion must run. India as a status quo power which has since the last 100 years adhered to the McMohan line cannot be held “equally responsible” in anyway for incidents on the border.
Gen Kapoor has clearly overstepped his brief in this case and this is not the first time, recently he held forth on the sixth pay commission on foreign soil disregarding all established norms that domestic politics stops at the water’s edge.The Government should either rein him in or relieve him of his responsibilities immediately if he continues to undermine the Indian position with his hollow moral grandstanding and continuous whining.That seems to be a long shot considering that the rest of the current government is no better in this regard.
It is also sad that Karan Thapar who has a reputation of being a “tough” interviewer who wouldn’t let even a bat escape on a dark moonless night gave a free pass to Gen Kapoor and did not challenge him with the fact that it was China which was being the obstacle in clearly demarcating the Line of Actual Control and India’s position in that regard is clear that it adheres to the McMohan line. Thapar would surely have pounced on any bureaucrat or politician if he had said such a thing. That he didn’t in the case of Gen Kapoor proves Pragmatic’s position that the Indian media and the public are in awe of the institution of the Armed forces and do not want to question them too closely for fear of offending them. This has to change. The Armed Forces like the rest of the state establishment should be held as much accountable to the Nation’s interest like anyone else.
Source: 1. Genghis Khan and the making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford.
On the eve of PM Manmohan Singh’s visit to Beijing the Chinese are reportedly putting pressure on the Indian side to speed up the process to conclude a Free Trade Area Agreement with them. The Chinese undoubtedly have an eye on capturing a major share of India’s huge market for cheap(and shoddy) goods which is almost as large as their own and are dangling the temptation of “free access” to their own massive market to the Indian side in return. But considering China’s own record at promoting their own version of Chinese “free trade” it is a good idea for the Indian side not to take them up on this offer just yet.
China stands accused in the WTO by many countries such as the US, Canada, EU and Mexico of unfair trade practices such as giving direct and indirect subsidies to its domestic manufacturers in many forms, such as getting its state agencies such as the PLA to invest and become “partners” in the business, granting refunds, reductions and exemptions from taxes and other payments owed to the government by such firms, and even going to the extent of stopping government run banks from recovering loans owed to them by these enterprises if they meet certain export performance criteria or give preference to purchasing domestic goods over imported goods for their own requirements.
Another complaint involves China’s preferential VAT tax rates on IC chips manufactured in China vs those manufactured abroad. And extending this preferential treatment to those components manufactured by China based companies abroad because of technological limitations which prevent them from being produced domestically. The other similar case involves China imposing higher taxes on Automobiles which are assembled with more imported parts than the ones assembled with more domestic components. This should dampen any unfounded enthusiasm anyone has been quietly nurturing about exporting the Tata Nano to China anytime soon.
And the less said about China’s respect for Intellectual property rights the better.
After hemming and hawing and trying to wriggle out of a very difficult situation the BCCI finally found succour in the same time tested tactic that the Congress has used for several decades ever since the time of the senior Gandhi and has since been adopted as standard procedure in the country. Ride out the public opinion storm somehow and then once the hullabaloo dies down, make a silent and incremental U-turn to get back to the point where they started.
The BCCI which had earlier threatened to pull out of the tour at any stage if the baseless charges against Harbhajan Singh were not withdrawn now sensing that the public busy celebrating harvest festivals across the country is no longer paying as much attention to this controversy as a week ago has quietly changed its stance saying that the tour will go on even if the baseless charges against Harbhajan wasn’t dropped! virtually sealing this talented cricketer’s fate to a 3 match ban and the tag of a “racist” which will soon be on record against him and the Indian cricket team forever.
Once again as if to remind us that all is not hunky dory with the great Indian diaspora. The Ethnic Indian community in Malaysia, took to the streets to protest against their continued institutionalized persecution by the ethnic Malay dominated Malaysian government. The Malaysian government since the 1970s has followed a kind of apartheid policy against their non-Malay citizens called the “Bumiputra” policy by which they seek to give first preference in most of the jobs, government contracts, college seats etc… to the ethnic Malays.
This has led to the marginalisation of the nearly two million people of Indian descent whose forefathers were taken there as indentured labourers by the British. According to this source if a certain Malaysian Indian tycoon Ananda Krishnan is taken out of the equation the entire ethnic Indian community in Malaysia has less than 0.2% of the national income! Alarming stats indeed and desperate people do desperate things.One of them is an attempt by an Malaysian Indian lawyer to draw attention to the plight of his people by suing the British government in a British court for a huge sum of money.
The Indian government’s response as usual has been woeful. At the very center of this policy rigor mortis is the Indian Foreign policy designed by “geniuses” like Nehru and his ignorant lackeys like K.N. Panikker and the custodian of this crown family jewel today is what goes by the moniker, the MEA, perhaps the only foreign ministry in the world which has a whole country at its disposal to further its own Utopian, dyed in the wool agenda as opposed to all other countries which have a foreign ministry at their disposal to further their national interests.
So we have the sorry spectacle of Indian diplomats and ministers hugging dictators and mass murderers across the world in the name of third world solidarity, crying over the cause of the far away Palestinians and black south Africans, losing sleep over the legal problems of assorted terrorists, giving clean chits to neighbourhood thugs, and so on and so forth while the welfare and well being of the Indian citizens living and working abroad and that of the People of Indian Origin which should be one of the top items in their list of priorities is neglected.
Even a Saudi blogger calling himself the Muttawa had highlighted this issue in his blog and specifically chastised the Indian embassy by name for its uncaring attitude towards the concerns of its own citizens. B. Raman in his recent book “The kaoboys of R&AW” has enumerated how Nero and his diplomatic cronies refusal to intervene inspite of the repeated requests of Indian migrants in places like UK and Canada during the 50s and 60s led to increasing embitterment on their part leading to disastrous consequences later on.
Not very surprising again. Considering that when the supposedly secular Indian state which is composed of people of so many different religions, ethnicities, languages etc… neglects to perform its duty of protecting the interests of its citizens and diaspora abroad, and these people are continued to be illtreated by their own host governments the next logical step for these desperate people, is to huddle together and organise themselves along sectarian lines and experience shows that is exactly what they have done. Whether it is the Sikhs, the Srilankan tamils before and now the Malaysian Indians, who have organised themselves as the Hindu Righs Action Forum and are also not neglecting to mention that they are mostly of tamil origin.
And if the Indian state continues its benign neglect then this issue is just going to morph into a Tamil and Hindu issue. With those who feel strongly about Hindu or Tamil issues recognizing themselves strongly with the woes of their Hindu and Tamil brethren across the Bay of Bengal(CNN-IBN please take note it is NOT across the Malacca straits, that would be Indonesia ).
And how long it is before more and more people both within India and abroad begin to connect the dots and start realising that the Indian state simply doesn’t protect their interests the way it should, and start looking towards their own narrow sectarian groups for support when in distress? how would that affect the feeling of Indianness among them? Not very positively for sure.And we all know the end result when the Foreign agencies start fishing in all these troubled waters. Hope we have learnt some lessons from the example of the Khalistani movement.
It is therefore absolutely necessary for the Indian state to take an active role in protecting the interests of both its citizens and diaspora abroad. It simply isn’t enough to merely hold annual “Pravasi Bharatiya” diwas to celebrate the successes of Indians abroad. It is also incumbent on the Indian state to help them in times of need. This is very much in the national interest of such a diverse country, The people of the country should have the confidence that wherever in the world they are their own country will come to their aid in whatever possible way in their hour of need.The same confidence should be instilled among the People of Indian Origin abroad that though they might not be technically Indian citizens and citizens of their own respective countries, India will definitely give them the necessary moral and diplomatic support and take up their case in the appropriate international fora during their hour of need. Every other civilized country in the world does this and so should this one.
Once again the Judicial system in India has proved that when it comes to punishing the Rich and the powerful their famed blindfold does come off for a little while.
While the sessions court sentenced the owners of the Cinema hall and some civic officials to a mere two years and even readily set them free on bail they sentenced a mere gatekeeper, the lowest person in the chain and hence not in a position to hire the best lawyers to defend him to seven years rigorous imprisonment and promptly sent him to prison.
Now in what way is a mere Gatekeeper more culpable than the owner of the building who built the hall flouting all norms, bribed civic officials to look the other way, maintained the building in a poor shape and finally hired him, a thoroughly incompetent gatekeeper, and others, the managers and supervisors to run the whole place?
The buck in this case clearly stops at the very top. And the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy are clearly right in expressing their dismay at the verdict and seeking to approach the High court.
The poor quality of the infrastructure and public facilities and the woeful safety record in the country is a direct result of the people in charge the builders, the civic officials etc… not being held to accountable for their actions and unless the justice system starts taking stringent action against the powers that be such tragedies will continue to happen on a regular basis.