Lamb Among Wolves

India's political situation is pathetic in the international arena. It does not look any better domestically either but that is the subject for another day. India has one sixth of the world population but it has no representation in UN Security Council which operates with fifteen members. It has not held even the rotating membership in the last eighteen years. Pakistan, a terrorist state, has held a seat as recently as 2004. Even miserable Bangladesh had a seat at the council in 2001. India has been kept out far too long.

Pakistan, in spite of all the terrorism that it exports, is a "strategic partner" of the United States in fighting terrorism. Further, Pakistan gets handsomely paid for being the "strategic partner" and is provided with modern weapons with which it can threaten India. It tries to wield a veto power over India's aid projects in Afghanistan and routinely sends terrorists to attack Indian interests there and everywhere else. In spite of the numerous Pakistani terrorist attacks inflicted on Indian soil the world paid no attention until US and Europe began to suffer similar fate.

Casual world opinion is that India is occupying Kashmir illegally and would like a plebiscite but nobody except Indians seem to know that Pakistan is illegally occupying a large chunk of Kashmir from where they have ethnically cleansed out all Hindus and Sikhs. Though the UN resolution states that the plebiscite can take place only after both India and Pakistan withdraw their troops from Kashmir, the focus is only on India to withdraw its troops. There is the Gilgit area of north western Kashmir which Pakistan has occupied and conveniently renamed it as "Northern Areas" that even Indian government seems to have washed off its hands. In such a world, what kind of security does an Indian citizen have, how secure is India's sovereignty and how safe are India's borders? Indian newspapers routinely editorialize about the "violation of human rights by Indian army and police" when the borders are not secure and internal security tenuous. During the siege in Mumbai at the Taj Mahal hotel by Pakistani terrorists in November of 2008 the Time Magazine's South Asia correspondent, Aryn Baker^(a) had the arrogance to advocate for the bigots in Pakistan longing for "the golden era of the Mughal period in the 1700s and has a fervent desire to see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited under Islamic rule". As if Hindus do not deserve human rights.

Three countries stayed out of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, namely India, Pakistan and Israel, and all three have nuclear weapons. Nobody in the West would even dare to suggest that Israel gives up its nuclear weapons. Columnists in the West routinely write about India and Pakistan holding nuclear weapons and the need to strip them of those weapons. Of the two, everyone knows which one exports terrorism and nuclear weapon technology. But even US does not have access to the top Pakistani proliferator, A.Q.Khan, in spite of all the billions that they are giving as bribe and blood money. But President Obama wanted to scuttle the Indo-US Commercial nuclear treaty that President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh worked out. Now, China is proposing to sell nuclear reactors to Pakistan in clear violation of commercial nuclear materials and equipment treaty while Obama and his state department are looking the other way. They very well remember that China owns a over two trillion dollars of US Treasury bonds and currency and it can sink the US dollar and economy overnight. It is not just Obama, there is a big business by a crowd of do-gooders who warned against Indo-US nuclear treaty, including New York Times and Gary Milholin of Wisconsin Project, but one does not hear these people uttering a word about the China-Pakistan deal. When it comes to their own economy, every country, including the mighty United States, becomes flexible with their principles and ideologies.

Is there justice in the world? Only fools and liberal Indian commentators would raise such a silly question. Of course, there is justice, but only on the terms of the mighty and strong. For the weak to survive in this world they need wisdom which Indian polity sadly lacks. We Indians are Gandhi's children, we always look out for the other guy and our dharma is to let our enemy hold our neck in a noose so that he feels safe and secure. Our intellectuals talk about a "just solution to Kashmir problem with Pakistan" as if Pakistan ever cared for a just solution. Pakistan's wish is to bring back the Moghul empire and claim ownership to every piece of real estate where Aurangazeb ruled. Some talk about mediation through a "disinterested third party" as if such an entity exists. There is no disinterested third party, every country in this world has an agenda with underlying self interest. We proudly talk about our non-violence, secularism and equality as if the rest of the world cares about all these. We live in a dog eat dog world, and when it comes to implementing a foreign policy, wise leaders put self interest ahead of ideology. Gandhi and his Congress followers including Nehru never realized this fact, and basically this ignorance is the root cause all the security problems that India is facing in its borders as well as in its international relations. Until India's polity realizes that its self interest ought to consistently command higher priority over the so called justice and ideology the forces to balkanize India will ever more be active and might even succeed. Just remember, Amnesty International is not going to stop Pakistani terrorists or guarantee our borders, our own security establishment has to do that.

I plan to be writing about India's internal and external politics, diplomacy and security interests on a regular basis. I welcome readers to give me feed back.

Reference:

(a) - Aryn Baker, "India's Muslims in Crisis", Time Magazine, November 27, 2008

(www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862650-2,00.html)